Week 5 - Group 4 - Animations and Simulations

Hey guys just me again for the second time this week! 

While we looked at presentations this week we also looked at animations and simulations that could get our students invovled in the classroom. There were many options to chose from such as; google maps, adobe, online timetables and more. So I have decided I will talk about two websites and how I would use these in my classroom. 

Museum Box:

Source: Museum Box

Museum Box is a quirky website where you put certain items into a box. So you could begin with the question if I was on an island what would be in my pockets? then you would put those items into a box. As you look through this resource it explains itself well and gives teachers the opportunity to have students work on the website while also being able to delete it once they have finished. 

This resource would be perfect for any type of classroom topic for students. Students can put pictures/text into their box to help explain themselves. This would be a wonderful tool to use in a history assessment to put what happened on The First Fleet or what an explorer might have had in their backpack. It would involve student in high order thinking as they would have to take part as the role of the convicts on The First Fleet or even the explorer. Museum Box also allows students to create two different boxes if they need too. 

You could also use Museum Box at the start and the end of a certain topic, by asking students a specific question such as what did Matthew Flinders carry in his pockets when exploring Australia? have them create a box before speaking about the topic and when the topic is finished to see how their thinking has changed now that they have more information about Matthew Flinders and his exploration. 

ZooBurst:
ZooBurst is a 3D interactive book. It gives the author the opportunity to tell a story at the bottom of the page while also allowing the pop up 3D pictures to give more information to the story. 

ZooBurst: My story - Family

ZooBurst is a great interactive simulation activity for students. However different age groups would (obviously) use this very differently. For the younger grades the learning manager could create stories for them to interact and learn from throughout the topic. While older grades could create their own stories from what they have learnt or what they would like to learn. 

The interaction part of this simulation is an opportunity for higher achievers (or lower achievers) to learn more. If used properly this would be a great ICT to use in the classroom. As I did not have much time to have a big play with this ICT (which I would have liked) as I have been really ill, I did not see all of it's potential but I am hoping over this weekend I can have more of a delve into this resource and find out more. 

Click here to see my Family story I created on ZooBurst. 

See you all in 2 weeks time (week 6).

Jess.