Screencast, Instagram, Flipagram

Screencast-o-matic 


Screencast-o-matic is a free screen recorder that is used to record computer screen activity. You can share it on screencast-o-matic.com, YouTube, or save it to a video file.  It is very simple and easy to use. On the free account it only allows you to record up to 15 minutes. A screencast is a video recording of a screen activity that can include audio. If you want to include audio, you must have a microphone. I created a screencast about how to create a comic strip using ToonDoo.  Below is a demonstration of my screencast.

Instagram 

Instagram is a simple way to post, edit and share photos and videos. You can add text, music and filters. You can share them publicly or privately. Users can connect their account to other social media. Below are some of my Instagram photos of students' work displayed at an elementary school.

Capitalization

A post shared by Esmeralda Villarreal (@ehv002) on Oct 26, 2017 at 5:01pm PDT

Student’s Writing Collection

A post shared by Esmeralda Villarreal (@ehv002) on Oct 26, 2017 at 5:01pm PDT

https://www.instagram.com/ehv002/


Flipagram 

Flipagram is an app that is used for creating short videos with your images. You can also add some music. You can link up your Instagram and get some images or videos from it as well.  It is very simple to use and quick. It can be used to create a simple slideshow of popular books, a slide show of the student of the week, or of a field trip.

Screencasts-o-matic, Instagram, and Flipagram are all great to display or create visual presentations or videos.  Screen-o-matic can be used to teach students how to use a database, an opac, an app. or simply present a visual presentation. Instagram is great for displaying students work, share book recommendations, present the student of the week, or just share field trip photos of the classroom.  Flipagram is easy for creating and sharing presentations.  It can be used to share popular books in the classrooom, create a topic presentation, or retell a story.  I really enjoyed working with all three but out of all of them, I enjoyed using the flipagram the most. I found it to be very user friendly and it is a great tool to have because it is so quick to create. Just select your pictures, add text, music, and your done!

Infographics

     How can we define an infographic? According to dictionary.com, an infographic is a visual representation of data which can be in the form of a chart, graph, or other image. An infographic should be with minimal text and is meant to be easily understood. I chose the Pew Research Center's Internet article titled: Tech Adoption Climbs Among Older Adults for my infographic.  I used data from a survey that represents a percentage of U.S. adults who say they used certain technologies. The graph shows gains among adults 65 and older using technologies such as internet, home broadband, smartphones, tablets, and social media.  I explored with three different infographics which included the web apps Piktochart, Infogram, and Easelly,

     Piktochart is a site that is free and is for creating infographics. The first thing I noticed, was that this site does not provide you with as many choices as Easelly. It has very limited amount of free templates to choose from.  But there are more templates available for an upgrade.  You can change the color or texture of the background on the template. It also allows you to double click on the blocks to change your text and font.  You can change the height, width and location of the blocks and even lets you clone a block. You can click and drag images to wherever you want on the template. It allows you to change the color on the images that are one color but will not allow you to change the color on multicolor images.  You can also upload your images from your computer.  I found it easy to use but just couldn't find the right free template for my infographic.

     Infogr.am is another free site for creating infographics. Like the other websites this one also provides free templates but with a more limited amount. It has fewer images and icons than the others. It allows you to embed videos from You Tube. When you click on the block it automatically provides you with options on the side that allow for deleting, duplicating, and bringing the text to the front or back.  Out of all the sites, I found this one to be the most unappealing.

     Easelly is a site where anyone can create an infographic to express their ideas or information visually and appealing. It is very user friendly. There are plenty of templates to choose from.  I found an appropriate template for the information of the article I chose.   It also had a great variety of images or objects.   I was able to change the font, color, and text size and  it allowed me to drag objects form one place to another. I really enjoyed exploring with Easelly.  Out of all the apps I found Easelly to be the simplest one to use for my infographic.   

     I really enjoyed navigating through the different web apps of Piktograph, Infogram, and Easelly. But of all the three I chose Easely for because I found it to be the simplest and with more options to create my infographic.

The following is a link of an infographic I created using Easelly.

https://www.easel.ly/create?id=https://s3.amazonaws.com/easel.ly/all_easels/2717142/1508529197&key=pri


Sources

Anderson, M., & Perrin, A. (2017, May 17). Tech Adoption Climbs Among Older Adults. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/05/17/tech-adoption-climbs-among-older-adults/ 

Create Easy Infographics, Reports, Presentations | Piktochart. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://piktochart.com/

Create infographics & online charts - Infogram. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://infogram.com/app/#/library

Create and share visual ideas using infographics. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://easel.ly/

Infographic. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2017, from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/infographic