What a fun tech play this week as we jumped headfirst into some “creativity tools”. These tools made me jealous. I would have been thrilled to release my creative energy and ideas by using these e-tools as a kid growing up. I thought it was cool when my dad bought the TI-99 home computer in the early 80’s. We thought we had something special. My kids don’t know how blessed they are. Two things that enamored me growing up were anything military and anything sports related. I could not get enough media, specifically newspapers. We had a subscription to the Tyler Morning Telegraph and that wasn’t enough for me. I would dig up some coins and ride my bike downtown and try to find a stand with a Dallas Morning News still in it. I love studying the newspapers. If I found something interesting I would cut it out and collect it. It was a type of creative outlet for me.
Researching these creative tools opened my eyes to some wonderful learning/creative opportunities for our present generation. Before this assignment I never had played with the apps I reviewed, but I couldn’t stop thinking about activities that kids could do with each of them that would help them exercise creativity and grow as learners in the process. I’m driving a group of GT students to the Ft. Worth Museum of Science and Natural History Tuesday and will speak to their teacher about some of the apps I reviewed this week, encouraging her to give the students access to some of them and report on the field trip experience.
I used the Bloom’s Taxonomy for iPads chart to locate some creativity tools. Now, most of these tools have been out for a while but have been off my radar, so they are new to me. I began on the “Evaluating” level of Bloom’s and first looked into an app called Zite. This is an app that allows you to customize an e-magazine with current news and articles about the subjects you are interested in. Very user friendly, this app is available for apple or android devices. You can choose different topics from predetermined categories or a specific search you’ve done. During the day Zite refreshes the articles, so you are always getting an updated magazine when you open it. Zite collects data from millions of news sources. Your e-magazine is Ad free so there is no worries about your students getting distracted by singles in their area that might be interested in them.
Flipboard is a similar customizable e-magazine app, in fact it has acquired Zite and will probably eventually merge the two products somehow. With flipboard you can build your magazine by following topics of your choice, specific people like scientist, authors, lecturers, political figures, etc. You can make multiple magazines under your account like a magazine over Space Exploration, or US Foreign Policy, The Texas Longhorns or the Newest Creative Apps, etc. These two apps could be very useful to students to deeply follow their interest. I loved it when a teacher allowed me to dig and dig deep into topics that interested me. With independent study projects, these apps can flood a student with great resources.
Science 360 is another great research and discovery app more geared toward science. When it opens up you see a great display wall of pictures that may have something to pique your interest. It might be a link to an article or movie clip, but it is user friendly and kids could use it to dig into a plethora of data over subjects that they are hungry for. I would use this in a science classroom and give students the tags to search for and let them go a discover what they can over a specific topic and create a Podcast over something new they have learned. Creating a podcast would put you into the highest level of Bloom’s and there are some exciting apps on that level as well.
I’ll stick with the podcast thought with the use of this next app, Audioboom. Audioboom makes podcasting so easy and lets you publish up to a 10 minute recording for free. You need to set up a free account through audioboom.com, download the app, record and upload the content you’ve produced right to the web. You can actually embed your podcast to your blog or wiki. I am going to work more on this to share as an artifact by the end of EdTech 524. Imagine being a student, feeling like a expert over a specific subject or interviewing others who are and you have the outlet to produce podcasts that others can link to and comment on. I remember recording an interview with my grandpa about the great depression. The recording is long gone, but what if I could have uploaded it to my audioboom channel to exist forever. If this technology had existed when I was a kid then my kids could study it today. This app really opens a creative door for our students.
The last two apps I want to review are Doink and Comic Book!. Doink is an animation creation app that allows users to easily put together animations to publish online. Very user friendly and can hook students quickly in my opinion. You can draw as detailed as you like or simple stick figures, either way users can build some new skills that can allow them to express something they’ve learned or created. Comic Book! is an app that will allow you to upload photos or take photos and turn them into a comic-art format complete with speech bubbles, thought clouds and even segmented pages. This would be a creative way for students to document or chronicle an event they participated in or make an essay/story they wrote come to life.
When we talk about assessment, too many times we think about standardized test and we forget about the power of a students creative product. Students will get more out of producing a creative product using the apps I shared then they would through a classic fill in the bubble exam. Each have their place, but it is so important to know your students learning styles and be diverse in the way you reach them.
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