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Teacher Review for TheBlu

Great visual representations, but offers an extremely limited opportunity for learning to occur.

Matt H.
 Instructional Technology Integrator
North Allegheny School District
Pittsburgh, United States
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My Grades K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
My Subjects English Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies
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My Rating
Learning Scores
Engagement
Pedagogy
Support
My Students Liked It No
My Students Learned No
I Would Recommend It No
Setup Time Less than 5 minutes
Great for Individual
Small group
Student-driven work
How I Use It
When learning about oceans and creatures that live in the ocean habitat, this product is a good tool to visually represent the environment. Filled with great graphics of ocean life, students are initially engaged with this product. However, there is no real opportunity for learning to occur. It is very difficult for students to manipulate through the ocean environment. Additionally, when students click on a specific animal, there is little-to-no information that is provided. This tool did work by getting students interested with dynamic graphics. However, students quickly lost interest with the lack of user support, limited educational information provided, and no set goals or directions to accomplish.
My Take
Overall, I believe that this program could be used as an instructional tool to support a lesson or learning activity. However, I would not focus my lesson or activity around the use of this tool. For example, when talking about oceans, I would use TheBlu as a visual representation of what animals/habitats look like. I would do this because the program does provide nice graphic visual representations that will capture the attention of students. However, this interest will soon be lost if students are required to use the program themselves. Ultimately, this tool serves the purpose of a virtual field trip to the oceans, with little or no learning opportunities provided for students.