Week 4: ToonDoo & Pinterest

Tool #7: ToonDoo - www.toondoo.com

http://www.toondoo.com/aboutus.jsp

• Practical Uses in the classroom or in education in general:

ToonDoo is an instructional tool that helps students create cartoons or comics without requiring artistic abilities. 

• Learning Process for the tools as either an adult (you) or as a student, such as potential barriers, disadvantages or advantages, etc.:

Advantages:

1. Easy to use and anyone can adapt to its features after learning the "ropes"
2. Add dialogue using speech bubbles or in-text.
3. Add pre-set graphics, backgrounds, and characters at a click of a button.
4. Fun and engaging for all age groups
5. Best of all, it's free!

Disadvantages:

1. Can't include your drawings or animations.
2. Cartoons must be public in order to comment and you must sign in.
3. The main page is too congested with so much tabs and features to navigate from.
4. It may take a while to learn the "ropes"

• Link to your example or another public example:

Here is my ToonDoo: 

• Must link to at least one resource to help teachers/parents/students begin to explore each tool:

I use ToonDoo a lot in my lessons and before teaching about the website, I showed this YouTube tutorial for ToonDoo. 



Tool #8: Pinterest - www.pinterest.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest

• Practical Uses in the classroom or in education in general:

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool that helps you create boards related to your interests. As an educator, Pinterest allows me to create a collection of related topics based on what I am teaching. I am also able to browse for different ideas that many educators have on their board and re-pin what they have posted. I can collect resources for different units and organize them into boards, gather visuals and videos for presentations, look for resources from other teacher boards, share quotes and inspirational sayings, show student work, suggest reading materials, and encourage student participation.

• Learning Process for the tools as either an adult (you) or as a student, such as potential barriers, disadvantages or advantages, etc.:

Advantages:

1. Pinterest allows you to collaborate with community boards and re-pin what they have found in other boards.
2. Organization
3. Collection of interests
4. Students can critique their peers.

Disadvantages:

1. Cannot pin all types of media.
2. Copyright can be an issue.
3. We can often lose track of time. Users can be "lost" in the pinning world where they dive in too deep and forget about what they were originally supposed to do.
4. Inappropriate content might pop up when searching.

• Link to your example or another public example:

Click on the icon     to view my pinterest page.

• Must link to at least one resource to help teachers/parents/students begin to explore each tool:

I also uploaded a link to view my screencast tutorial for using pinterest...