It's obvious that there are innumerable amounts of resources available. Even though the assignment did not require me to evaluate education-specific cites, I did choose one that was education because it is a way for me to sharpen my online skills and fill up my toolbox even more.
After browsing several sites, I came across PowToon, an online cartoon maker. I actually had been looking for a tool like this before. I've used GoAnimate! and the recently closed Xtranormal, but I've found that PowToon is really easy to use after playing around with it for a little bit. The site even has several easy-to-understand tutorials. Simply enough, I registered via my Gmail account and confirmed through my email. I did watch the tutorial that popped up after registration and then began to create a PowToon. The cartoons you make are limited to 5 minutes, so I decided to create one on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey because that is what I am in teaching in my Guidance class. I would explain the interface as similar to Microsoft Power Point because you have a slides pane on the left and an editing pane in the middle. See screenshot below. Many keyboard shortcuts work with the program like Command(CTRL)+C and Command(CTRL)+V for copy and paste. Some shortcuts like Command(CTRL)+D for duplication and Command(CTRL)+Z for undo (my most used shortcut) did not work. I ended up spending about 20 minutes creating a PowToon and I really thought it was neat. I shared the completed video with YouTube and then embedded it into my website underneath the embedded Vokis. The final part of the review is the most important. PowToon is a "freemium" site. Paid accounts allow for more toons, tools, and high quality downloadable videos. Check out their accounts page. $48 for a teacher account + 30 students accounts seems fairly reasonable. Overall, I would say that PowToon was very easy to vet and has a certain educational value for students and teachers alike.
Finding a second site to evaluate was difficult. I didn't want to just find any old site for the sake of completing the assignment. I came across ResumUp and tried it out because it seemed interesting. Several months back, my wife came home and showed me a resume that someone had sent in to her workplace. It was visual and really interesting. I think the person who created it used Photoshop and Dream Weaver or some combination of Adobe products. I'm a total novice when it comes to those programs, so ResumUp intrigued me. For a while, I've had the idea to create a resume on Prezi or Glogster to demonstrate my Web 2.0-ness. ResumUp was easy to register for and easy to use. You simply edited different boxes and put in your own information. The only part I did not like is that some cities, like Belvidere, NJ or Stroudsburg, PA, did not show up in the pre-population box and therefore those cities would not show up in the resume. See below. The site provides the ability to connect with other professionals, find vacancies, and share your resume. I did not want to share my resume, so I took a screenshot.
My final observation is that this site is geared more for business professionals, not teachers. It would be interesting if a site like PAREAP or PAEducator would team up with ResumUp to provide this type of service to teachers. There is definite potential for this site in education because it can be a more fun way to introduce the concept of a resume to high school students. Overall, the site was fairly easy to use, but I do not know how much I would actually use it.
The third site I chose was Class Dojo. Once I received Untangling the Web, I thumbed throughout it to see what I was in store for and tried some of the websites out. After hearing my district's elementary school principal talk about Class Dojo, I figured I needed to try it out for myself. The sign up process was simple, as most sites are, and I got to work right away. I'm the kind of person who likes to try out new sites and, THEN, seek out tutorials if I need help. Class Dojo works in the opposite manner, so that was a bit frustrating to me. I just like to get in and get to work. However, after following the instructions I could finally set up a class and import students. The first day I tried out Class Dojo was Thursday of this week. I teach a quarterly 7th Grade Computer Science class in which I have them complete typing exercises for the first half of the quarter (an eighth, I suppose). The particular class I have now has really great students, but they are very chatty. I offered incentives such as listening to music or playing typing games for the first and/or last 5 minutes of class, but it wasn't until I implemented Class Dojo that I saw them really understand the incentive system. I simply plugged my projector dongle into my laptop and let them view their scores for the day. I gave them a +1 if they were on task or a -1 if they were off task. I said that if they were in the positive for points, they could play typing games at the end of the period. It worked very well. The next day, I acquired an iPad from another teacher so I could try the application out (I feel the website version is cumbersome in terms of finding students and then clicking several times to get what you want). I also printed and distributed the student/parent logins for the students because I thought they could just sign in and view their progress instead of looking up at the projector. This is one part I do not like about Class Dojo. It requires that students input a parent's email address. This was only an experiment for me and I did not want to get phone calls asking what the program was all about, so I aborted that step in the process and just continued the way I had before. Maybe I misunderstood the process, but the students couldn't change their avatars without a parent's email address. The only things I would like to see changed is the ability to change the order of students (alphabetical or by seating chart) by dragging their avatars. I clicked on the "IDEAS" cloud on the bottom of Class Dojo's website and typed in my suggestion for including a seating chart style modification and will report their reply when I receive it. Overall, Class Dojo was easy to use and is definitely educationally sound for both teachers and students.
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