Travel Diaries of a Web 2.0 Newbie

Call me a pessimist, but it had to finally happen. After having had an amazingly glitch-free run using all different sorts of Web2.0 resources, I finally got frustrated during this Thing. Now that pulse rate and blood pressure are back to normal I feel able to share my feelings with the group…

Having liked the look of the cartoon strip of “The Hungry Caterpillar” from the Thing 14 introduction, I thought I would use the same images from my “Your Genes & You” slideshow and make a cartoon strip version using Pikistrips. I mentioned before that I think this kind of resource could be used to provide an introduction to a new topic, or a summary or revision guide, either created by the teacher or the students themselves. It appeals to the visual learner part of me. The site seemed straightforward enough: upload pictures; choose format of cartoon strip; add text boxes etc; and save. But I found adding text boxes very cumbersome, with no real-time indication of what they would look like – you had to keep on selecting to preview your work. Then, having saved it halfway through, I came back after a gap and find that it has reverted all my text to the default font, which was too large. Anyway, the finished result is here, but I’m not sure what I think of it:

I also tried Picnik, in the hope that it would be useful for getting students to annotate images, but found it to be too basic for this. Maybe my students would have a better imagination than me and I should just let them loose on it at some point and see what they come up with – I don’t want to limit their choice of expression by my opinions. I did find time to use it with one of our holiday snaps from a visit to London’s Natural History Museum:

Both Picnik and Pikistrips have social aspects, allowing tagging, comments and easy uploading of images to Flickr and other sharing sites.

Quizlet has obvious applications and I am already thinking of using it to help students in their revision of the more mundane, factual components of some of the subjects we study. I like the flexibility in time and space that this resource offers, in contrast to going over similar exercises during class time. Plus the fact they can redo the same question set in different quiz formats – sure to stave off the boredom.

Just as an “impulse buy” as I was finishing this Thing, I looked at Blabberize and then wished I’d picked this one first! When looking through the list of tools, I dismissed it as a gimmick. However, when I went to the site, without even exploring it, just looking at the first page, I enjoyed it. I could imagine my students using this to voiceover images of famous scientists giving us a summary of their achievements or their key experiments, or getting two competing scientists together in a face-off. I think it would appeal to all age groups and would definitely be a good resource for students with less of an inclination for writing. Finished products can be browsed and embedded.