Karen+Burden's+Cool+Tools+Reviews+Reflections+and+Application+Plan


 * Cool Tools Reflection **
 * ECI 509—New Literacies Teacher Leader Institute **
 * Karen B. Burden **

====I not only attended some very powerful Cool Tool sessions at the institute last week, I also observed anumber of tools in action during the other institute sessions. It seemed that one of the common themes of many of the tools I encountered emphasized their ability to engage students more in learning, provide multimodal learning opportunities, and provide an outlet for student creativity.====

====**Xtranormal**—This video-making tool seems particularly engaging and easy to use.It's great that students can add voice and graphics and that it can be embedded as link or uploaded easily. I’m not a real fan of the quirky figures the tool uses as its avatars, but I can certainly see where students would love them. I worry a bit that students will get a bit over-involved in creating scenes and adjusting the camera angles, but with proper focus and a carefully constructed rubric, those issues should resolve themselves. I particulary like this tool for an interview-type presentation where one of the avatars is the interviewer and the other is the interviewee. Overall I think students will enjoy the quirkiness of this tool and will therefore will really explode creatively.====

====**Voki**—This tool also requires the creation of avatars, but again, like in xtranormal, I’m sure students will enjoy the choices this tool offers. Surprisingly, I did when I created a sample Voki during the session. This tool seems fairly versatile by being able to be linked in a number of formats such as blogs, websites, and e-mails, and again, easy to use. There is a human interaction element in this tool yet a sense of anonymity that I think reluctant learners would find particularly appealing. I wish that Vokis could belonger than 60 seconds, but then again, they could become boring and tedious if they were longer. I think these would be great attention-getters at the start of lessons where teachers could present their class warm-ups or opening tasks.====

====**DuffelUp—**I did not get the full potential of this tool for some reason. I did observe its collaborative potential,but I was not entirely able to see how the notion of a travel destination too lwould play out in the classroom. I think my problem with this tool would be resolved if I had a chance to manipulate it more and perhaps see some applications of it in my field of study. I do like the fact that its graphics were excleent and that several students could be working on the same project at the same time. I could see multiple uses in a typical social studies classroom that I need to explore more fully.====

====**Google Sites**—I have used website-making tools before, mainly Weebly, but not Google sites. Since the workshop, I built a Google site and found it overall to be fairly intuitive and user-friendly. It certainly has more options than Weebly including the incredible feature of Google custom searches. Our speaker convinced me of the custom search as a strong online research tool that will allow the teacher to scaffold learning and save students’ valuable time through more focused research. Google sites seem to really encourage collaboration as well. As will all website building tools, they do take time to build but once constructed, are readily accessible and reusable. This tool offers incredible opportunties for learning.====

====**Glogster**—I definitely need more time with this tool; but I do like it especially as a tool for students to demonstrate their learning. It is user-friendly yet structured. Its images seem particularly eye-catching with the ability to link to text, videos, music, websites, and recordings. It truly is a global interfacing tool that should spark students' creativity while allowing high-level demonstration of learning. I do like Glogster as an assessment tool in particular. It seems to lend itself quite well to the sharing of a vast quantity of information in a visual and stimulating format.====

====**Prezi—**As I spoke of several times last week, I have a little motion sensitivity to this tool,but most everyone else seems to be unbothered by this aspect of this tool. It is a very interactive and highly visual tool that uses visualization to show relationships among ideas. In short, our presenter made it clear Prezi takes dull PowerPoints and turns them into exciting and meaningful presentations. I did not find it as user-friendly as I did other tools, but again, this I think I could remedy that problem with additional practice. The colors and graphics potential are superb in this tool. I do not think this tool is suitable for a novice; I think it will take me some time to cultivate the skills necessary for me to appreciate fully Prezi's potential.====

