Each week I tweet several links to new tools I find through the blogs I subscribe to and read! Often, other members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) will also find these links and provide examples. The best way to share these cool tools, lesson plans, and materials is to post them in a weekly series! If you enjoy this new series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your PLN through your RSS reader or Delicious account.
Multimedia Sites
Made up Memories is a site for students to insert their photos into several video adventures. Students choose an adventure such as skydiving, starring in a fairytale, or being a superhero! Mary Beth Hertz was super cool to help me out by creating a skydiving video! Students could create stories about these adventures and post them in a blog or wiki. This site is also very easy for English language users.
My Movie Moment, which I learned about from Ozge Karaoglu, the links queen on Twitter, works the same way with students inserting their photos. However, students get to choose from a variety of video clips from famous movies. Several of the movies they may have never watched and many are not PG so you have to use careful filtering with this site.
Earth Touch provides hi-definition video documentaries of nature. Think of this as the Discover Channel in your classroom!
Build a Jam will let you create and edit music collaboratively. Students sign-up for free and create a band. Then they upload mp3 files created on Audacity or Garageband. This web site could be used to create original music for podcasts, videos, or web sites. However, the teacher has limited possibilities of monitoring which music the student listens to and this could be a problem.
Literacy Sites
Pan Raven is a free site for creating digital stories. Students can use video, music, photographs, and text to create books or stories! Furthermore, the site offers photo editing tools and ways to share the story in a blog! This is another great site for English language learners. Check out Kaleigh Irwin’s Sixth Grade Summer Vacation digital story below!
Storybird is another site that offers students a way to create collaborative digital stories. To find out more information on this tool check out these blog posts. I recommend subscribing to these blogs like I have!
- David Kapular‘s post with a video of how Storybird works.
- Kelly Tenkely‘s post that gives you ideas on how to integrate Storyboard in your classroom.
- Larry Ferlazzo’s post Use Storybird To Create A Story
- Read Write Web‘s very detailed post with examples Storybird: A Family-Friendly Storytelling Tool
Read Print is a library of free online books and poetry for students and teachers.
Challenge:
Use one of these sites to improve a project for the school year!
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Shelly,
I always like your “What did they tweet?” series!! You really find great tweets that I’ve missed. Thanks for sharing with us.
MadeUpMemories has become my favourite,how did I miss that!!!
Great read,
Thank you =)
Another great post, Shelly!
Am really loving this series! I discover so many useful and interesting links through your blog that would have otherwise passed me by!
Thanks for sharing them, & keep ‘em coming
Sue and Ozge,
You two are very supportive and wonderful! You truly are gems! Thanks for the comments. I’m hoping to get Ozge to do a series on links as well because she finds so many great ones!
I am a children’s author and video maker currently producing a new series for children titled MEET ME AT THE CORNER. This series of virtual field trips is being distributed over the Internet as video pod casts on our web site http://www.meetmeatthecorner.org
Directed at America’s school children, each show explores the world and its wonders from a child’s point of view. During each video pod cast a child host serves as tour guide, leading the viewer to historic and cultural sites. Each show includes a suggested reading list and a Learning Corner of follow-up activities for school children ages eight to twelve.
Our new episode features an interview a woman who is raising a puppy for Canine Companions for Independence. Would you consider reviewing MEET ME AT THE CORNER, Virtual Field Trips for Kids for your readers?
Donna W. Guthrie
Donna,
Thank you for sharing the web site. My sister lives in Oceanside where the dogs go. Contact me via the contact page and we can set up an interview!
Great site and post! My most recent favorite tool is xtranormal! The students instantly took to the site and have wanted to use it with everything we’re doing – from booktalks in reading to presentations in social studies.
Keep up the great work!
-Mr. Lund
Daniel,
Thank you for sharing! I think xtranormal is a great tool! Feel free to share any video examples with us.