Tagged: collaboration

Digital Games by Digital Natives

It’s really demanding to work with very young learners, but it’s amazing when you think of how much they can pick up even they are so small!!

I’ve made three animation projects with 6 years old kids for the last two years. MEDEA Awards awardedDaisy and Drago cartoon that was animated and dubbed by 6 year old non-native students with “Creativity and Innovation” award in Online-Educa conference last year. I had written a guest blog on Ken Wilson’s blog about this project. If you are interested more, you can also watch my interview about it and watch the film here. The kids also animated the second story of Daisy and Drago. You can watch it here.

This year, we’ve been working on a new animation story with new and very cute characters “Bubble and Pebble”. The aim is to teach colours to the kids. The recordings haven’t been completed yet so I’ll share it later on a different blog post. By the way, you can have a look at the short summary of the story below:

At school, we’ve collaborated with the IT department to create digital games for kindergarten students to reinforce what they learn in English lessons. This year, we’ve decided to create digital games using our new characters to teach different topics to the kids. For this project, children have drawn the pictures for the game. I’ve recorded their voices and IT teacher  has put the drawings and the recordings together using Flash. You can play the demo of one of the games below:

Children do love playing with Bubble and Pebble games!! and it’s amazing to see how much they enjoy the material they have created to learn English. Let’s give them all a big hand!!


100 Web Tools to Enhance Collaboration (Part 2)

flickr hands lots“No one can whistle a symphony.  It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock

“The 21st century collaboration” moves us from its traditional definition towards a new one with the developing web technologies.

Here is the second part of my collaboration tools list for techie collaborators.

Voxopop is a message board system which lets you create talk groups that you can talk, discuss and collaborate using your own voice. Some of you may remember  Voxopop as Chinswing in the past. You can listen to public discussions though you need to join to create yours.You can easily send group invitations, keep your discussion private, open or restricted.You can delete it whenever you want. You can explore public talk groups on Education, Learning and Language here.

EtherPad is a web based word processor that lets you work with others at the same time. When multiple users work on the same documents , you can get feedback immediately. You know who contributed to the text, also all changes are saved on the server in case you need to undo.

Mindmeister is an online collaborative mind mapping tool that you can brainstorm with others real-time. You can create your own mind maps on an award winning interface or share  them with your friends or collaborate with others to create a collaborative map.

Survs lets you create your online surveys collaborating with others in multi user accounts. You can collect responses and analyze the results in real time with others.

I’m sure many of us are familiar with VoiceThread. It’s a tool to have conversation around different kinds of media. It’s one of the best ways to talk and share about your images,documents or videos. You create your Voicethread and others can leave comments by telephone, text, web cam, microphone or file upload. Learn more about it by watching this Voicethread.

Tgether allows you to communicate in small groups by emails. You can share files, track conversation and manage your group. You can share codes or use 3rd party applications that Tgther provides.

StoryBirds are short and simple stories that connect you with others. Two or more people can create a Storybird story by writing their own texts and inserting pictures by taking turns. You can create your story with the person sitting next to you or someone who is far away from you.

WebCanvas is a collaborative painting project. You can paint using different basic tools, upload or post professionally drawn images or you can watch others paint live. This is an interesting project for artists though we can still give a try.

AwesomeHighlighter is the easiest way to highlight texts on web pages. When you finish highlighting, you get a link and share it with others. If you like this, you should also try Markkit.

Protagonize is a community that writes collaborative, interactive fiction. One person starts the story, the others post chapters to your story that will lead it to different directions. At the end, it becomes an evolving story which everyone can participate.

Mixbook is a site that lets you create picture books with others. You start creating your own book with pictures, invite a few friends to build the rest of the book together.

Thinkature places an instant message inside a visual workspace with voice chat. You can use it as a collaboration environment, a meeting room or a personal whiteboard.

TextFlow is a way to review document versions instantly to produce a final draft. It matches all the different versions of the text to show you all the suggestion in one single view.

LucidChart is another way to collaborate on a document simultaneously. Everyone can see the changes that have been made on the document .The difference between the other word processors is that it has an built-in group chat that makes it easier for you to collaborate.

Wikispaces is the best way to create collaborative web pages that you can edit and share together. You can watch Wikis in Plain English by Common Craft or visit the world’s largest collaborative online encyclopedia,Wikipedia! Wikispaces are my favourite wikis, you can have a look at my wikispace though I’ve been using it as an e-portfolio.

Senduit lets you upload your files and share them with private links with your team.

With Stintio, you can create your own chat in seconds. You can invite people to join by simply sending a link. You don’t download or install anything. You chat will be deleted if it is not active for a while.

Yuuguu is an instant screen sharing and video conferencing too that lets you work together quickly and easily.

Voxli allows you to hold voice conferences online. You can have a voice chat up to 200 people. You can invite your teammates by only sending a link, and you don’t have to upload anything. You can use push to talk to control your speaking even you are out of your browser.

Wridea is an online idea management service and a collection of brainstorming tools. You store, manage,organize and share your ideas to improve them with others. You use the web interface or you write an email to your wridea address to keep your ideas organized. You have pages and categories that lets you improve your ideas easily and collaboratively.

Enjoy collaboration!

If you like reading this, you may consider reading 100 Web Tools to Enhance Collaboration (Part 1).

Cross posted on TechLearning!