Web 2.0 Assignment

The Web 2.0 assignment foced me to explore some resources that I had heard about, but not fully researched before. I had actually already set up a Glogster account before at the recommendation of some of the teachers that I work with, but I had ot actually taken the time to try it out. I thought the Glogster app was pretty cool, but also really time consuming. The tutorial we had seemed to be pretty outdated, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out some of the stuff on there.... but, overall, I think once my students got used to using it, they would enjoy it as an alternative to making a paper poster for class. I do feel that it takes a lot of time and therefore, I would have to use it mostly as an out of class assignment, or as a project grade to allow the students ample time to master this application. You can check out my glog here:
http://kathyj.edu.glogster.com/6-kingdoms

Next, I tried out Animoto. I have to say, I loved this. It was easy, it was fun, and I think my students would love it. My only concern is that it wouldn't let you add much text to the pictures.... so there were a couple of pics where I was really trying to figure out how to word something and still get the point across! Science has some pretty lengthy words, so I'm sure that was part of my problem. You can check out my Animoto here:
http://animoto.com/play/1AQi9TOGBVPfeAjjZILeZw

For my "free choice" option, I decided to use the Blabberize tool. I pulled up a short tutorial on youtube to make sure I knew how to do it correctly-- because I couldn't find a "help" button anywhere on the site. It was pretty simple once I watched the tutorial. It's pretty silly- I'd have to really think about how to let my students utilize this tool. It is fun-- and quick, which is nice-- but I can see my middle school students getting into all kinds of trouble with this one --blabberizing all kinds of inappropriate stuff! I'll definitely have to do some more research on how to use this one in the classroom. Here are my 3 Blabberize pics:

http://blabberize.com/view/id/943988

http://blabberize.com/view/id/943991

http://blabberize.com/view/id/943992


Last but not least, here is the concept map that I created to illustrate the topic I would be teaching. In this example I chose to use AL COS 4 for 7th grade science which is to describe organisms in the six-kingdom classification system by their characteristics.

I think the bubbl.us concept maps are definitely something I can use in my classroom- but I've got to see how hard it would be for my students to upload and send these to me on a MacBook which requires them to use IPhoto.
I hope to be able to have the chance to go back and explore some of the other options in the "free choice" category. There appeared to be some pretty cool tools to use!