BP4-Web 2.0 Tools

Big Universe is a great tool that can be used in classrooms from PK-8 grades.  Parents can also purchase it for their own personal use at home .  You can sign up for the 14 day trail to see if you would like to purchase it.  It gives you the option to try out the product before you agree to purchase.  I think that is a great marketing ploy because sometimes you may purchase something because it looks good and then you realize it did not meet your expectations.  I have signed up for the 14 day trail because I want more practice and I want to explore further before I divulge into it.  As soon as I saw this tool I said yes this can be useful for me and my students.  Now I am going to explore the various ways that I can personalize this tool for me.

I love that you can use this tool in other subjects not just language arts.  This tool offers various fiction and non- fiction books that you can use as a teaching tool or just have the students go on line and read themselves.  This tool also allows you to integrate across the curriculum.  Wonderful!  That is what makes it so cool.  Time is so precious and we need to make the most out of our learning opportunities.  This tool will help in this way.

These are a few books that are available in Big Universe.  This will allow you the opportunity to explore more books if you do not have them in your personal or class libraries.  When planning your lessons you can look to see if they have the resource that you require for your lesson and you can share the book on your smart board etc.  This will also give the students an opportunity to reread the book if they like.  This will be beneficial because most times we only have one copy and everyone can not read it at the same time.  This tool will allow teachers and students to read it as a group or when they just have the desire to read it. They  will  not have to worry about whether someone else will be using it.

I love this part of the tool because the students can publish some of their own stories.  They can also use the tools provided to create their own story.  They have illustrations, backgrounds and various elements to assist you with creating your own book.  You do not have to create your own graphics if you do not wish to but it does give you the option to import your graphics if you wish.  The students will feel proud of their accomplishments once they have created their own books.  At the end of the exercise you can have an authors party to celebrate your students successes.  I think that this tool will also be an inspiration to those students who do not really like to write.  This will give them the tools they need and they will arrange them in the manner that they will like to use them.

This screen shot is just explaining the benefits and advantages for investing in the Big Universe Website.  I think that eventually I will purchase the membership because through my exploration of the tool, I can see various ways it would be useful for me and my students.  I did not create a writing piece because I wanted to use a specific piece of work that I did not have available at this time.  My class did a shared writing piece on our school science fair and I would have love to share the book on this website unfortunately, I do not have it at home.  I am going to use this tool to publish the book and I plan to send it to our local newspaper because they came to take pictures and they have asked us to share a writing assignment on it.  That is how I plan to use it at this time.  I am also planning to use some of the books provided for my science, social studies, math and language classes.  I will use the books as teaching tools and also for the students to research information and pleasure reading.  We are currently working on non fiction so this would allow the students to read up on some information about the topic of their interest. Most of the children in my grade level like to find out information about our sea animals/mammals  such as sharks, whales etc.  These books are available in this tool.  I am so excited that I was able to find out about this tool and I can't wait to implement it with my students.