Play Tech 3 - Creativity Tools

Tools of creativity is what I explored this week. The three tools were glogster, scribble map and voicethread.

Glogster - online poster maker.

When you think of Glogster, think of a graphic blog.  This tool allows users to put various objects on a "poster" to give a message, or tell a story.   It's not just plain text with a occasional graphic sprinkled in.
The nice thing about this is that it has pre-made shapes and objects, such as pictures and it also allows the user to import their own created objects to place on the poster.  Video or audio can be incorporated.   It seems to have a lot of traffic and usage as there were many glogs to search through and discover. 

Likes: creative, has many shapes, images, can import various types of content.  It's certainly a mash able type of page.
Dislikes: external glogs can be quite crude.  It has the appearance of myspace which pages are often hard to read visually and with content.

Scribble Map - google map editor

Scribble Map allows the user to overlay text, shapes, images and pictures to existing google maps.  Maps can be used in a variety of subjects and this tool extends the maps usefulness in the learning environment.  It allows a hands on connection with the map in a way that wasn't afforded before.

Likes:  Uses legitimate map (google), overlays objects or tags to make the map/image your own.  facebook login for easy of use
Dislikes: I wish it had a way to export or view the scribble map in an iframe like google allows.  This would allow to add to other web pages without saving as an image.

Voicethread - a discussion board on steroids

A thread can be created and responses can be in the form of text, voice or video.  This enhancement to online interaction is a great way for the respondents to show their creativity or demonstrate knowledge in the discussion.

Likes: It accepts voice, graphics and text for input.  They can add items, pictures and video to share what they found or created and reflect.
Dislikes:  I couldnt tell if it prevents viewing the other respondents until they post something.  This would help keep them from slipping into group think.

I really enjoyed the Scribble Map tool the most.   I can easily see how this creativity tool can fit right in the center of the TCPK model.  From a content prospective, the students need to learn about scale factors and maps use this concept quite well.   They can measure the distance of points on a map and then translate that to a distance in real life using ratio calculations.  Regarding pedagogy, this activity can be very kinestetic which appeals to many of the students.  They are able to use a map that relates to their every day life and using a printed version of the map and some string, they can identify if their calculations are reasonable. The technology aspect of this is that the google maps, which is merely a substitute for a printed map can extend it's usefulness by zooming the scale factor and by the use of labels, and other shapes to indicate the path or connection between the two points.

Other ways that this tool could be used is to have the students drop some of the other shapes on the map to identify a radius from a single point.  They can calculate the area that their school or house might take up.  They can also identify which shapes are being used for 3 dimensional objects.  They can also be asked to find and and tag a list of shapes that might be used by famous landmarks.

New tools are constantly being developed on the internet.  With the dawning of HTML 5 and other web technology, user inter-activeness with a web page or tablet application can enhance the learning experience for the students.   While drill and practice tools have their place, they are further down the blooms taxonomy which do not encourage or drive the students outside of their comfort zone to analyze or evaluate what they have learned.  Tutorials and instructional games do not allow the student to interact and prove what they really know or how it might connect.  So they may know the facts, but not understand how to use the facts. A creative task and tool enables this assessment.