Lino

Lino is an interactive bulletin board website. It allows you to create wonderful presentations that resemble a bulletin board when finished. You are able to post words, pictures, and videos throughout the board. It is a free website and you do not have to sign up to create one. However, if you would like to save it so others can view it, then you do need to sign up.

To figure out how to use this website is not a hard task. In the top right hand corner is your main toolbar. There are four different post-it notes to choose from (they are all the same and you can change the color of them when in editing) for which you can type your words into. You can easily change the size and font of your writing. Then you just click okay and it is put into your bulletin board. You can just click and grab and move it anywhere are your board hassle free.You do the same thing with inserting pictures and videos. You just click on the icon for each and open the picture that was saved on your computer. For videos, you are able to just copy and paste the URL into the box and it will upload your video. After posting what you want on your lino, if you move your mouse to the middle top of your post, you will see a pushpin appear. If you click on that pushpin, it will lock your post into place so it cannot be moved. Just click it again to remove the pushpin and move your post somewhere else.

How I had used lino was to do a country project. Every student was assigned a specific country to research. They would then put the things they researched about onto their bulletin boards. These could be things like food, dress, music, sports, and so on. Then they would pull it up on a smart board or projector screen and talk about their country to the class. This way all of the information is in a neat and fun way for the class to look at.
Another way to use this in your classroom is the teacher can make a board that is "open." When creating a board you have the decision of making it closed (no one else can add to it they can only look) or you can make it open (other people can log on and post their stuff on your board). An example of using this would be to pick one country for the entire class. The teacher would create a board and each student would be responsible for a part of information to go ahead and put on the class board. At the end, the teacher could bring it up and the class and see what they found and learned about their country.

Here is an example of the one I created about the country Germany.

If you would like to try out lino, click hhttp://en.linoit.com/

Popplet

Every classroom can benefit with using graphic organizers. Some students need them to help them understand what is going on in a lesson or it helps them to break up information that they are given. A great website to help with this is popplet. It is an online, easy to use, interactive graphic organizer that incorporates colors and graphics.

Popplet is a free website that you can easily sign up for. You can also choose a month membership or a year membership depending on how you want to use it for your classroom. With the free sign up, you are able to make up to five popplets. Once you've decided, to create one, you click 'make new poplet.' Then you add the title of your popplet and choose the color of the outline of your popplet. Then click 'make it so!' When on your popplet, double click anywhere to create a new box. You can put whatever you'd like in the box. There are four options under each popplet box. The one on the far left lets you change the outline color of the box. The next one in lets you change the font size and orientation of the words. The pencil lets you draw on the box, to highlight or make notes. The one on the far right lets you add a picture to your box. Also up on the top right of your popplet box, there is what looks like a speech bubble. If you click on that, you are able to add comment to that box that will show up when you click on the speech bubble.

You can use this website in many different ways in your classroom. The example that I have below is a popplet that I created for a Solar System project. Each student is given a different planet or star in the solar system. They then are to do research about their topic and find at least ten facts, and one picture about their topic. Once they find the facts they can put them into their popplet. It saves automatically. The teacher can then look at all of them and add comments to popplet boxes if need be. The one I created below is a popplet for the sun.

If you would like to try out popplet, click here. http://popplet.com/

Animoto

One great website I like to use in the classroom is Animoto. Animoto is a place where you can create videos with pictures and sound. It is an extremely easy to use website and tool. You are able to subscribe to the website to create videos of any length, however, without subscribing you are able to create videos up to the length of 30 seconds. This length is perfect for students because then you can make sure they do not create overly long videos if they are being presented to the class.

Like I said, this tool is very easy to use. You start by picking a template for your video. This template will act as the background and determine what the transitions will look like. The next step is adding in your pictures and or words. To can use any pictures you would like. For instance, I got all mine from Google Images. You just save them to your picture folder and then upload them to Animoto when it asks for them. Then you pick your background music. You can choose from a wide variety of music from Country, to Classical, to Electronic. You click the music you want and it is immediately entered into your Animoto. That's it. Click on next and your video is ready to be shared.

There are many ways to incorporate Animoto into the classroom. I will share an example that I have used. In my fourth grade classroom we were learning about the presidents. Each student was assigned a different president in which they had to research and present to the class. At the end of the presentation they were to show the class the video they made (using Animoto of course). The video needed to include the name of the president, who made the video, and pictures of the president they had researched. Below is one that I created for Abraham Lincoln.

If you would like to try out Animoto, click here. http://animoto.com/

Abraham Lincoln

Technology in the Classroom

Technology is becoming a big part of our lives. You rarely see someone nowadays without a cellphone and the ages children get them seem younger and younger each day. This problem translates into the classroom. Many times there seems to be a gap between the students and the teachers with technology.

This blog was created to help fix that problem within classrooms. As an upcoming teacher, I love to use technology in a variety of my lessons. It is a great to appeal to all sorts of learners, and most of the time the students can make something tangible to have as a resource later on. Throughout this blog, you will see a variety of technology that I have used in my own classroom experiences. I hope you enjoy all I have to offer, and feel free to comment with any more suggestions!