I am hearing impaired. I have been since I was a toddler, and I wear hearing aids. When I talk, I sound muffled to most people like I have a mouth full of tobacco. That's why I was apprehensive about having to record myself for an undergrad class. The instructor used Voice Thread for our recordings, and it could not have been easier. I just followed the instructions that I was given, and in a matter of minutes, I had my voice thread recording done and uploaded. The ease of that program has left me less unsure of how I will sound to people. Doing a Voice Thread does not bother me anymore. If such a program can make a hearing impaired person like me feel good about oral assignments, then I think it's safe to say that it is relatively easy for anyone to use.
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I know I'm a welder, but I'm talking about my helmet, striker, or machine. I'm not talking about the program Class Tools.
It's a HUGE no from me on this site. I tried many of the programs within ClassTools, and I could not get many to open or to work. Many of the games seemed to time-consuming and complicated to try to use including "Fling the Teacher," "The Vortex," and "Random Group Generator." I spent 20 minutes preparing a Tarsia Puzzle Generator. When I downloaded it, my computer would not open it because I got a message that the download could not be trusted. Who has time for that? I call this one "Wasted Time, Wasted Space." Doodle is a calendar and scheduling program. If a person has a Google account, why should that person choose to use Doodle? Google is free while Doodle has a monthly fee. However, for a very short-term need, Doodle is a great free tool. I found it much easier to navigate than Google Calendar. I experimented with the scheduling portion of the program in which I set up a final exam lab study session, and in a matter of minutes, I had it ready to send out to a class for the class members to choose times to schedule. Doodle is a winner in my book ---- as long as it is free!
This site is super easy to use. This site allows one to make a circle/pie graph, bar graph, line graph, area graph, and an XY graph. I chose the pie graph and had a colorful graph made in a matter of minutes. The program has default color choices built in, but one can choose from a multitude of choices. Unlike some other online programs, this one allows a user to easily download a PDF of the graph. If I taught a middle school or high school class, I would have my students use this program for their work.
Google Drive may be the single greatest software ever created. In terms of word and presentation publishing, what can Google Drive NOT do? The answer to that is very little. Google Drive has made my life so much easier. It is so convenient to access Google Drive from my work computers, my SmartPhone, and my girlfriend's laptop. Google Slides is easy to use and navigate than Powerpoint. Google Forms makes surveys easy to use. In the past, I have used Survey Monkey, but Google Forms is much easier to use and share. I'm not a fan of Google Sheets, but I also do not like its Office counterpart, Excel. For some reason, many colleges and universities are leaving Google Drive for Microsoft Office. Someone told me that it was all about money. Most fellow students and colleagues that I talk to much prefer Google Drive to Office.
Until my recent experience with Prezi, I had never heard if it. I attend welding conferences around the state and country, and I have never seen Prezi used. I asked several family members and mentors about using Prezi. My mother is a 30 year veteran educator, and she had barely heard of it. My girlfriend, who recently finished her Master's degree at UWA, had never heard of it. One of my academic mentors told me that she had tried to use Prezi for a presentation at UNA, and the other professors told her no because it made their eyes hurt with all the zooming. My work mentor says he will use YouTube and TikTok for instructional purposes, but otherwise, he just shakes his head and says, "No" when asked about Prezi. For a supposedly "engaging" type of presentation tool that has been around for over a dozen years, Prezi does not seem to have many fans. I found it difficult to use and understand. The program slowed my computer down to the point that it froze up several times while working with it. I would work for about an hour with the online program when I would get a message that said after seven days, Prezi's free trial would be over. But apparently for the version I chose, that is not correct. So for those who like Prezi, by all means use it. As for me, I'm happy with Powerpoint or even Tik Tok. Audacity may be one of the most versatile digital apps available for school use. The ease of use is appropriate for all grades and subjects. The fact that it is free makes the use of Audacity even more beneficial to the school. Audacity can transform all areas of the curricula. Here is a small sample of how it can be incorporated into the course content while helping to preserve instructional time:
Audacity can provide an excellent option for students who have physical challenges to present work in a multimedia aspect rather than through writing or typing. For teachers who want to use a flipped classroom template, Audacity can be used to record and upload lectures for student use. This would be a good archive for students and teachers alike. Students who are absent could listen to the lectures as though they were in the actual classroom. Teachers could use the archive as documentation for when they hear “but you didn’t say that” or “you didn’t cover that material”. Parents could listen to the lectures through Audacity and help their children at home with studying for tests and homework assignments. This is another tech tool that I had never heard of. The name of it sounds like a word my dad would say when he gets mad. I had never heard of stripcreator.com until this summer. It is completely free to use, but there is a link to send a donation via PayPal.
