iMovie

This week I learned how to use iMovie, which is a tool for producing multimedia videos.  It can be used to tell stories in a digital format.  While it was very easy to interact with, I am not sure that it will be a very practical tool for my classroom.

The software itself is very self-explanatory, although it does take some time to get adjusted to it's format  I did not like that it was not very easy to move the different stills around.  I found that I also had to be very careful when I placed the subtitles onto the slides, because it would place the title for only part of the clip if I did not have the whole clip selected. I also found that it was very challenging to keep the time length of the slides consistent.  I was very disappointed that I could not save my project to DropBox so that I could work at it on my home computer.  I ended up just redoing my entire project, because I could not make it back to the lab.

Although I had some problems the program is typically very easy to use.  You can figure it out mostly by playing around with the program.  I like how simple it was to post to YouTube when I was done with my project.  If I use this tool in my classroom I will use it to post the stories that we are covering that week in class to my website.  I will use Picassa to share pictures.

Animoto

Make your own slide show at Animoto.

ActivInspire

I really enjoyed learned how to use ActivInspire and Promethean Boards this week.  I had not had previous experience with working with any kind of interactive white board prior to this class.  I found that it is a wonderful tool that I plan on using in the future if my classroom was the technology.
I found the software to be pretty user-friendly although when I decided to do one of the more complicated features I had to google step by step instructions.  The menus are very easy to locate and use.  One of my favorite features that I found was the ability to insert YouTube videos using their HTML code.  When I had wanted to insert a video into a PowerPoint I found that I had to download the video and insert it that way.
I did not like that you had to click on each object individually.  I found that this process was very time consuming, especially when there were a lot of objects on the page.  I also did not like that the clipart seemed very limited.  I know that this problem can be fixed with resource packs, but I would have thought there would have been more to begin with.
I plan to use this tool in my classroom for interactive activities.

Inspiration

I was pleasantly surprised upon working with Inspiration.  The program seemed to be a little outdated and useless when I first became acquainted with it.  While the program is a little complicated at first, it quickly became one of my new favorite resources.  I am very driven my visual organization and this program fits perfectly into just about anything that you would need to organize, whether it be curriculum or comparing apartments.
I found that Inspiration was very slow on my home computer.  It could be because I only have the free trial and not the software, but I found it very frustrating.  The program also crashed, which caused me to lose my original project due to not saving it periodically.  Despite a few annoyances, I found that the program was very useful and applicable to a wide range of projects.
This program would be wonderful for organizing any subject that I would be teaching.  It would be especially useful for Language Arts and Science where thought maps are very useful.