3-12, Art, Creative Thinking, Education, Research, Student Products, Teaching Tools, Web 2.0

Jux

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If you are looking for another option for creating presentations, Jux may be the answer.  Two reasons that you might like Jux are that it is visually stunning, and that it works on mobile platforms as well as on desktop computers.

Unfortunately, you need to give an e-mail address to sign up for Jux.  But classroom teachers have found workarounds for this in the past, such as creating an account the whole class can use under the teacher’s e-mail address.

The Jux home page gives examples of different types of projects you could design.  One of the ideas I liked was the “Top 10 List”.  This would be a good framework for students to use, such as “The Top 10 Inventions in Communication” or “The Top 10 Exhibits from Our Museum Field Trip.”

Once a Jux presentation is created, there are multiple options for sharing, such as embedding it.

Two things you should think about before using this with your class, though, are:  is this blocked from student access, and are there inappropriate images in the gallery?  I have not seen anything inappropriate, yet, but I would recommend limiting younger students to creating a Jux presentation, and not digging too deeply into the examples.  At the very least, you should hopefully be able to use it on your own, perhaps creating collections of images for your class blog or to generate interest in new topics you want to introduce in the classroom.

3-12, Art, Creative Thinking, Education, Independent Study, Student Products, Teaching Tools, Websites

Logotype Maker

Logotype Maker is a tool I discovered awhile ago on the Free Tech 4 Teachers blog.
I have used it for a few personal projects, but had not implemented it in my classroom yet.  Yesterday, my fifth graders were working on “Genius Hour” projects – which I will be detailing in a future post.  Some of the students are creating websites using Weebly.  One pair was trying without success to create a banner for the top of their site, and it suddenly occurred to me to recommend Logotypemaker.  They were so psyched about their results that other groups kept coming over to see what was going on.  Several students wrote the site address down so they could try it at home, and two other groups immediately got to work on creating their own logos.  If your students have blogs or websites, I highly recommend you show them this resource.  It will not only generate hundreds of logo ideas, but will also allow the students to edit them to further personalize them.