If all my classes did this

Wendy Wolfe
http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=175

Covering:
Cartoon Creators: Toon Doo, Comic Creator
Graphic Organizers: Gliffy
Productivity Programs: Zoho
Basic Podcasting: GCast
Technology engagement with students increased especially with at-risk students. Students register on toondoo.com and can start creating cartoons with one click of a button. They can select different backgrounds, people and objects. You can also upload pictures and edit and crop them all on the website. After finishing the cartoons students can publish or save the cartoons for personal use. This is a great program for high school and middle school students, but can also be used for upper grade school students. Toondoo can be used to communicate ideas and thoughts, and can help engage students in discussion within the classroom. Another site readwritethink.org (http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/comic/) hosts a comic creator that is simple for all grades to use. These comics are only in black and white and uses flash. The final product can not be published to the internet but can be printed out and scanned. This is a great site for younger students.

Gliffy – Graphic organizer; The site has free access for anyone. There is a subscription service that offers more than the free version. This is very similar to Inspiration. You can also create flow charts, floor plans, network maps. You can also type text onto the page. This might be beneficial to foreign language classes. You can also setup collaboration with other people. Just type in the email of the person that you want to collaborate with and it sends them an email. You can publish your final product public or privately.

Zoho – Online productivity suite; This is a great alternative to Powerpoint. This is especially useful for students that do not have Powerpoint at home. You have several backgrounds to choose from but you can also upload background from powerpoint slide shows. Pictures can be uploaded and inserted into slide shows. Students can save and publish their slideshow to the internet. It is not as robust as Powerpoint.

GCast- Podcast publisher; You can record podcasts on the phone and publish them to the internet. You can embed html code within your wiki site so visitors can listen to your podcast. Students can use this for foreign language assignments to oral histories. Teachers can use gcast to create presentations to assignments for students that are absent.

On the horizon Google Docs looks to be a good replacement program for Zoho as a word and presentation program. The plus is that this program allows for collaboration between many people.