A Trip to the Zoo

    Last week, Mrs. Frederick began a unit on the zoo.  The zoo has hundreds of different species of animals.  Most of the animals at the zoo we do not come into contact with every day.  The University of North Alabama has two lions on campus, so this provides children with one example of a zoo animal.  We began to create Doodlecast presentations on what we knew about the different animals.  The children knew a lot of valuable information about many animals.  I began to notice that most of the information consisted of "I love...", "I like...", or "You should also like..." instead of facts.  I quickly looked up an app on the zoo and zoo animals.  The first one to pop up was called Pocket Zoo.  Pocket Zoo is by far my favorite app that we have used so far.  The front page is a map much like on you would see at a zoo.  The different animals are all over the map.  Once you click on the animal, it opens up a page about that animal.  When you click on the animal, it makes the real noise that the animal makes.  There are facts below the animal and on the side that are great for learning about the animal.  There are tabs at the top that can be clicked.  The next tab beside the one that shows the animal shows different educational YouTube videos.  This prevents the children from having to actually go onto YouTube to look up videos.  Sometimes the videos on the actual site are appropriate, but the ones on the side frame are not.  This app provides only pre-chosen educational videos on each animal.  The last tab is my favorite part.  It shows live feed from different cameras at zoos across the world.  Children can watch zebras, whales, tigers, meerkats, and many other animals live on camera.  The children were ecstatic to play with this app.  I would recommend the app to anyone and everyone.  Once the children learn more about the animals, we will use this information to create Doodlecasts about them.