My Presentation

I am presently a semester long course on using technology to support my teaching, in and out of the classroom. In service of this class, I was asked to give a presentation on a technology tool which I felt might be of use to my classmates.  I decided to show them ZooBurst, an awesome (and free!) website where one can design interactive 3D online pop-up books.  I've loved pop-up books since I was a child and this awesome site (winner of the American Association of School Librarians "Best Website for Teaching & Learning Award in 2011) really called out to me as something that could be educational, literacy promoting, and very fun.

In order to get ready for my presentation I registered for a free account on ZooBurst.  They have paid accounts with more features (such as the ability to add voice-overs and video to your pop up books) but the free account was perfect for what I wanted to accomplish.  The free account allows you to add pictures, add writing for the overall page, and add captions for the pictures.  I loved this idea for English Language Learners because the pictures can serve as scaffolds to comprehension when there are unfamiliar vocabulary words.

I created a model book to show the class and in the presentation I showed the class how to add pictures and writing.  You can view a model by clicking here.  

The other options that are available with the paid accounts include storycodes which let you print a QR code that you can attach to a physical object and then someone can scan it and look at the book. This would be a good way to show the work to parents, provided the parents have a smart phone.

I think this technology would be great to use with a computer literate students so they can create there own zoobooks, or for teachers to use to create advanced organizers for lesson plans and units.