Some months ago, I wrote to the toondoo folks and expressed my dismay at some of the content on the site. They responded right away with a plan that they were just hatching at the time. It was to be a pay site for schools that would only include content from the school community. An administrator would be in charge of all the log ins, much like we have to do at Kerpoof or any of these creative, amazing sites. I volunteered to be a tester for the site as we tried out our school’s domain. Because it’s the end of the year, I have only been able to get a couple dozen 4th and 5th graders to try the site out but it’s really great. Kids can draw their own cartoons or use the many, many little images already made. Then using backgrounds and speech bubbles, stories can be created, limited only by one’s imagination and abilities.
You’ve gotta check it out! Here is the free site, as is:
I have been researching exactly what we mean by the term “21st century skills” when it applies to what I am supposed to be teaching my computer classes. Our kids were recently given an assessment that covered those skills and they did not seem to be the same skills that I thought were 21st century skills. Therefore, I am seeking the correct answers…since, if we are testing kids on them, there has to be some set responses. Right? I am collecting comments here http://lindargeorge.pbworks.com/ if you’d like to weigh in on the subject.
In my ever vigilant quest to find new programs to dispaly my students’ creativity, we just used google sketchup 7. We used this tutorial: http://www.aidanchopra.com/tableofcontents/chapter-2 and found that we could watch it without skipping and could start and stop for the kids to try it and work along with the narrator.
Here is my original drawing of a bee:
and here it is after I played with it at this site: http://labs.artandmobile.com/tiltshift/