No Really - How much is a trillion???

We all know that a trillion of anything is quite a lot - and I for one just love when someone comes up with a good analogy, metaphor, or visualization that really brings those kinds of numbers home. I used to have a professor in college who always had one of those in his back pocket - about how many times a million dollars would circle the earth, or go to the moon and back.

A few years back, Paul Harvey had a good one that explained the difference between a million and a billion, but I haven't heard or seen anything new or interesting since - until now.

I happened upon this little gem called "What does one TRILLION dollars look like?"


In these times of a tumultous economy and the words "billion" and "trillion" being thrown around so often - it is difficult for adults to really get our minds around this concept - let alone our students. Pop this slide show up on the overhead or the SmartBoard and have a good discussion!

Got an identity problem? Try using a Voki!

Vokis are like an avatar on steriods! Voki is a free web tool where you can select a "Voki" - they can be people, weird cartoon characters, animals, digimons, etc. Once you pick your little alter-ego, you can customize them a little - with the people you can change hair color, skin color, eye color, nose and eye size and also pick out clothing. For all Vokis you can pick from a wide selection of backgrounds. Kids absolutely love creating their own Vokis. The best thing about Vokis is that they will speak either computerized text that you type in, or your recorded voice for 1 full minute. Their lips move, their heads move - it's hilarious! Making a voice recording on Voki is called an "oddcast". What in the world would you ever use a Voki for? Well, I've included my own Voki here - note - be sure to roll the cursor around her even when she's not talking. See what she does:


I use them with my third graders so that they can give oral reports without having their faces appear on our blog - here are links to some of the Vokis my students have made - Check out Voki's from Allen, Kiara, Kade, Kevin, Megan, Melissa, Marrin, Jessie, or Hunter. (I had to list them all or there would have been hurt feelings!). Take it from any of them - Vokis are great. Now for every project we do the first question is "Are we going to get to make a Voki for it?".

That's what I call motivation!

Animoto: The end of slideshows

First of all, let me just say this - if you have dial-up and decide to use Animoto, you are officially the most patient person in the world. Ok, that being said, Animoto speeds along just fine on our school connections, so as long as you do Animoto projects at school you shouldn't have any problems.

What is Animoto? It is a "video" program (for lack of a better word) that will take your photos to make either a beefed up movie clip or a not-so-boring slideshow. Here is a sample I made pretty quickly using some pics (not great pics) I snapped at my daughter's Choral Society performances this year:



Animoto was created by video and film makers, so there are lots of special features you can use. But the most basic features (the simple ones I used to make the above video) are Upload, Add Text, Add Music, Finalize. That's it. I made a video short which is 30 seconds and requires about 10 to 15 images. No two videos are ever the same. It analyzes the images and music you choose to orchestrate a custom video. You can also Remix it so it will change.

Animoto takes what would be an ordinary slide show and makes it a professional quality video. Animoto in the classroom is a fun and easy way for kids to use digital photos to express their stories.

Be sure to watch some of the many samples they have on the site to get a better idea of what they can be used for. You have to sign in with an email to register, but it is free.

Bubbl - an easy webbing, brainstorming, mind-mapping tool

We used to have to spend a lot of money on software that would do this, but now there are some good free web-based brainstorming/mindmapping tools. Bubbl.us happens to be one of the easier ones to use that I have found. It's pretty self explanatory - you get your center bubble, type in your main idea or topic, and then expand side to side (sibling idea), or down (child idea). Once you create your bubbles, they are easy to manipulate and move, and you can even decorate it up and post url links in them. You can keep your bubbl web-based, download it, print it, email it, embed it - whatever you need. Another great thing is, you can share your Bubbl with others for collaboration.

I've had a chance to use Bubbl in my French class this year when we analyze French language articles looking for the main idea. I have two students pair up and create a Bubbl, adding to it as they scan the article together. We don't have time to complete these in class, so the students can set their bubble to "share" and each can work on them at home later still sharing their input.

As much as I like the dedicated fun programs and activities on the web, I really love a good general tool like this that is so versatile! You have to do a quick sign-up for a Bubbl account - pick a username and password - but it's free and worth the extra few seconds it takes to sign up.

I found a video that gives a great 9 minute tutorial on how to use Bubbl (this is how my students and I figured it out!). I tried to upload the video to this post at home and no dice - probably too slow. So I'll try at school and if it works I'll edit this post to include the how-to video, so check back!

Show students how to be creative with text - use Wordle

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Let your students display their work creatively on Wordle by having them copy and paste things like a poem, meaningful quotes about a theme, or even a vocabulary word list.