Conquering Blabberize and Jing

Well, another conquest for Mrs. Demeter; my students will be so proud! I chose to explore Blabberize as my Web 2.0 website. I have only heard of this program before thorough one of my high school students who is in the procedure of creating a project for my class. After researching the site, I feel that this is a fun way to add a little jazz to a presentation. It is sure to get the attention of the audience! My student is researching American Romanticism; however, my area or research was figuring out how to use both Blabberize and Jing!

After playing around on Blabberize just one time I was able to figured out the procedure. It is definitely not one of those websites which takes up three hours of your time watching tutorials. I would happily advise this site to any of my students because I know it would not detract them from the topic they were presenting on.

Jing, on the other hand took a little more time to figure out. I really feel that the directions on the website are written very poorly. With just a few more words it could be a much smoother process. I had to spend at least 20 plus minutes watching tutorials on YouTube, which thank goodness were very helpful. Then I had to spend another hour or so getting the recording just right.

Now that I know the process, and see that cute little sun on the top of my computer, I feel that I will be using Jing more often. How cool would it be to record a 5 minute intro to a class and show it to all 6 of my classes while I am taking attendance? This would have them being productive right when they walk in the door… and be something unique to catch their attention.

Some Web 2.0 apps that my school library and English Department are trying to promote (*my favorites are starred):

*glogster.com:   Poster yourself - Make your interactive poster easily and share it with friends. Mix Images, Text, Music and Video. It is fantastic!  This site does have educator accounts and the capability to create log-ins for your students.  These log ins allow you to monitor all student work. *Blabberize:  This site allows you to upload any picture, record narration, and then make that picture talk.  Pretty funny! VoiceThread:  A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam).  *Prezi:   Prezi is a zooming story telling and presentation tool that helps you create outstanding visuals for your thoughts.  *Animoto:  Animoto turns your photos and video clips into professional video slideshows in minutes. Fast, free and shockingly simple - we make awesome easy.  *Xtranormal:  With Xtranormal, you choose from among various premade characters and scenes, decide how many actors you want, then simply type in the dialog you want them to say.  Masher:  You can "mix, mash, and share" video clips, audio files, and photos into polished movies. Students own content as well as media from the BBC Motion Gallery and Rip Curl free for the mashing, and can then be shared on social media sites or via email.  Storybird: This site provides beautiful illustrations, you provide the story.  Build your own storybook that includes professional-quality illustrations.  Wordle:  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.  Bibme: An online bibliography maker.  It will generate bibliographies in APA, MLA, and other styles.  Chart Tool:  Create online graphs and charts. Choose from different chart types, like: line and bar charts, pie charts, scatter graphs, XY graph and pie charts.

Click the PLAY BUTTON below to view my How-To Video: