E-Portfolio Jorge G. Aparicio

Five more tools related to teaching with new Media.

This entry consists of five tools which can help docents to teach through New Media.
These reviews explain important aspects about different tools embedded in websites,
which contain effective methods to get the aim that the teacher may have.


Cuadernia 2.0

This Spanish tool from Castilla La Mancha enables us to create,
download and share electronic books or notebooks.

Take a look at their website on this link:
http://www.educa.jccm.es/educa-jccm/cm/temas/cuadernia

To use this tool just click on here:
http://cuadernia.educa.jccm.es/maquetador/
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The most striking aspects from this tool is the fact that using this tool we can create easily a electronic book.
It is a good thing for the environmental aspect and can also make students pay more attention than to regular books. Something to mention is that these e-books can be printed as well.

It contains many functions to work with, much more than a normal book, has a nice appearance and is easy to use.
This website is constituted by a community called scorm. In scorm we will be able to find many e-books or e-notebooks created by teachers most of the cases. It is often used various languages in the same lesson, so that we can choose between the e-notebook in english or spanish for instance.

The following video shows you how to use cuadernia and
the most important aspects for students to know.       
It has three good options as well, we can make our e-book online without registration or by installing the program in the computer or usb stick. These ways of using have almost the same posibilities to use this tool, but by installing the program in our computer we can keep files without the necessity of uploading each time that we want to use it, whereas the online version does not.

After finishing an e-book we will be able to export it to our computer, scorm or to the website. Then you will download a zip file which will be exported to load our work or other's work.

The link below is the youtube channel for cuadernia,
where all the necessary explanations are:
http://www.youtube.com/cuadernia?gl=ES&hl=es



Imtranslator

This time we are going to deal with an add-on for Mozilla Firefox,

To use this tool follow these steps:

The first step is for students or teachers who does not have
Mozilla Firefox as his/her browser. It can be downloaded from here: 
http://www.mozilla.com/es-ES/firefox/   (Spanish version)


The second step is to download this add-on, click or go to:
http://imtranslatorpro.ourtoolbar.com/

The third step is to install it, which will be recognized as a firefox supporting feature.
Instructions are given in the website too.

This tool is used as: Translator, Dictionary, Text to Speech, Virtual Keyboard, and much more.
Check out this video to know how it works:
I find this tool really useful and not difficult to use, it deal with all the necessary tools to learn without depending on many books or websites. In my case, I use it everyday to learn some vocabulary meanings and pronunciation most of the cases. Although the video does not mention it, we can set controls to  have a rapid access to this tool. For example, I usually copy a word or a text, click on the right mouse's button and choose "imtranslator". Then, a new window is open and translate what I copied and give me the options that appears on the video.

What I do not like is the publicity that it contains over the page. Where I can see the problem is especially in the big advertisement on the right bottom, which can be a distraction for students.


www.dvolver.com

This website is a tool which has no instructions to create short movies, it is very concise and intuitive. In my opinion it  is a good way to make movies in a short period of time, futhermore registration is not required so we save time. Students just have to select the background, the characters and write what each character says. They can also choose different kinds of music to play in each scene.
Afterwards, they can send this movie to their and other people's e-mail addresses. Finally they will receive the link to watch the movie they have created.

I would use this task in the classroom in order to deal with different topics, for example this topic could deal with
normal expressions that usually occur in a real conversation.

To use this tool click or copy the following link:
http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/make.html


To watch this video in a better new window is the link for the video displayed below:
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-595502

http://show.mappingworlds.com/world/

The fourth tool shows the world, as its name indicates. It also shows different and interesting aspects about the world.
It provides information about all of these different aspects that are available. It resizes the map making bigger the areas where these aspects occur and making smaller the areas where they do not occur. So it will be changing all the time depending on the aspect we are dealing with at that moment.
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It has much information to work with, so I definitely would use this tool.
I would make a task about finding information with this tool. Therefore students would explore the world through this website in order to get all the important knowledge available. Each group or student would focus on certain information,
which would be explained afterwards.


http://letterpop.com/

The last website handles many different types of writing text, click on the title to go to its homepage. To use this tool we need to be registered, otherwise we can use it but we cannot create more than one page, nor save it in the computer or use any function to export our work and put it online. However it has a disadvantage, it contains limitations concerning the options to use this tool, depending on whether you buy an account or not you would have available more or less functions. 

I like the idea of having many templates, because with so much variety students have the possibility to be original. It can be used for many purposes and fit in many tasks for school or high school.

What Can You Do With LetterPop?
The videotutorial for this tool is a little bit long but it is not necessary to watch the entire video, you can skip some parts if you think that you already know them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S2QCzLgsv4&feature=related