Over the last several weeks, a contest was organized, promoted and judged, and winners were awarded prizes. The contest asked faculty to submit favorite web sites or apps. Our Student IT volunteers, a group of nine students (grades 9-12) judged the entries and chose one winner for each of four categories: creative, education, news and technology. The winners and their submissions were reviewed in my previous post. I hope you've had a chance to take a look at the sites/apps. All four are excellent.
Because so many submissions were outstanding, I wanted to add a list of Honorable Mentions. These are sites/apps that were near misses. All earned justifiable praise from our reviewers. And again, all are worth a look if they are not familiar to you.
In the creative category, a few sites merit attention. Animoto, submitted by Mary Tuohy, allows the user to quickly create videos from still images. You can add music and text to enrich the content. It's a site and app. Prezi, submitted by Joanna Hayes, allows for the presentation of information in a particularly dynamic way. As perspectives shift, viewers are forced to consider their own perspectives on a topic. Kristen Armstrong's recommendation, Recitethis, allows the user to add quoted text to a variety of other platforms. The results can be useful and fun, and helps viewers engage material.
In the education category, Elise Smith suggested an app called Subitize Tree. (Currently, it's selling for 99 cents.) This app promotes numerical literacy and number sense for younger mathematicians. Irv Taylor recommended the Code Academy site for people who'd like to "learn to code interactively, for free." Linda Park offered several sites that focused on language use. Forvo is unique among them because it is built around the auditory component of language acquisition. Listen to how words and phrases sound around the world. Finally, in this category, Lynn Prosen's ChemCrafter iPad app allows you to mix chemicals and see reactions, all from the safety of an app. I guess it's the Chemistry version of a virtual dissection in Biology.
In the news category, There were several sites designed to bring news items of your choosing to a central location. I submitted Zite and Mike LaBrie submitted Feedly. Both are similar to Fred Corona's winning submission of Flipboard, though Flipboard's navigation software is especially impressive. And Larry Bostian's igHome allows the users to create a personal dashboard that might serve as an excellent home page in your browser. With the exception of the web site igHome, these are free apps. Some of our student judges were impressed to learn that CNN has set up a news section on their site for middle and upper school students. Joanna Hayes pointed us towards their site.
The technology category had only four submissions, but in addition to the winning Dropbox, Isabel; Corbin's suggestion of Diigo merits a look. It's a social media site for educators. It allows you to organize information and sites for personal use, and also to become part of larger communities sharing resources of mutual interest. I receive a Diigo feed every day, and virtually without exception, I find information of use and interest.
So in addition to our four winning submissions, there are quite a few others that are deserving of your attention. When you get some free time - and yes, that might be at some point in the distant future - check out our Honorable Mention submissions. They, too, are worth a look.
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