Would I ever use this tool in my job as a Welding Lab Instructor? Probably not. However, I might use it if I had to give a presentation, and I wanted to create something funny to go with it. The program is fairly easy to navigate. The user can choose to make a cartoon with 1, 2, or 3 panels. Each panel can have 1 or 2 avatars with 20 different ones as options. Then each avatar has several subcategories of drawings. Some of the avatars look expertly drawn while others look like a kindergartener was the head artist. Some of the avatars border on the offensive (one is a Rebel Soldier bearing a Confederate flag). The background can consist of 8 different scenes that can be changed to include open or closed doors and other details. I had more fun going through the library of saved strips than I did in attempting to make one myself. I was school introduced to the use of Chromebooks in English class in high school. The first thing that I found that I liked about the program is the fact that everything is automatically saved in the "cloud" as one writes. There was no more need for keeping up with a flashdrive. As I continued working with the program, I soon liked it much better than Microsoft Word, and I found it easier to use. The drawbacks I find to Google Docs has been changing page margins as easy as in MS Word and converting a Google Doc to a Word Doc(x). I find that I will have to go back in and change spacings in the Google Doc so that it looks correct in Word. I suggest that a person download a Google Doc as a PDF, if possible, to avert the problem of strange word or paragraph spacing. Many universities are no longer maintaining GMAIL/Google Drive accounts for their students and are returning to Outlook/MS Word accounts. I have yet to find anyone who likes that move because of the overall ease of using Google Docs. The best part about Google Docs may be that it is a free program. No longer does anyone have to worry about Microsoft licensing codes and fees.
The Frog: A virtual Dissection is a pretty simple and interesting online tool. It can be found at https://dcc.ilc.org/snc2d/14/the_frog_a_virtual_dissec/the_frog_a_virtual_dissec.html.
I found this virtual dissection via an easy Google search. The lab has four parts: introduction, dissection, external anatomy, and internal anatomy. The introduction section is simply a picture with a very brief description of the intentions of a dissection. The dissection gives a short, non-animated lesson that compares a frog's organ systems with that of a human. The external anatomy section gives 9 links for the different external structures of a frog. When the user clicks on one of the links, a close-up picture and short description appear on screen to provide more info. I found the internal anatomy link to be the coolest of the four because that is the actual dissection portion. It gives you a picture of a frog with links for pins, scalpel, and scissors. The user follows directions on the screen to pin the frog's limbs before proceeding with making an incision. As long as the user can read the instructions, this is a relatively simple program to use as the choosing the wrong tool will lead the user back to the correct one to use. However, once the user moves beyond the initial pins and cuts, the program becomes more difficult to use and understand. The scroll bar will appear, but does not function. This virtual lab would be a good exploratory exercise before performing an actual dissection. Without the actual experience of cutting the frog and looking for and at the real organs, students are missing a great opportunity to learn about more than just cutting up frogs. Knowing how to dissect can help a person to learn how to skin and clean fish and other wild game. That may not seem like a skill that the average person would need, but in an emergency situation, that skill might help a person to feed others and survive. |