Zooburst

Week 6 - Engagement Activity 12

 

Reflection on Zooburst

I had a lot of fun experimenting with Zooburst, and creating my own pop-up book, which you can view below. It is better to expand the screen to full-size, to be able to read the page and character captions. The character captions are accessed by clicking on the exclamation marks over the top of the pictures.

I can see Zooburst being an excellent resource to employ within the early childhood education setting. Teachers can use this tool to create simple books on any topic, from introducing beginning sounds and early numeracy skills to explaining scientific phenomena that take the children's interest. In addition, it would make an excellent collaborative tool to engage young children in creating a class story, that can be created one page at a time and built upon as much as the children would like, or for as long as they remain interested - before they decide to begin another story, that is!

This is such a simple tool to use, and the results can be seen within such a short time that it is sure to maintain the interest of young children. In fact, pages can be as elaborate or as simple as you or they choose. This being the case, it would be an excellent tool through which to introduce basic computing skills to children in early childhood settings. Although they would need adult assistance to spell the words to search for pictures either within the clip art file supplied, or through uploading images, they themselves could use the mouse to maneuvre and position pictures, change the angles and sizes of pictures, and the timing of the pop-ups. There really isn't any way to go wrong with these simple tasks, and the result will always be quite effective.

The ways an early childhood teacher could use Zooburst to create teaching and learning resources is only as limited as their imagination. Why not try creating a page of 'farm animals', with one or two misplaced 'zoo animals', and then ask the children to identify the odd ones out? The answer could be on the following page ... which could then lead onto another page of 'zoo animals'. On this page, there might be a few misplaced domestic 'pets' for the children to identify as the odd ones out ... and, of course, this would lead onto a page of 'pets', and so forth.  There are many such simple classification / categorisation tasks that could be created in this way (e.g. fruits and vegetables, hot and cold, healthy and unhealthy, living and non-living, warm-blooded and cold-blooded and so on), and the beauty of Zooburst is that it is so quick to create a book - and, it already has many pictures available for use. 

In addition, audio tracks can be added to books. This would be great for stories the children create themselves, or for books of favourite songs and rhymes, or for identifying sounds. You might have a series of pictures and sounds on consecutive pages, some matching and some not. For example, a page may display a picture of a telephone with the sound of an alarm clock. You would then ask the children if the sound matches the picture. If not, on the next page you might display the same object (the telephone), with the numbers 1,2, and 3 on the page, attach sounds to the numbers, and ask the children to choose the correct sound. Or, you might have a number of alternative items on the next page (e.g. a toaster, an alarm clock and a small bell), from which the children can choose the item that really matches the sound. This is rather a simple example, but there are many more challenging objects and sounds to choose from, depending on the children's level of development. 

And so, Zooburst can be used by teachers and students. It can be used as a creative story book, as an interactive educational book to explore factual information, or as an interactive and educational activity book, among many other fun and engaging applications. As previously stated, the uses for Zooburst are only as limited as the imagination. I believe this is one of the best and simplest tools for presenting a variety of educational material to early childhood students, with both visual and auditory input and cues to stimulate sensory experiences and intellectual development. It's fun, engaging and creative! It can be used for all key learning areas, as well as for the development of basic concepts and understandings learned during the very early childhood years. I don't think young children would grow tired of this tool in a hurry, especially if they are allowed to play with it and create books and activities of their own - for themselves and their friends, and perhaps even for their teacher?!