TeachersFirst - Featured Sites: Week of Oct 27, 2019
Here are this week's features. Clicking the tags in the description area of each listing will present a list of other resources with this topic. | Click here to return to the Featured Sites Archive
OK2Ask: Digital Storytelling 101 - TeachersFirst
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): digital storytelling (147), professional development (196)
In the Classroom
The archive of this teacher-friendly, hands-on webinar will empower and inspire you to use learning technology in the classroom and for professional productivity. As appropriate, specific classroom examples and ideas have been shared. View the session with a few of your teaching colleagues to find and share new ideas. Find additional information and links to tools at the session resource page. Learn more about OK2Ask and upcoming sessions here.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Elementari - Nicole Kang and David Li
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): creative writing (162), digital storytelling (147), writing (364)
In the Classroom
Offer students the option to share their writing using Elementari by adding illustrations and sounds. From the home page find the upload button at the top of the page. Upload up to 10 5mb images and 10 mb audio files. Create stories together, as a class, as you move through a unit or topic. Enhance student learning by adding images and ideas your students suggest. Use in a flipped or blended classroom to deliver course information. Assign several student groups a different topic and extend their learning by having each group create their own version as they learn more about the topic. Challenge gifted students to modify the "standard" class text with the additional material they discover, by going deeper and learning about related topics. In lower grades, create teacher-made digital stories for students to use as a learning tool.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Adobe Spark in K-12 - Adobe
Grades
K to 12tag(s): blogs (77), creative writing (162), multimedia (52), posters (42), video (266)
In the Classroom
Use Spark for Education to create videos of student presentations for any subject. Create videos of images taken during science experiments and class field trips to share on your website. Modify student learning by asking students to create infographics explaining facts and information about states, countries, planets, and more. Have students create interactive posters, book report covers, invitations, and flyers to promote school events. Spark offers many possibilities for graphics and redefining student learning by having students create multimedia presentations in all classrooms.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Color, Draw & Paint - ABCya!
Grades
K to 4tag(s): digital storytelling (147), drawing (74), painting (62), preK (281)
In the Classroom
Share how to use this site on an interactive whiteboard or with a projector then allow students to explore on their own. Have students create drawings to demonstrate math problems, share science experiments, or draw scenes from a story. Include students' drawings in a digital portfolio like Seesaw, reviewed here. Seesaw offers tools for uploading images and creating an audio recording to share their reflections on their work.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Digital Storytelling Resources - TeachersFirst
Grades
K to 12tag(s): digital storytelling (147), writing (364)
In the Classroom
Find an abundance of digital writing tools to use in your classroom. Share sites on your interactive whiteboard. Challenge students to create their own projects using tools on this list. Rather than a unit test, have students create a book demonstrating their understanding of concepts. Bring out creativity with these engaging tools!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Book Creator - Red Jumper Limited
Grades
K to 12tag(s): collaboration (55), digital storytelling (147), ebooks (33), preK (281), reading comprehension (131), writing (364)
In the Classroom
Create books together, as a class, as you move through a unit or topic. Enhance student learning by adding images and ideas your students suggest. Use in a flipped classroom to deliver course information. Assign several student groups a different topic and redefine their learning by having each group create their own multimedia versions as they learn more about the topic. Students can combine their books later as a class book. Make a digital bookshelf of all the versions for all to use. Challenge gifted students to modify the "standard" class text with the additional material they discover, by going deeper and learning about related topics. In lower grades, create teacher-made e-books for your young readers, perhaps adding audio - your own voice reading the text.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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WriteReader - Children As Creators - WriteReader
Grades
K to 5tag(s): digital storytelling (147), reading strategies (58), writing (364)
In the Classroom
WriteReader is so simple very young students can use it successfully after a demonstration using a whiteboard or projector. While creating their books students will be able to add images, multiple pages and delete pages, include voice-over, use color on the pages, view one page at a time or the entire book, and toggle between letters' names/sounds or no audio. Use this tool to design simple projects using student drawings to tell the story. At the beginning of the year have students draw and annotate stories to tell about their summer and share with classmates. Students of any age love to draw, so why not have them draw their impression of what the message to the reader was after hearing a story and then explain it in writing? ESL/ELL students especially will benefit from hearing the letter sounds as they are beginning to write in their new language.Edge Features:
