Kickin it with T: Adventures with Technology

My final cool tool review is called Coggle. Coggle is an online tool for creating and sharing maps of ideas such as notes, brainstormed ideas or planning. It works on any browser (no downloads or installations required) and can be shared with your friends, colleagues or classmates. What is nice about this tool is that there are three versions : Free (free), Awesome ($5/month), and Organization ($8/month). Some advantages about using Coggle are: You can have three private diagrams Icons (this is available in the free version) Unlimited image downloads (also available in the free version) PDF & image downloads (yup, included in the free version too) Saves every change you make  Steps to creating your own Coggle: Create an account- if you already have a Google account you can just use that instead of creating a new one Click create a diagram  Click to edit your title  Add to your web by clicking the '+' marks on either side of your title  Pick yo...

This week's cool tool was My Ebookmaker . This tool is a free book making program that you can download and create as many books as you want. Your ebooks can be downloaded in an epub format (an e-book file format that can be downloaded and read on any device) and can be distributed in many forms of technology such as: Amazon Kindle Apple Ibooks Barnes and Nobel Googlebooks  Lulu Unfortunately, when it comes to this tool I am not a fan and did not get to finish making my book because it was just too confusing to use. It is not an 'easy to follow' process like my other cool tools were. One of the hardest things for me to do was add images to my book. When you click on the photo icon it takes you to a weird screen that does not allow you to add a picture from a file. The only way I was able to add a photo was by clicking the upload tab and then click send to server. But that took me a while (with additional help) to figure out. Even after the picture is uploaded there...

This week's cool tool was suppose to be TagCloud, but I could not figure out how to work it so I decide to do WordItOut instead. WordItOut  is a word cloud generator (similar to TagCloud but eaier to use) that randomly arranges words for a fun visualization. The most important words in the arrangement are positioned bigger than the other words. These words are decided based on how many times it is used throughout the sentence or document that you use. WordItOut can be used by anyone and can can vary in size, shape, and color.  Some cool features of WordItOut are that it is free to use and there is no sign up required. You would just need to provide an email so they can send you your cloud to print or share with others. This is perfect for the classroom. Most classrooms have 20-25 students in them so teachers would not have to worry about signing everyone up. It also give you control of to your settings to customize it to your desire. Some other features are: Being a...

The Cool Tool that I chose to review for this week is Emaze . Emaze is the next generation of PowerPoint presentation that expands to offer a creation tool to the social hubs such as website design , blogs, ecards, and photo albums. With Emaze you are able to add media, GIFs, and live social feeds. Some features that Emaze has is that it is easy to share content anywhere and monitor who is watching. It is also easy to use , has front-line designs and be used on more than one device. Along with that Emaze has language support and is cloud based so you are able to save on your cloud. You can also upload an existing PowerPoint and make changes from there OR you can create your own from scratch. Something else that is nice is that students can use their Google account information to create an Emaze, which means that they will not have to memorize new information.  Emaze could be used in the classroom for presentation purposes both for teachers and students. For teachers this co...

My original cool tool that I was going to review was Bitstrips, but unfortunately for me those have been replaced with Bitmoji, so instead of reviewing Bitstrips I will be reviewing Bitmoji. Bitmoji is your own, personal, emoji. It is a cartoonish version of yourself that can be really be used anywhere! It can be integrated with Facebook, Facebook messenger, gmail, snapchat, text or anything using google. This app is very user friendly and can be downloaded onto your computer using chrome or on your phone (Apple or Android). Once you download Bitmoji, you create your personal avatar and go from there. What makes this so easy is that all you have to do is make the avatar look like you and BAM you are done and let the fun begin! With that, I do not think that students will face any challenges using this piece of technology. The challenge that I do see happening is how teachers could use this tool in a classroom (when it comes to being educational) because there are not ...