Technology Tool Assessment

MOODLE

-MOODLE is an interactive educational tool that allows students and teachers to access the course syllabus, assignments, deadlines, and much more—twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. It gives students the opportunity to access an interactive course community at the luxury of their homes. MOODLE is a great tool for educators that will lessen the actual hardcopy of students’ works being turned in. Instead, students can simply submit all their assignments online, which will be available for access anytime of the day.
http://www.moodle.org
RATING: 5 out of 5



FIREFOX

-Firefox is one of the best available web browsers on the Internet. It is secure, customizable, easy-to-use, fast, and user-friendly. Some great aspects of Firefox are its features, which include spell check, session restore, tags, and password manager. Every computer owner should definitely have Firefox as one of his or her browsers.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html
RATING: 5 out of 5




DELICIOUS

-Delicious is a free book marking website that allows users to bookmark websites they love and share them with others. It is a great tool for students, teachers, and every one else who surfs the web. Some great features of delicious include the ability to tag websites with words such as “education, technology, food” or whatever the website relates to. Delicious also has updates about the most recently added bookmarks or the top bookmarks of the day. It is a wonderful tool for organization and research as well.
http://www.delicious.com
RATING: 5 out of 5



GOOGLE SUITES



-Google Suites, which includes Gmail, interactive documents, and Blogger, is an amazing tool that allows interactive communication between friends, students, and teachers. Gmail possesses great features such as video chatting with contacts that are online, and not to mention the huge space of your inbox. Another tool part of Google Suites is Blogger. This free blog is available to anyone and can be used as an online portfolio or a personalized news updater. Google Suites is great for everyone and should definitely be taken advantage of by educators and students.
http://www.gmail.com
http://www.blogger.com
RATING: 5 out of 5



AUTHORSTREAM

-authorSTREAM is a helpful online tool that allows users to upload Power Point presentations and share them with others. It is also great for storing important presentations or embedding them in blogs or other personalized websites. In addition to sharing, there is also the option of keeping some presentations private. Also, you can view other public presentations from other users around the world regarding any topic. One downside to authorSTREAM, however, is the possibility of presentations being modified when uploaded.
http://www.authorstream.com/Dashboard
RATING: 4 out of 5



YOLA

-Yola is a free website builder that is easy-to-use, customizable, and available to everyone. Yola makes it possible for even the novice at website building look like an expert. Some of the great features of Yola include drag and drop inserts and already-made layouts. It is a helpful tool for teachers to make their course available to students online. Although it is not interactive, it is always possible to update your personal website and add new things.
http://www.yola.com
RATING: 4 out of 5



MULTIPLY

-Multiply is an amazing tool that allows users to share anything and everything from blogs to photos to music to even videos. You can customize the way your personal site looks like and you also get your own URL. It is a great social networking tool that is safe and easy to use. One of the best features of Multiply is the ability to add friends and family from your multiple email addresses.
http://www.multiply.com
RATING: 4 out of 5



TOKBOX

-Tokbox is a free online service that allows users to video chat with friends and family. When anybody signs up for a TokBox account they are automatically given a personal URL. This URL acts like their online phone number. You can give anyone your URL and all they would need to do to video chat with you is paste the URL into the address bar. Another great feature of TokBox is the ability for users to embed their ToxBok into any personal website such as Facebook or Myspace. With this feature, users can video chat directly on their Myspace page.
http://www.tokbox.com
RATING: 5 out of 5

Learning and Evaluating with Multimedia

While trying to think of an interesting activity for lesson plan two, I was challenged to include the use of two multimedia tools. At first, I thought it would be easy, but when it came time to write my objectives I found myself revising and changing the lesson. I finally came up with an activity for middle school students in a science class. Although my content area is English, I wanted to do something different, which is why I chose to use science as the lesson. I found the topic of seed germination to be extremely interesting. I thought this would be an exciting topic for students to learn.

I wanted to include multimedia that most students have experience with—the digital camera and computer. In addition to these tools, the students would need to learn how to use Windows Movie Maker to create a slide show. This lesson would “promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness” in the students. The students will have to use their creativity to create a slide show with unique pictures they take on a field trip. I chose to have students use Windows Movie Maker as the software to create their slide shows because it was an easy tool to learn. Students with special needs can also take part in this activity with the assistance of the teacher or other students.

I found it very fun making a website for my lesson plan because I could put my own creativity into the website. I think that the lesson plan website is also a good tool for students to use if they want to see what is expected of them for the lesson. The website includes the whole lesson plan, along with the grading rubric. This Multimedia lesson plan was also challenging because of the Evaluation and Revise part that had to relate to the Objectives. The objectives included the students being able to create a slide show and present this to the class. Therefore, I had to make sure that this was evaluated as well as the effectiveness of the media that was used. I had a challenging and fun time creating this multimedia lesson plan. I hope that one day I can actually use it in one of my classes.



References:

ISTE. (2008). ISTE/NETS Standards for Teachers 2008. Retrieved February 20, 2009, from ISTE International Society for Technology in Education: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm

Koning, Ross Seed Germination. Retrieved April 15, 2009, from Seed Germination Web site: http://plantphys.info/seedg/seed.html