Our final presentation project in Web 2.0 is to market a educational web tool to the class. We need to explain why Eastland should use it, how it can be implemented, and why this tool is better than other tools like it. To begin the project, I first evaluated five mind mapping tools. I chose to evaluate Mind42, Mind Genius, Mind Meister, Mindomo, Spider Scribe, and Wise Mapping. I decided to use Spider Scribe because the tool allowed me to upload my own pictures, maps, and word documents to the mind map and also post a calendar so I knew when all of the project due dates were. I posted all of my tool reviews on it, but it was a big waste of time. I never used them! I out lined the main points of what I wanted to talk about during my presentation. Doing this was helpful, but it is a lot faster to just write it down on paper. I used the mind map most for brainstorming ideas for what tools I could use to make my project and how to use them.

I also used Symbaloo to keep track of all of my research sites, flashcard tools, mind mapping tools, and the six tools that I needed to use in my presentation. This was very helpful because it kept all my sites together in one spot and I never had to worry about losing a paper list or my computer crashing and losing a virtual sticky-note with all of my web sites. After I was done with the project and needed to complete my work cited page, Symbaloo made it fast and easy to get all the sites I had looked and cite them with Easybib.

         During the mind mapping process, I decided that I wanted to market some kind of flashcard study tool to the class. I found many different flashcard tools online, and chose five to evaluate. I spent hours looking through Quizlet, Study Blue, Ediscio, Cramberry, and Study Stack. I found Quizlet to be the best because it has a mobile app and several game modes that make studying fun. You can put audio, pictures, and words on each note card to help both the audio and visual parts of your brain learn the information you are studying.  After learning the words in the simple learn mode, the game modes really help make the information stick in your brain. This helps ensure that students don’t sit down to take a test to find they can hardly remember their name let alone the definition of bibliophile, gregarious, euphemism and thirty Latin roots. There are thousands of Quizlet users who have posted comments about how Quizlet has helped them get better grades in all of their classes from art and the way to their math class. My favorite part of Quizlet is the app. Finally, a way to take your flashcards with you without worrying about dropping them on the ground and playing one hundred seventy-two card pick up. You can study on the bus, while waiting in line for lunch, and walking down the hall to your classes. Teachers love the tool because their students love using and studying with the tool. It also can make teachers’ lives a little easier because it they can use the testing feature to quiz their students on vocabulary words and Quizlet will grade the quiz for them! Teachers can also use the big flashcard sets on the homepage as a way to introduce new  vocabulary to the class in an interactive way.

            After I found the exact tool I wanted to present to the class, chose several web tools that I have learned how to use over the past semester to create a presentation. For the main presentation part I chose to use Prezi. I hadn’t used Prezi before, but several people in my class recommended it for this kind of presentation, so I thought I would give it a try. It is a really neat tool that has a back ground picture that you can zoom in on to find more information. In a way it is like a huge one page PowerPoint that you zoom in on to show the details of the big picture. Then I used the other web tools that I had already used to make the Prezi even better.

 I created an infographic with Infogram that compares the different features of the different flashcard tools to show why Quizlet is the best flashcard tool available. Then I uploaded it right to my Prezi. I thought the infographic would be perfect for this because it would allow the audience to see what I’m saying in a graph form rather than me just saying that Quizlet has more and better features than the other tools. I didn’t use Infogram for the infographic unit because it didn’t have the template that I wanted, but this time I found a graph that presented the information I needed it to in the way that I wanted it to. It was really easy to make too. I simply chose a color scheme, clicked the graph and filled in all the information. The hardest part was going through all five of the infographic tools that I reviewed to find a template that would work for my project.

Next I made a Wordle with different features, games, and uses that Quizlet has. I uploaded it with no problems. I chose to do a Wordle because they look so cool! It will give my audience something interesting to be looking at that relates directly to what I am saying so they don’t zone out completely during my presentation. They are also really easy to make. I just type in the words, and clicked randomize until the perfect color combination and word arrangement popped up.

The biggest issue that I ran into with Prezi was that I couldn’t embed a link to another web site into the presentation. This was frustrating because I want to show some of the games Quizlet has to the class and talk about how they can be implemented into high school curriculum. I will need to have a tab with the Quizlet site already up when I go to present to the class. It also took me a while to understand how to link all of the stations of my Prezi together in the order I wanted to talk about them in. Some times that link would break when I moved something around and then I would have to rewire the whole presentation. Eventually I got the hang of it, but not after I made my hands sore from using the undo button so much! I would definitely use Prezi again though. I think it is a very nice tool that creates really neat presentations.