Internet Tools

Prezi        http://prezi.com/

 

Prezi is a presentation tool that helps you organize and share your ideas.  It serves as a similar function to PowerPoint, but with more powerful and interesting features. Presentations are created on a canvas rather than on slides. Presentation can be combined with text, images, and multimedia. A path can be drawn between the different elements to create an animation.

The layout deters the presenters from using too much text. It is easy to include images, sounds, and videos in one presentation. Most importantly, it is very easy to use. Prezi makes sharing ideas more fun and engaging.

With Prezi, you move seamlessly from brainstorming your ideas to presenting them. Create a more cinematic and engaging experience and lead your audiences down a path of discovery. Because Prezi is 3D, you can guide your audience through a truly spatial journey. Zoom out to show the overview of your prezi, zoom in to examine the details of your ideas, or simply move freely through the prezi and react to your audience’s input.

 

 

Web Quest     http://webquest.org/index.php

 

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The model was developed in early 1995 at San Diego State University by Bernie Dodge with Tom March.

This site is designed to serve as a resource to those who are using the WebQuest model to teach with the web. By pointing to excellent examples and collecting materials developed to communicate the idea, all of us experimenting with WebQuests will be able to learn from each other. It is an assignment which asks students to use the World Wide Web to learn about and/or synthesize their knowledge a specific topic. It can also be a more engaging and effective replacement for read-the-chapter-and-complete-the-review-questions

·        A good webquest makes learning interesting for your students. First, a good webquest puts the power of the web behind your topic. You can show students - or let them discover for themselves, not just tell them. Web sites can take your students anywhere in the world.

• Webquests are a way to let students work at their own pace, either individually or in teams.

• A webquest lets students explore selected areas in more depth, but within limits that you have selected. This makes webquests ideal for classes which combine students with different ability levels.

• Webquests offer a different, more dynamic approach to teaching the value of research.

• Webquests can also increase the "comfort level" of students using the Internet for learning activities. While your students are probably already computer literate, a properly designed webquest can help students become creative researchers rather than simply "surfing" from one site to another.

 

Wordle    http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Students can use this tool as a way to familiarize themselves on a specific topic.

ABCya! Word Clouds for Kids    http://www.ABCya.com

ABCya.com word clouds for kids! A word cloud is a graphical representation of word frequency.  A word cloud can represent any main idea or topic based on the words used. Word clouds are fun and exciting because they allow for creativity, expression, and imagination. The appearance of a word cloud can be altered using the graphical buttons above the cloud. It is also easy to save and/or print the cloud by simply pressing a button.