Online Tools Project

Pixton is a drawing tool that assists students in creating an online comic strip. I looked for most of my tools through the resources that Dr. D provided and Pixton stood out to me due to its clean logo. The tool instructed me to make a free account which was easy and allowed for me to have full access. I was further drawn to this cartoon maker because of the sheer amount of backgrounds and clothing that you could have for your characters. Name a place and there was a background for it which is an amazing quality to have in an app such as this. Not only that, but the costumes that you could have for your character ranged in culture and time period. When I made my example, I did notice something that I could see as a potential issue. While there was diversity in the many stock characters that they had, in the create your own character section, the range of skin tones for people of color was small with not a lot of variation. I think that as a tool that proudly advertises its ability to make a digital classroom picture using students’ characters that it should be more diverse in the characters that you can create. Overall, I could see this tool being a huge asset for teachers wanting to use this and have students depict a scene from a book in a visual form like a comic strip. I could also see teachers using the classroom feature as a fun way to introduce everyone on the first week of school.

WeVideo was one of many video editing tools that I found and stuck out to me due to its logo. It seemed simple which is something that I value in apps, specifically ones that my middle schoolers will be using. It was one of the few tools that I found myself stuck behind a paywall. The app did allow for me to make a free account, but many of the graphics, animations, and other cool features were not available for free users. Outside of that, the tool did an amazing job and allowed for me to create a neat intro video with graphics. There was even the option to add in closed captioning. A music library with copyright free music was also available and, even in the free account, it had a small selection that you could choose from. This is an app that could have many uses in the classroom. Specifically, students could use this app to create book trailers for their literature circle books or to edit the before mentioned newscaster project. Video editors like this allow for students to use their multimedia knowledge and be creative in the classroom.

Edublogs was a tool that I was actually searching for when looking to create my Unit in Dr. Keyes class. This tool is a blog maker and includes options to create a personal blog, classroom blog, or student blogs within a classroom. Each student can create their own personal blog page which can be visited by their peers and personalize it however they would like. There is a lot that you can do with this site which is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that you have a lot of freedom with what you can do, however, it means that this website take a lot longer to get used to. Once you do understand it, it becomes a great utility in your belt of digital publishing. The actual page where you write your post is very simple and even allows for you to upload pictures, videos, galleries, and audio files along with your written work. You can also embed links to a multitude of websites and include widgets. These allow for a lot of versatility when it comes to the assignments that you can give that can be uploaded to student’s personal blogs. I would use this to have students keep a digital portfolio of their work as well as write essays to encourage digital communication.