Primary Wall

Just came across this link on twitter today 

 "@Elle_Gifted  Alternative to Wallwisher for primary sts shared by @plnaugle http://primarywall.com/ at Tech Smackdown #RSCON3."

Primary Wall looks like a great alternative to Wallwisher especially as it seems to be 'broken' quite often. It has a few different features from Wallwisher and is very easy to use.
Here is an example of what it looks like





And you can choose to send your notes to Wordle

And here is a list of ideas you could use Primary Wall and Wall Wisher for...

Vocaroo

This has to be the easiest way to make a voice recording and then embed onto your wiki or blog.

Go to http://vocaroo.com/
Click on Click to Record and then click Allow

Record your voice by speaking straight into the microphone.

Click on Click to Stop

Click on Listen or Record again

Click on Post on the Internet. Copy the HTML code and then paste into the Widget on a Wiki or a HTML Gadget in a blog.

Embeddable Books

There are several embeddable book and magazine makers on the internet and this was one I came across today. Create your book in Word or PowerPoint, save it as a PDF file and then upload to http://www.yudu.com
It embeds in this form

Enlarge this document in a new window
Publisher Software from YUDU

You can click on the above link to enlarge the document. This will be a great publishing tool for children and teachers to use, I could see them making story books and magazines, embedding on to their wikis and blogs and also downloading for off line reading.

Fotobabble

I was reading a post about the iPad written by @dakinane when I saw him mention a flash based application using photos 'Fotobabble.
With this application you can upload a photo, add your voice to it and then embed into your wikis or blogs.
Fotobabble could be used in  many ways in the classroom

• as an oral assessment for speeches
• oral assessment for speaking in other languages
• a way of publishing a piece of writing, (selecting a photo that represents the writing)
• publishing explanations, narratives, persuasive and procedural
• final assessment tool in presenting information
• a linear slideshow presentation with several photos and voiceovers

This is a great tool for the verbal/linguist student. It is very quick and easy to use

Textoriser -Textorise your images

Textoriser turns your pictures into words. In this example I have used the text from my ICT Teaching and Learning blog and my avatar.
First download the software from Textorizer, install the software. Upload a picture.

To use your own text, copy the text into a Word/Pages file and save the file as a .txt.
Click on the Change Text and browse to your text file.
There are two choices of Textorizing, the one I prefer using is Textorizer Two.

You will need to play around with the the font scale and text size (drag the blue bars up and down like sliders).
Click on Textorize when finished.
Maximize your screen before taking a Screen Capture

Here is an example of the same graphic with slightly bigger text.

Here is an example of a Picture created in KidPix, saved as a jpeg. The text was typed in Word and saved as a text file. Here are 3 different examples where I have adjusted the font scale, text size and Line height. Click on each example to see the full image.

Wallwisher in the classroom

I have seen Wallwisher used in a few different ways by teachers, which has of course inspired me to write this post and come up with some more ideas of how to use it. So instead of writing the ideas in this post I have added them to the Wallwisher. Please feel free to add but additions are moderated.
If I was using this with students in real time I would not moderate it until later.
You do not have to set up an account, but for classroom use I would as you can save and view all of your walls.

First choose your wall colour and add distinguishing words to the end of your wall URL if you would like to personalise the wall. Click on the options of who is able to view or post notes. If you want to approve the posts click on the check box.
Type in a title for your Wallwisher by clicking on Click here to edit title and do the same for the Subtitle.

Add an Icon Picture to the wall by clicking on Click to select image. Choose one from the ones provided or upload a  picture from your own picture library by clicking on the Browse button.
When you have finished click on the 'done' button in the bottom right hand of the screen.
To add a note, double click on the wall, type in your note which is limited to 160 characters.

You can add links to a website or to a  movie by pasting in the URL at the bottom of the note.

The notes can be moved around and organised.
The notes can only be edited or deleted by the wall owner.
If you have given a unique name to your wall, anybody can view and add to it http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/ineducation but in this case I am moderating the comments.

Scribd - Presentation Software

Scribd is my new favourite online presentation tool. It is very simple to upload documents, and accepts many types of files (PowerPoint, Word, PDF and picture file formats jpeg etc). This is a wonderful way to showcase children's published work online as it embeds into Blogs and Wikis. Below is an example of a Word document.

Where the Wild Things Are Activities - Upload a Document to Scribd

Big Huge Labs 'Curriculum use of Photos'

Big Huge Labs
has a multitude of applications that can be used in an educational context mainly as different ideas for publishing or presenting. If your school blocks Flickr though you might not be able to use it. Occasionally you might see some questionable advertising that you might like to advise your students to ignore. Click on images to see a larger version.

Motivational Posters

Insert a photo and type in an inspirational message, choose a frame.

Bead Art

Digitises photos and turn into beads

Jigsaw

Photos are turned into jigsaws with some pieces missing.

Picture Cube

Create your own dice with photos and graphics.

Magazine Cover

Create your own magazine cover with photo and words

Wahorliser

Turn a photo into a Warhol picture.
And there are many more if you click on the 'Jump to Menu' options

Wordle - Word Clouds

Wordle is an application that creates Word clouds from text. The more times the word is used is how large the text will be. You can print them or take a screen capture of them for use on blogs or wikis. To embed you must save to Gallery first and then the code will appear. Here is an example of text copied from a recent newspaper article. This could be used as an activity for writing a report.











Or this one where the story of Cinderella was copied from wikipedia site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella

Why not copy the text from a child's story and insert into Wordle, the student will be able to see what words they use the most in their writing.
Here are some examples of student writing. This particular student is very aware about using descriptive adjectives and interesting verbs.


This next student who is of the same age as the previous one has the same amount of words, but it is obvious which words she has overused by the size of the text. In discussion with this student she is able to clearly see that she needs to find other words for 'said, school, fun' and she could look at the use of her pronouns as well. Compare the two Wordle diagrams and it is obvious which student has the larger vocab!
If you are letting students enter this site on their own then I suggest that you give them this address http://wordle.net/create this will avoid the Home screen which has examples of others 'Wordles'. Occasionally there may be one that has inappropriate words but if you use this address with the Create it will open up the Create window thus avoiding looking at the Home Screen. There are new features being added regularly. Use the menus to make more changes to your diagrams, the Language menu allows you to show all common words like 'the' or 'and'. The font menu offers you a range of creative fonts. Layout gives you many choices for viewing the words horizontally, vertically or any which way. Under the Colour option you can change the colour of the words and backgrounds. This application has the potential for many uses in education so give it a try!