Online Applications for Everything!

I started this week’s exploration into the world of Online Applications with Flickr.  While I had heard of Flickr, I had never bothered to sign-up for it.  I think I felt it would be a huge undertaking.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I found it very easy to upload all of my photos.  The hardest part for me was linking it with my blog.  Trial and error helped me figure it out.  I loved Richardson’s tip on GoogleEarth and geotagging.  It is an incredible feature and relatively easy to use.  While the photos didn’t have a great deal to annotate (and I didn’t want to use my children’s names), I decided to have some fun with what was in the pictures namely the reactions of my children to better understand the course of our trip.  

Once I was finished with Flickr, BigHugeLabs was a perfect transition to further play with my photos.  There were 15 effects that were available with the free package, but some required an image viewer.  I wished that they had more effects to offer, but I really liked the mosaic maker.  I used the same photos to make a lovely 4 by 3 mosaic of our day.  From there, Dumpr had some other neat features associated with photos, so in addition to linking BigHugeLabs with Flickr I also linked Dumpr with Flickr and took a photo of 2 sailboats and turned it into a pencil sketch.  The only negative was that the sketch was very light.  I found that even with the darker background photos, this was also the case.

Still playing with my photos, I enjoyed taking the same sailing ones and using them in an Animoto thirty second video.  I liked how I could pick the background and the music to better convey the feeling of the day.  It turned my 2D pictures into a 3D experience!  Before signing up for an account, I felt that the type of editing done here was something that was only available to professional photographers and videographers.  I can definitely see myself using this for other occasions.

Voki offered so many fun ways to incorporate its tool with learning.  I liked how you could personalize your visual image and then add your own voice.  I was surprised to find that the hardest part of creating a voki was to record exactly what I wanted to say and then not hit the cancel button out of habit.   My children saw my voki and wanted to create one of their own as well.  My only wish was that they had more creative capability to further individualize the image.  I would have liked to see historical figures as well.

Bubble.Us was exactly what it said it is…simple.  I liked how they did keep it simple to help organize complex minds.  I made a family tree with my 1^st sheet.  I could see this being used in a science class to map out an element, a family tree project, in a foreign language for verb conjugations, storybook mapping, or to map out a food chain or food web.  The simplicity really does lend itself to many application possibilities.

Rollyo seems like a perfect introductory search engine when teaching children how to safely search the web.  I liked how you could chose what sources you wanted Rollyo to search and feel confident with children that the results would not reveal anything inappropriate.  This search engine also saved valuable search time and wasn’t as overwhelming and distracting as a Google search.  I did wish that there weren’t that many ads on this site.

My first two attempts to get on Doodle ended in an internal error.  The error page did offer some FAQ info.  While I did gain access the next day, that error made me question the availability of the site and its use.  A tool isn’t very good if you can’t use it.  The site is supposed to be fun and it offers group planning of events and scheduling.  I did like the example showing various time slots available for a meeting and each person specified which ones they could attend.  This tool seems like it would save some planning time but I think that there are other sites that would be able to do the same and even more. 

Survey Monkey was a very helpful site.  Feedback is so important whether you are planning an enrichment event, field trip, recital, or open house.  The anonymity of the responses and ease of answering the survey, I feel will give valuable feedback to the teachers and school.  It is a great way for a school to assess parent concerns as well.  I liked that there were templates available.  I am sure that this would be a helpful tool for someone who has never used this application before or someone who needs a little structure with their survey.

Zamzar was unique to me because I never realized that there were sites that could convert files to another format.  In the past if I received a file that my computer could not open I would let the originator know and ask to send it in a format that I was compatible with or I would just ask them to print me a copy.  This approach isn’t so bad for single pages but for extensive documents this site offers an invaluable service.  Immediately, I thought about an older computer that we have that doesn’t have Power Point.  I realized that this service could convert the Power Point PPS file into an html file so that I could still view the individual slides.  This was definitely a site I bookmarked.

StumbleUpon really tries to tailor their search information to their customer based on gender, age and previous preferences.  This can be a helpful tool for an individual but it could also waste a great deal of time with the sites presented that you have to wade through. It uses a thumbs up or thumbs down feedback to fine tune your interest level.  While my criteria had to do with hobbies, families, cooking, and computers, there was some content that was inappropriate for younger audiences.  This is a tool that will take a while for it to really be able to deliver sites and articles that are really relevant to a customer.  If you need something specific and quick this is not the site for you, but if you have time to meander, you could find a really neat paper folding project that might be a nice addition to a math geometry unit like I did.  

Google Docs makes collaborative projects much easier to create.  Unlike Windows, your document is no longer tied to a specific computer.  In my house, everyone wants to use the computer that is linked to the printer.  In the past when I worked on a different computer and my flashdrive was not available, I would have to attach my document to an email and then open the email on the computer with the printer.  If something were to happen to my computer, I would not have to worry about losing all of my files if I used Google Docs.  I liked the fact that Google Docs is a word processing tool that can accommodate images, videos, and comments while allowing you to choose the level of privacy you want.  I also found the template gallery feature helpful to get you started with a document.  Google Docs also features Google Translate that can translate words or a document into 57 languages.  Once you have a Google account, it is just so much easier to use the applications that come with it rather than using a different application.  

Zoho was another tool that allows for collaborative use.  This on-line word processing application allows the use of comments and tags.  The tags are a seen as a more convenient way to retrieve a document that could typically fall under two different categories or folders in the traditional sense.  Zoho like Google Docs allows the users to link the document to the blog.  While Google Docs is more appealing for this type of application, I could see the possible benefit of a foreign language student taking advantage of the 75 language spell check feature.  

Jing is a wonderful tool to further explain a website.  This tool is downloaded to your computer and a yellow sun is visible in the middle top of your screen.  This allows you to capture video or individual pages and record the information you want.  You can stop and resume recording and then preview your content.  Jing offers many ways to share your finished product such as through Facebook, Twitter, or your blog.  I chose to add a video tutorial with accompanying audio to my wiki that I embedded on the first page.  I feel that this tool has many classroom applications and that children of all ages will find it fun and creative.  This tool can also easily add value to a professional development workshop.  Along with Animoto, this was one of my favorite sites.