Gertrude's Technology Assessment #2

SoundCloud (3/5):  I would consider SoundCloud to be a tool that can be used for education. For example if a student in band class was to upload his/her instrumental music onto the website and share it with his classmates and the teacher, the student will be able to receive peer reviews on his/her instrumental record. The peer reviews can be critical where they point out his/her mistakes on the notes played within any portion of the recording. Besides critical reviews, other students can also give good motivational words. Not only can peer reviews on a student’s work be marked down, but a student can organize their recorded sounds. For example if a student recorded their teacher lecturing about several chapters, the student will be able to mark down the different chapters in their recording and listen to them again. Overall, I would consider soundcloud to be a tool used in education. However, I wouldn’t consider it to be a valuable tool. There is not much that can go on in this website besides uploading sounds and showing it off to the community. It may have some educational purposes but it is a very limited website.

-        Diigo (4/5): Diigo.com is an interesting website that has evolved to satisfy the generation of today. It is able to be accessed by users on their mobile devices, I pads, laptops,  and computers. It is a very helpful tool in managing one's online reading, especially if one was a student.  The student or other will be able to highlight (various highlighting colors included) the important points in their reading and add comments or notes to the highlighted reading sections if they would like. Diigo can also store previous website pages without changing what was made on the website. For example if a student highlighted sections on a website, made notes and stored it on Diigo’s library cloud, that student can open that website back up again and continue where they left off. Also, the student wouldn’t have to open up the visited website on the same device that they used. The student can have the option to use their ipad or iphone to access the website with the same capabilities. Overall, I would consider Diigo to be a useful and valuable tool on a student’s education.

      Scriblink (2/5): Scriblink is very similar to a google document on one’s gmail account. This website allows you to draw, type, or edit images on a whiteboard. One can also share their work with others by adding the email addresses of those people that they want to share their work with. The people who were added to the document will not only be able to view the work, but will also be able to discuss and collaborate on the work made on the whiteboard. Overall, I would consider this website to not be that educational. It’s more of a place where creative designs can be featured rather than educational work. 

-       Wolframalpha (4/5): Wolframalpha  is a very intelligent website. It offers answers to various fields of study. It answered my math questions and other topics that I wanted to know of.  Sure it didn’t give me all the answers to some of the things that I had asked for because those topics may have had an abundant amount of information to offer, but the website still gave me something. It gave me short answers that were right to the point, which is what I favored most.  Mainly, what I noticed is that this website gives very good answers on the topics of math and science. Thus, I would consider this website to be more beneficial to students who had questions dealing with math and science. It is a good website with a background of experts to answer questions that are asked every day. 

 

 Prezi.com (3/5): Prezi is a fun website to explore, especially for teachers and students who want to give an interesting presentation. This website offers different dynamics to a presentation rather than a simple and formal powerpoint presentation that is usually seen in class. It is like a video camera that can be controlled to view different areas on a large board. Not only can it view different areas on the board, but it can also view areas within an area within another area. An example would be a title on the page. The presenter can control the viewing of the camera to go deep into the title and find more information that will be largely viewed with a relation to that title. And if they clicked on the information again, there can be more information found within the information viewed. For those who understand some calculus, I would say that it is quite similar to solving a chain rule problem. Other than information that can be viewed, videos and sounds and also be input by the presenter.  Overall, I would consider this website to be a valuable tool in a student’s education, especially if they want to keep their audience alive while they’re presenting. 

Xtranormal.com (2/5): At first, I thought Xtranormal.com was an interesting website because it had colorful characters, different voice speakers, various background sounds, and many environment settings. However, I realized that the website is not all that great. Everything is not free. You’re only limited to a certain number of pixels that you can use. It is those pixels that determine what you may and may not use. Even if you did buy some pixels you’re still limited. The characters don’t do much besides say whatever you want them to say (with some muffling here and there), blink, have few arm movements, and sway a bit from side to side. The characters don’t walk and the opportunity to place any text on the video for the audience to see was lacking. At first I thought this website would be a good educational tool for a presentation. However, I realized that it’s not that valuable. It will allow you to make a boring video with barely any educational value to it. A student can go to a better website without having to pay for anything. 

Wikipedia.com (1/5): Although Wikipedia may provide a lot of information that seems reasonable, it is still not a trusted website. It is not legitimate because anybody can go to the website and edit the information that is on it. This website is not a credible source and is not acceptable for students to use in their education.  Therefore, wikepedia is not a valuable educational tool for students. 

Youtube.com (3/5): I would consider youtube.com to be an educational tool for students. There are opportunities for a student to watch educational video clips from discovery channel, flipped video lessons about math, and many other videos teaching a variety of educational subjects. Basically, youtube provides good educational content and useful knowledge. However, there many distractions that will keep a student from learning. There funny videos about cats, movie clips, and other ridiculous nonsense. Students will not learn much with educational and non-educational videos colliding on youtube. However, I would still consider youtube to be a valuable and educational tool for students to use depending on the videos that they choose to watch.