5 - The Last Tute Continued - and www.buildyourwildself.com

ANOTHER FANTASTIC WEBSITE TO ASSIST WITH CREATING
A CREATIVE PRIMARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM

Our last lesson for ICT was extremely enjoyable and such a rewarding experience. We were introduced to so many websites for creating animations and encouraging us to be creative in the classroom using ICT rather than traditional methods. Although some sites were not appropriate for usage in a Primary Classroom they were still fun to use and made me understand that not everyhting on the Internet is appropriate for children to use even though it may seem harmless. As a teacher when planning a lesson incorporating the use of the Internet it's a good idea to use the website yourself first before allowing students to use it in your classroom.

The final website I would like to discuss that we visited, was a great one to encourage children to be artisitic, but also introduces them to many different types of animal species. The url address is http://www.buildyourwildself.com/. This is an American site sponsored by the American Wildlife Conservatory Society & the New York Zoos and Aquarium. The site allows children to create a half human/half animal male or female character by allowing them to select various features such as - eyes, mouth, clothes, ears, arms/wings, face, tails, skin tone and even backround (i.e the ocean, the sky etc.)

After creating a character and clicking 'I'm done', students will receive a name for their character automatically created by the site. This page will also show a list of the features chosen for the students character and a description of the animal that the features are from. For example my made up character is featured below. Her name is Angelique the pea- bat-ingo - ondor - bird and her head gear is from a Peacock crest and Chilean Flamingo legs!

This is a great site to use in English, Art Class or even Science Class.
In English class it can be used to create new characters in a narrative story to write about and encourages children to use their imagination.

In Art Class children could come up with their own character and then complete a sketch of it for a class Art display.

In Science students can use the website to learn about specific animal features.

Again I used my children as guinea pigs and they loved this website. They loved the sound effects too as you change the background for your character. For example the jungle background has a mosquito zooming in the air and the actual sound a mosquito makes too.

This semster of ICT was fabulous and I look forward to using these technologies in my classroom, who knows I may even use them during teaching rounds.