About those Apps...

This week I noodled around with some completely new and some not so new apps.  There were a few I loved, a few I disliked, and the rest, well they were okay and I will probably use them at least once in a while.

Let's start on a positive note with the ones I loved: Animoto, Glogster and Screencast-o-matic. They are all simple to use (okay I haven't actually made a screencast yet but I watched lots of how to videos), they have lots of educational uses and the finished product looks professional.  Animoto produces a slideshow that is far superior to Google Slides and much simpler than PowerPoint.  The free version has a large watermark in the bottom right corner which is pretty annoying but is that is the price you pay for getting it free for educators.  Sadly, I couldn't find a plan for educators that gives more options for multiples users--it is the personal at $60/year or the professional for $400. Glogster produces a multimedia poster that has pictures (including 3-D ones), text, links, video, audio and embedded content. You can exhibit your creation online or print it out.  What a much more interesting and creative way to produce a report than gluing picture and text on a posterboard. Like Animoto, there are limitations to the free account: you can only post 6 content items (which is hardly any) to each product. Unlike Animoto, Glogster has a great price for educators which is only $39 for elementary (30 students) and $95 ($125) for high school.  Both Animoto and Glogster have lots of stock photos or it is super easy to upload your own. Did I say already how much I love both these apps?

As for Screencast-o-matic, I'm excited to try it out.  It seems so incredibly useful, both to educators and students; the former can post tutorials and the latter can create video projects. And it's free!

Now on to the apps that didn't wow me:  Voki and Big Huge Labs.  Don't get me wrong--Voki was cute and I can absolutely see that it would be fun to use in an elementary school setting but the options for which avatars you can use are so limited that I think you would need to pay for. Plus, it just seemed kind of low tech and cheesy to me. Speaking of cheesy, Big Huge Labs' website is terrible.  And while some of the products are fun to make, the parameters are quite limited and I don't see that much educational value to many of them. Though that might be because I'm just creative enough.

As for Timeline, BubbleUs, Doodle, Survey Monkey and Zamzar, they are useful for sure but I'm going to keep my eyes open for alternatives. Timeline was too simple--I'd like to find one that is a bit more sophisticated for high school students.  As for Zamzar, I feel like students mostly want to convert pdf into Google Docs which they can already do without using a converter.  I might use it to convert into Word though.

A final word about Flickr: I've had an account forever though just as a place to store photos--I never thought of it as an educational tool.  It is too bad about not being able to annotate photos but you can still insert text and stickers so it still is somewhat useful in that regard.  Plus you can create private groups and download photos from the Commons so it is still a really good resource.