Sharing Information
“How many readers and audience members does your average student write for in their years in K-12 school? (and what can be done to make that number bigger?)”
Digital Storytelling
Storytelling
Storytelling Lesson Plans and Rubrics
Digital storytelling is....
Seven Steps for Digital Storytelling
Our students are ready to read and write information beyond words — to use the media technologies of our era for effective communication. Here are the steps that will help them do it.
Digital StoryTelling Tools
Powerful and Engaging K - 12 Projects with VoiceThread
VoiceThread - A school-wide project - excellent instructions on how to up a VoiceThread with several identities.
VoiceThread in the Classroom - A great SWOT analysis of the tool along with suggestions for use in the classroom. Some examples also provided.
VoiceThread and Comic Life - the Curriculum Consultants from the Living Sky School Division explain a joint project with a grade 2 class using Comic Life.
VoiceThread for Education - a wiki full of examples from K - College
Using VoiceThread for Digital Conversations - Everything you could ever want to know about VoiceThread - with excellent examples.
Video
Make Internet TV - This guide has step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing online videos that can be watched and subscribed to by millions of people.
Video in the Classroom - digital storytelling in the elementary grades... and beyond!
Cartoon and Comic Book Tools
Comiqs - a wonderful easy to use online comic generators
More Comic Creators from Stephen's Lighthouse
More Tools
Alan Levine's 50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story
School-based Professional Development
Bready School Staff Development: Digital Storytelling Using a Variety of Tools
Blogging
About Blogging
Using Blogs to support authentic learning in the classroom - a immense collection of resources for those educators wishing to learn more about blogging for themselves and/or their students. This collection includes links on the following:
- Educational Rationale for and Pedagogy of Blogging
- Student Safety and Responsible Blogging
- Evaluating Blogs - Rubrics
- Classroom-created Blogs/Student-created Blogs
- Blog Add-ins/Widgets - Items that can be added to student blogs
Go Ahead and Blog; The Experts Would Approve: Blogging technology allows people to become active participants in the Web and create interesting and functional sites rather than passively engaging in other people's information.
Blog2Learn an extensive wiki collection of resources, articles and professional development activities. From Anne, "I have found that blogs help us move away from thinking of writing as a 5 paragraph essay or a set of steps to move students through. Blogs give us an avenue to teach writing (blogging) as a cluster of complex thinking and writing behaviors that provide ownership to the student and the possibility of getting a multitude of responses from others". The page on significant comments will be of particular use to teachers who have started blogging with their students but want to encourage them to make well articulated, thoughtful comments.
Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours? This blog post emphasis that blogging is not just about writing words but about holding conversations. The author suggest five ways to write great blog posts and creating and participating in meaningful online conversatons.
Blogging Platforms
- Edublogs
- How to set up a class blog on Edublogs or Learner Blogs
- Students as contributors on Edublogs: The Quick and Easy Way - learn how to use the power of linked-in gmail accounts to create a short cut for making individual contributing authors in Edublogs.
- The Edublogger Blog - a great place for tips about using Edublogs including embedding video and subscribing to blogs with rss.
- ClassBlogmeister
- How to set up a classroom blog using Class Blogmeister: Initial Setup - step-by-step instructions from Vicki Davis
- WordPress
- Blogger
Evaluating Blogs from David Warlick
Assessing Blog Posts from Will Richardson
Collaborative Writing: Wikis
About Wikis
Wiki's Make Learning Wicked Fun - From Tech Learning - Wikis now give a venue for virtually anyone to collaborate on line.
Wikis in the Classroom
Collaborating, Writing, Linking: Using Wikis to Tell Stories Online : a lesson from Read Write Think
Lesson Overview:
When students read online, they engage with text differently. Clicking on links and images for more information easily takes them down unexpected paths, links to e-mail addresses allow them to interact with authors, and wikis allow them to make changes to published text. This lesson, which can also be used in high school classrooms, has students create stories that reflect this kind of reading. Students begin by reading untraditional books that use fragmented storylines, multiple perspectives, and unresolved plots. They apply these same types of strategies to their own writing, which they then publish using wiki technology. In doing so, students practice important literacy skills including searching for information, integrating images into text, and creating storylines that are reflective of the new types of reading found on the Internet.
Wikified class notes
Wikis, it turns out, are very good at establishing this sort of document. Someone starts by uploading their notes, and subsequent students can expand, revise, delete, re-arrange, or otherwise improve the version, until it reflects something like consensus about the day’s class. Further, the page can be updated throughout the semester, as later class periods interact with earlier ones.
Global Collaboration
Beyond Global Collaborative “Units,” on to Real PLN’s: Podcast with Chris Craft and Clay Burell - they explore the concept of 'quick in - quick out'. 15 minutes... spontaneous... two different hemispheres.
From: Sharon Peters
Online Writing Tools
Online word processing applications not only enable students to work from anywhere at anytime but allows for collaborative document building.
Four Web 2.0 Collaborative Writing Tools : Reviews and a comparison of Google Docs, Zoho Writer, WriteBoard and ThinkFree Online
BuzzWord - handles formatting better than Google Docs.
- Introduction (screencast)
- Formatting (screencast)
- Google Docs A Focus on Documents: A series of video tutorials from Atomic Learning
- How to Use Google Documents: A video series
- Marking Work in Google Docs - an excellent blog post which provides answers to these questions: What is the best way to give feedback on a piece of work produced in Google Docs? What formatting tools are most appropriate to use when leaving comments? How do you organise 30 to 60 pieces of work handed in to you? How do children hand in work? What new possibilities does this process uncover?
Creating a Google Account - you will need an account to use Google Applications. This screencast will explain how to get a Google Account.
PodCasting
Podcasting 101 - a great introduction wiki
A screencast by injenuity that describes how to create a quick podcast in audacity, edit, export as an MP3, upload it to Podbean and share it with others.
Podcasting Resources from the Share More! Wiki by Miguel Ghulin - a great collection of resources, about podcasting, tools for creating podcasts, hosting sites and guidelines.
PowerPoint Reform
70+ PowerPoint and Presentation Resources and Great Examples
PowerPoint Reform - Joyce Valenza article and links
Example: Identity 2.0 a Presentation by Dick Hardt (15:11) - an excellent example of a clean, crisp presentation in which images and text are used to support the talk.
Talk Good: Giving Effective Presentations - ten links on how to give effective presentations.
Dodging Bullets in Presentations: a humorous but effective presentation on how to create effective slides presentations.
Online Slide Shows
SlideShare - a place to store and share your slide presentations
ShowBeyond - a multimedia slidecast creator, online publishing platform and story sharing community.
Online Slide Shows - a blog post annotating for Web 2.0 online slide shows
Video
Izzy Video #79: How to Improve Your Online Video
How to use YouTube in Education (pdf 5 pages) - an excellent overview of all aspects of YouTube