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5 cool tools I discovered without going to NECC
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Venn Diagram created in Crappy Graph
As many people in the educational technology world know, the 30th annual National Education Computing Conference (NECC) sponsored by the International Society for Technology Educators (ISTE) will begin Monday, June 29, in Washington, D.C. The conference is an opportunity for educators from all over the world to gather, share, and learn about using technology in the classroom.
I will not be able to attend this year, but I was able to attend the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) pre-conference event on Saturday at their headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. In one day, I learned about enough new tech tools to keep me busy for awhile. I thought I'd share the five that I will be sure to explore in more detail. Keep in mind that I learned about these mostly through the sharing that occurs any time there are technology educators in a room together. I attended only one formal session during the entire day.
1. CrappyGraphs! I wasn't able to attend Steve Dembo's session where this tool was discussed, but because of the backchanneling happening on Cover-it-Live (see below), I heard about it and played with it a little. This tool is how I created the picture inserted in this post. Crappy Graphs is a simple tool to create quick graphs or Venn Diagrams. This isn't a high-tech tool that uses spreadsheet data, it is just a step above pen and paper. Creating a Crappy Graph is extremely easy. There is no login required, you can just jump right in and start creating your graph. The instructions are easy-to-follow and the tools are pretty intuitive.
2. Glogster. Although I had heard about Glogster before, I wanted to include it in this list because I just began looking at it as a result of the pre-conference. I am a high school teacher and I had always thought Glogster was a tool that would appeal more to the elementary/middle school crowd. After DEN STAR Cheryl Lykowski from Michigan, who was sitting next to me in the back of the room during "assembly", showed me some creations that were made using Glogster, I realized that there could be a place for it in my classroom. I just need to remember to apply my RICE criteria to it, making sure to use it only where it makes sense.
3. Cover-it-Live. Another tool I had already heard about and used is Cover-it-Live. This free tool allows users to create a chat room for discussion. The cool thing I discovered about Cover-it-Live is that the creator of the session can also pull in tweets from Twitter using specific hashtags. For example, the precon hashtag was #DENPC so any tweet that used that hashtag was pulled into the discussion. This meant that those of us participating in the pre-conference could discuss what we were learning in the various sessions we were attending and see what people were saying about it on Twitter, as well. Thanks goes out to DEN STAR Dean Mantz from Kansas for that one.
4. Xtranormal.This is a text-to-movie tool that allows users to create videos by creating comic-like characters. The three cool things I learned in a very short time about Xtranormal are: you can practice camera angles - one attendee said he uses it to help student practice with camera angles for the AFI "Door Scene"; you can work through your storyboard and add all your text before creating the frames; and there is green-screen capability. The free version is highly restrictive. The full version is available for $39.99 per year, but there is talk in the air about an educator version coming soon. I learned about this tool during the one session I attended, led by Brad Fountain of Discovery. He also talked about Comic Life, Go!Animate and Pixton.
5. BatchGeocode. Okay, I'm cheating a little with this one because this tool is actually one that I talked about during my recess session entitled "Discovery Education in the Virtual Classroom." I decided to add it here because of the enthusiastic response I got from several educators when I talked to them about this free tool. BatchGeocode converts simple Excel spreadsheets into maps that have flags at each geographical location in the spreadsheet. That is kinda cool in itself because it gives you a nice looking visual representation of the locations. The super cool thing is that if you include information in the spreadsheet like pictures, websites, or text along with the locations, that information will be displayed when the flag for that location is clicked. The super super cool thing about it is that you can either save the map as a webpage or (drum roll) as a KML file to be used with Google Earth. This means that if a teacher doesn't want to have to walk students through the process of learning how to create Google Earth trips, they can have students use BatchGeocode instead and they'll still be able to view the trip in Google Earth. Quick and easy!
I'm sure if I were attending the week of NECC, I'd learn a lot more, but I'm happy to have learned so much (and there are several other tools I learned about, as well) in one day. I encourage everyone who is attending NECC to remember to analyze the real value of each tech tool they discover this week and use what is best for their classroom and their students for each particular project.
Add comments and let us know what you have learned this week!
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