LookyBook

LookyBook is a great resource for sharing high quality picture books with students via the Internet. I recently read about this tool on Kevin Jarrett's blog and I agree with him that it would be a great site to use with an interactive Whiteboard. You can access the books and even embed them without signing up for an account, which is a bonus when working with elementary students. Whenever you can utilize a tool without having to sign-up 25, 50, 100 students it is a definite plus. However, in case you are wondering, registering does allow you to comment on books, much like writing a review, as well as create your own bookshelf of books from their collection.

I have embedded a book below to show how this works. If you click on the eyeballs it will show you a larger version of the book. Of course, you could go directly to their site and view the same book but I always like the option of being able to embed content into my own sites such as a Wiki, blog or class homepage because it means my students don't have to learn a new URL just to access the content.

Screencast-O-Matic

If you do any kind of screencasting to create video tutorials or for any other purpose you might want to check out Screencast-O-Matic (great name huh?). This is an unbelievably easy tool to use to capture your onscreen activity. You can record audio via a microphone and have the option to upload and use their server space or save your video as a Quicktime file. It is web-based so you need to be online when you use it but you can record work in offline applications such as Word or anything else you might want to demonstrate. Once you are done recording you can add notes to different portions of the video that will allow your viewers to jump to those sections and read your comments, which will appear as unobtrusive pop-ups at the bottom of the viewing screen. I tried this out and without even signing up for an account I was able to make a simple clip that I then brought into Final Cut Pro (though I imagine it would work in other editors as well) and incorporated into a larger video project I was editing. I didn't need to record audio so I can't comment on that but the video quality was quite good. I'm really not sure what they could do to make this tool any easier to use. It may not have all the features you are used to in a screen capture tool but you can't beat the ease of use and quality for the price (free). You can check out the demo video below to get a better idea of how this tool works.

Dipity and Time Tube

You are probably wondering what a tool named Dipity allows you to do that could be remotely educational. Well, if you are interested in creating timelines with your students then Dipity is a tool you might want to try out. It is web-based and free (isn't everything I write about?) and takes advantage of the many benefits of Web 2.0 functionality, which means you can add images and video from around the web, embed and share your finished timeline and even geographically tag the different events or entries on your timeline. Timelines can be viewed in multiple ways including as a flipbook on a map and, of course, as a traditional timeline. Check out the timeline I have included on JFK to get an idea of the kind of thing you might be able to create. Timelines can have multiple authors as well.

TimeTube is a mashup from Dipity that allows you to type in a keyword and then have a timeline automatically generated that includes a variety of videos that match your specific keyword. I like the concept of this but since there isn't a clear way to filter out videos you can get a lot of oddball stuff included in your timeline. For instance, when I used the search term "JFK" I got news footage and historical video clips along with a clip of a comedian who was talking about JFK and a video of people dunking a basketball to a hip-hop soundtrack. I realize I could have tried to refine my search term but it would be nice if you could edit the timeline once it was created to weed out the videos that don't fit with your educational goals.

Just for Fun

I wanted to share some tools and resources that I have come across in the past few months that are more for fun then for education and since we are fast approaching that time in the school year when achieving educational objectives is becoming increasingly difficult this seemed like a great time for this particular posting.

Face in the Hole
The name of this tool pretty much says it all. The site has a variety of pictures of different celebrities where they have removed the person's face and replaced it with a hole. You get to upload a picture of yourself and put your face in the hole, thus replacing the celebrities face with yours. I have included a sample picture showing myself as Lance Armstrong after winning one of his many Tour de France titles.

Play My Game
Play My Game is similar to Face in the Hole in that you get to add your image to something, but in this case you are adding your image to one of their pre-made games. The games are rather simple and fairly limited but as I said at the beginning, this stuff is more about fun then learning. I tried to upload my own picture to a game but kept getting an error message telling me my picture couldn't be uploaded so I decided to share one of the games on the site that featured our Commander in Chief instead.

Link: PlayMyGame

BeFunky
Once again this is a tool that allows you to work with an image of yourself to create a new customized look. While it can be used for all sorts of fun applications, I do think it has some educational value in the sense that you could take images of students and "cartoonize" them as a way to protect their identities. These images could then be used as profile images on social networks, wikis, blogs and other tools you may have students use in the classroom. I realize students can have a profile without an image, or use an abstract image such as a basketball or lion to represent themselves, but BeFunky does provide another option to consider. Check out my funky look!

TuxPaint: An Open Source KidPix

I read a review of TuxPaint by Marilyn Western in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of the MACUL journal that landed on my desk just yesterday and I had to share it with my dedicated legion of readers. As Marilyn mentions in her review, TuxPaint is an open source alternative to KidPix, which means it is free and available for both Mac and Windows. I realize KidPix is available on both platforms as well but of course it isn't free. I encourage you to look over Marilyn's review for some great ideas on how you may use TuxPaint but really, if you have used KidPix you can do essentially everything you have been able to do with that software. If you aren't familiar with KidPix or applications like it, then check out the screenshots I have included to see some of the ways you can use this graphic arts/drawing program.

Students can create their own drawings, design habitats for an assigned animal, visually represent math problems, work with a teacher created template, insert personal pictures in their creations and much more. It is definitely worth a look and the price (free) is certainly right.