Yet, More Tools!

GE Whiteboard
I think I could pull this up daily. What a fun way to practice drawing. From this site you can email a drawing. Having a drawing replayed…(how cool is that during a presentation?) You can collaborate with up to three people. Ink is limited. I wish they had a code to embed the replay drawing feature into a blog. I found that if I send someone who is a slow responder to email an email with this tool, they respond quickly. Good to note.

Jing and Screencast-o-matic
This open source tool must be installed to your computer – Jing has the features of “SnagIt” and “Wink” and chat service rolled into one. You can make a screen cast (or, screenshot) share with another person by sending them the url for your finished product. Just like other screen capture programs one can add text, arrows, etc… to the cast.
Still in its Beta Screen-o-matic is similar to Jing but web based – ie: no download. A feature much appreciated if you computer ever crashes.

Diigo
This is a social bookmarking tool. We are using this in Policies and Planning. …need practice…notes can be added…social aspect…… My concern is how many bookmarking sites can one person really maintain? I have settled into my Delicious and am reluctant to leave. I’m afraid I don’t use the social aspect much but I have found the tagging feature really helpful. It allows one to have greater wealth of sites and still be able to locate information.

Animoto
This application synchronizes music you download to photos you upload. You can use Flickr and Picassa accounts to upload too. Examples included history teachers making engaging intro to units. Also could see kids liking to work with this tool. This was personal use for a day at the beach on our last trip.

Voice Thread
I really like this application. I have created personal voice thread as a way to communicate to family (free account limits number of samples and interactive responses). But, the blog Museum 2.0 was my first introduction to the tool. I really liked the way the author used voice thread for her presentation on ways to make museums more interactive. It would be a great tool for use in a school setting and for storytelling.