====**Flipping the Classroom**—Unfortunately, I missed agreat deal of this session because of the issues with audio and video with Dr.O’Byrne. I am intrigued by his idea of finding ways to free up class time in order to pursue the “precious work:” discussions, hands-on activities, collaboration—all application level activities. I also was glad to see him reinforce the importance of formative assessments rather than the traditional and ineffective summative assessments. I truly am just beginning to explore the idea of video screen capturing and look forward to reviewing the videos on Jing and Skitch that Dr. O’Byrne referenced.====

====**Other tools—**I sawa myriad of other tools in action last week, some of which I am familiar with and some that I am not: Animoto, flip cameras, nings, wikis, PhotoStory, VoiceThread, Wallwisher, Skype, Weebly, and Wordle in particular. I even used some of these technologies in my Design Studio work. Seeing these technologies in use reinforced for me their viability and versatility in the learning environment. I am committed to continuing my knowledge and use of these tools in my future work as a teacher and a literacy coach.====

**Unit Plan—Possible Opportunitiesto Use the Cool Tools**
====I’d like to focus my ideas here on the longest work of literature sophomore English students read in the Wake County Public School System, the novel //All Quiet on the Western Front// by Erich Maria Remarque. I don’t think I’d use all of these ideas in a single unit on the novel,but I think they all have validity and promise. I tried as much as possible to push for the upper levels of Bloom's taxonomy for these activites with a particular focus on creating, analyzing, and applying. This particular novel loses it effectiveness if it is not applied to students' lives and if they are not presented with opportunities to create something with their new understandings. I have struggled for some time to renew my energy around this novel; my activities achieve that goal by blending the content knowledge of the book with sound pedagogical practices that are either driven by or manifested in digital products.====

====1) Students could use xtranormal to recreate some of the key scenes in the novel that intense conversations between characters. For example, in the first third of the novel, the young soldiers engage in a discussion of what they would do if peace were suddenly declared. My students generally disregard this important conversation because they think it is boring, but its themes are quite crucial to the novel. Perhaps students could recreate that conversation in an xtranormal video where the avatars speak the parts of the various people in the conversation. There are several other such important conversations in the novel that would work as well such as when the boys discuss the worthlessness of their schooling or the scene when the protagonist Paul tells his mother farewell before heading back to the front. In all three cases, students would be “forced” to pull from these crucial conversations the salient points in order to produce the video.==== ====I also like for students to conduct a biographical study of the novel’s author since he fought in WWI, the setting of the novel. I can see an xtranormalvideo in which one avatar is the author and the other is the interviewer with the purpose of focusing on the parallels between the life of the author and events in the novel.====

====2) In the past when I have taught this novel, I have asked students to engage in daily journal writing activities that link to the focus and purpose of that day’s reading and discussion. I think using a Voki each day to announce that day’s journal prompt would be clever and engaging. I could change up the avatar for the sake of variety if necessary. The prompts would be brief, so the 60-second limit would suffice.====

====3) Students need to focus on the themes that Remarque reinforces in the novel, all of which have to do with the effects of war. Students also need to identify quotations and events in the novel that support those themes, especially the quotations. Though I did not attend a session on Wallwisher, I think students could use it to post the key quotations they locate as they read in the format of short quotations that support each of the novel’s 5-7 main themes. All students would then have access to the located passages which could then be used in an essay on the topic of the novel’s themes.====

====4) I have used Weebly already to build a website entitled “Letters from the Front” ([|www.warletters.weebly.com])in which students examine archived letters on websites that real soldiers in a variety of wars have written home. I also have students listen to songs I selected and linked on the website on the same subject, soldiers at war writing home. In the end, students write their own letter home from the perspective of the novel’s protagonist, Paul Baumer,modeled after the war letters they reviewed. They were required to reference scenes in the novel as well as include at least one direction quotation. The WebQuest I built takes students through every stage of the research project.==== ====5) A good research project for this unit could revolve on the fact that this war was the first war fought with the tools of modern technology. Students could research one of these new killing methods and present their findings on a Glogster that will allow photos and text. Possible topics include the following: tanks, airplanes, mustard gas, hand grenades, flamethrowers, pistols, and machine guns. The project should help students understand the cost and cruelty of war.====