Brainstorm with Edistorm!

The grade one's have become researchers in the last couple of weeks. During our science unit about the needs of living things, the students have decided to find out more about ocean animals. This inspiration came from the Betas that live on their tables that they care for each week. There are 4 research groups and they are studying Dolphins, Whales, sharks and Turtles. To this point, we have been spending most of our time on chart paper, clipboards and stickies but groups have begun to meet with me at the Smart Board to create KWL charts based on their knowledge, questions and learning.

The way we have been organizing and manipulating our thinking and learning has been through a site called Edistorm. Edistorm is a brainstorming site that is a similar to Smart Ideas concept mapping, that allows you to place post its of different colours onto an interactive wall. You can group ideas and can even collaborate with others on your "storm" online. Just like stickies, you can move them around based on how your thinking and ideas change over time. I really like the youtube video tutorial at the site that gives you an overview of the functionality of this site and its possible uses. When you begin a storm you can start from scratch or you can choose from a small menu of templates. I became a member of the site and there is an option to join as an educator. I am currently on a 30 day free trial for private storms. They have special pricing for schools and the upgraded packages are reasonably priced.

Overall, I think that this site could be a useful tool for junior, intermediate or senior students to be able to work on independently. For primary students, it is a great demonstration tool in another medium to show how to brainstorm. I have just become familiar with it and would like to spend a lot more time playing with it to determine its full capabilities and possibilities.

Here is a link to my progressing Dolphin group's K-W-L. My plan is to post them to the blog as we near the end of our study.

Get your voice heard!

To hear about Vocaroo, click here...



I haven't tried to use Vocaroo to add voice clips into programs such as Movie Maker. If you do, share with me how it goes. Personally, I find it to be more user friendly as a voice recorder than some other voice recording tools for this purpose. I recently used it to embed my student's voices onto their blog pages. The task was to write about their Halloween costumes and then they practiced practiced practiced and then read into Vocaroo. It was a quick and easy way to add a personal touch to their work and to share it with a wider audience. Here is a link to one of my student pages and his creative vocaroo!
http://www.classblogmeister.com/blog.php?user_id=304884&blogger_id=323380

It is a great tool! Give it a try - in fact follow this link to Vocaroo and try it for yourself right now!