Week 5 1/2 - Tool Group 4 - ZooBurst

ZooBurst is an interactive online teaching and learning tool that is aimed at primary and early education students. ZooBurst can be used by both students and educators and offers a diverse range of presentation options such as simply telling a story or writing a book. This education tool has interactive features, therefore the potential for a high level of participation and engagement with the students. I believe the website would be a valuable tool for students above year five as I found the navigation of the site to be more complex then would be the expected capability of an eight year old. Therefore it would be a great activity that the class could work through together to create the desired presentation. Bellow year five though, ZooBurst would be a great presentation tool that can be viewed rather than the created by the individual learners.

Just one of the interactive features that ZooBurst offers is the option of using a webcam. This can be an exciting feature for users of all ages, by simply holding a “special” symbol up to the webcam, the characters “pop-up” into the room around them. This augmented reality feature can also be used in a simpler form of merely waving an arm in the air in front of the camera to turn the books page. https://edshelf.com/tool/zooburst. Another great feature about ZooBurst is that it is able to be embedded into a blog, website or wiki. This allows authors to include their own contextual framework, so the viewers don’t have to acquire all new information from the pop-up book animation but rather use the information already provided from the particular site.

I fell as though ZooBurst is a valuable learning tool that should be utilised within the classroom as an inclusive group activity rather than an independent activity, as I struggled with the building process and the navigation of using the site. Apart from it not being as intuitive as other educational tools, I found it to be a creative, useful tool none the less.

My example of a ZooBurst can be found on my Wiki page: http://thundagettin.wikispaces.com/