Welcome to NCS-Tech!

Good morning all!

Today’s featured site comes to us by way of Angela Maiers (thanks to a Tweet by Ann Oro) and it’s called Shidonni.com. It’s a fascinating website that lets you draw, animate and interact with your own critters! Here’s a shot of the main screen. Each ‘planet’ in the galaxy is a different activity:

The user interface is pretty simple, I was able to figure it out in a few minutes, and come up with a basic (and quite scary) rendition of our dearly departed family cat, Misty:

My artistic limitations aside, the neat part about Shidonni.com is that once you create the critter, it’s magically animated for you! You can choose between a walking creature (above) or one that flies, and the program does the rest!

Once your critter is created, you can create backgrounds, ‘feed’ your pet, put it in a vehicle, ‘play’ with it (there’s a fun ‘Chutes and Ladders’ game), publish it for others to see, and more.

The site requires free registration and requests an email address but I had no problem creating an account with a bogus address. If you are using this in a classroom you’ll probably want to create the student accounts in advance. Note that critters created in each account are persistent to be sure students name them in a way that identifies them easily!

The site did take a while to load but that must be due to the heavy use of Flash. There is a detailed help system. I did find it somewhat difficult to draw with, but that might just be my middle-aged hands and failing eyesight! That said, I see the site being best suited for upper elementary, perhaps even middle school students. The youngest learners may struggle with some of the controls, but that’s just a hunch.

This site is very unique and deserves a look. Let your students use it and see what they come up with! I predict they will immediately find their way around the site and begin creating detailed, wonderful creatures with rich environmental details and supporting story lines. This really seems like a site that can capture a student’s imagination for some time! Check out Shidonni.com today!

Hope this helps!

-kj-