For my first podcast, I listened to "No Peanut Butter Required" by Tech Chick Tips. This reflection will cover three tools that they discussed including Secret Builders, Screen Jelly, and ABCya!.
The first tool that they looked at is Secret Builders. It's a virtual type world that kids can use, a lot like the different worlds that they can use with Webkinz or similar toys. The cool thing about this is thought that they can interact with different important people in history as well as fictional characters. Because this site is trying to combine the virtual world with an educational aspect, there are different quests, quizzes, and other activities that students can do along with interacting with these characters. There are different "social tools" that they can explore like malls, cafe's, etc. There are sections for parents as well as teachers and the privacy settings vary for age but the site doesn't offer ANY of the child's personal information, which is nice.
The next tool is Screen Jelly which is a screen capture application. It has a 3 minute limit but you can capture what you're doing on your screen as well as record your voice as you work. It's very easy to share your information via Facebook or Twitter as well. It could be a great tool for teachers if their students are at home or out of class and they need to be shown what to do. The teacher could just demonstrate what they need to do and use Screen Jelly to record it and then send it to the student.
The last tool I'm going to discuss is the ABCya! which is a site with different education games for students mainly at the elementary level. The Tech Chicks talk about how the site itself is a little overwhelming but could definitely be used for an interactive whiteboard. One cool aspect of this site is that all of the games and activities were created by teachers for teachers! These activities incorporate all subject areas (math, reading, etc.) while trying to introduce students to basic and needed computer skills. Cool thing for younger grade elementary teachers: the kindergarten and first grade lessons have sound to help the kids as well! It's not really geared towards high schoolers however some of the concepts and lessons could be used for certain middle school classes.
My favorite tool that they discussed and the one that I think I would use the most out of the three would be Screen Jelly. Because I'm going to hopefully be teaching high school, if I have students that are absent or sick, I can still get them the information they need in such a way that they can see it done and hopefully it would make it easier for them to do the assignment outside of school.
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