I had a great time playing around with the tools in the sandbox this week. Vocaroo is very simple and easy to use. I think that this would be a great tool for teachers and students. Teachers could use this tool to create a welcome recording and send it out to parents and students before the first day of school. Teachers could also record themselves calling out word study or vocabulary words and post it on a class website so that students can have access to them for a practice spelling test. Students who have access to this site at home could record themselves reading words or passages to enhance fluency so they can hear themselves and send the recording to their teacher.
Voki is fun website to use. It offers a ton of avatars to use along with your voice recording. This would be a great "getting to know you" activity for students to do the first week of school. Many of the students are hesitant to share information about themselves, especially in front of their peers. Using Voki, students could create an avatar and do a voice recording talking about some of the things they would like to share with the class. Sudents could also use Voki to create character monologues. It would be a great wany to explore different points of view and make connections to characters and text.
My favorite website this week is Blabberize. Students could draw or search for an image of a famous historical figure and use a recording of their own voice to present facts and information from a first person point of view of the historical figure. The funny mouth template could make it a very entertaining presentation.
Students could also create cartoon videos from their own drawings. This would be a very intriguing activity for those that love comics and graphic novels. Here is a clip I made using a picture:
Podcasting
The Let's Bet Busy Podcast is by a librarian! Matthew Winner is an elementary school librarian that provides this weekly podcast. He interviews authors, illustrators, and others that are in the field of books. The podcast episodes are at varying lengths and include answers to questions that apply to teachers, students, or parents.
I would use this podcast for my library when doing book talks or author studies. Many teachers bring students to the library to check out books related to an author, genre, or topic they are studying. I would add episodes from the podcast to these presentations so that they can hear the actual author or illustrator speak. I know from past experience that students are interested in books when they are book talked and adding the actual author audio might take it up to the next technological level!
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