Includes an education-only area for teachers and students
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
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Tolks - tolks.io
Grades
K to 12tag(s): digital storytelling (147)
In the Classroom
For younger students, consider creating a class account for Tolks. Have students create Tolks to discuss literature, such as a conversation between characters or descriptions of feelings. Create Tolks to share on an interactive whiteboard or projector as lesson starters or display at the end of a lesson with characters discussing essential information from a lesson. Upload images of shapes and have students compare and contrast features. World language students can create simple conversations in the language they are learning or label pictures for vocabulary. You will find many uses for Tolks in your classroom! Counselors may want to have students create a Tolk to share information that may be difficult to discuss in person. Of course, be very careful not to share private information.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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WordsEye - WordsEye
Grades
K to 12tag(s): digital storytelling (147), images (272)
In the Classroom
Turn on your students' creative side with WordsEye! There are SO many ways to use WordsEye in classrooms: ESL/ELL students can create sentences, and correct them if the image doesn't look correct. Have ESL/ELL and world language students set up their own visual dictionary. Challenge students to create images and then use them with the class as a writing prompt. Tell them they have to create a story, not try to recreate the sentence that produced the image. Show your students how to embed media transforming their work into a true digital story using a multimedia presentation about class content with their created images and sentences and UtellStory, reviewed here. Digital storytellers can use the 3D images for the reader to see what is happening in the story. Alternatively, they can upload their image to Thinglink, reviewed here, and tell the story around the image. Share the link for this tool with your school's art teacher as an excellent tool for use with art projects, and post the link on your website for students to use at home. Since registration is via email, for young students consider using a "class set" of Gmail subaccounts, explained here; this tells how to configure Gmail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Using Gmail subaccounts will provide anonymous interaction within your class.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Odyssey - CartoDB
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): digital storytelling (147), gamification (82), images (272), interactive stories (31), maps (296)
In the Classroom
Most users will find a bit of a learning curve to working with Odyssey, click on the three bars on the left top of the home page to find the Quick Start Guide tutorial for using the site. Share this site with tech-savvy students so that they can become experts and help others become familiar with using the site. Use Odyssey for creating map-based stories based on works of literature, important events in history, or mapping scientific discoveries. Odyssey is perfect for use with gifted students when creating multimedia presentations.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Add Text - FlamingText.com Pty Ltd.
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): creativity (115), DAT device agnostic tool (169), digital storytelling (147), editing (79), images (272)
In the Classroom
Use Add Text to add captions to images to create memes or posters for your bulletin boards. Use this easy tool with students during back to school time as a way for them to get to know each other. Have students upload a picture of themselves doing their favorite activity and label it with amusing text or a favorite quote (or song lyrics?). Have them upload images that represent their interests and character traits. Print the images with text for a back to school bulletin board. Use after a field trip for students to write captions on the photos they took. Be sure to share the photos on your class webpage, blog, or wiki. Haven't started blogging yet? Check out TeachersFirst's Blog Basics. For other uses, have students practice new words in a world language class by labeling and identifying images in that language. Help ESL/ELL learn English by labeling the images. Create writing prompts using several annotated images. Have students create annotated images to explain key terms in science class. In ELA class, make homophone or vocabulary images to show the correct word along with a picture that explains it.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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My Storybook - myStorybook.com
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): digital storytelling (147), writing (364)
In the Classroom
Show students creation possibilities by viewing a few of the books from the library using a projector or interactive whiteboard. Create a class book to begin. Start with a storyboard. If you usually do this with pen and paper, replace these and use an online tool such as SuperNotecard, reviewed here. Using a storyboard and My Storybook is an effective way to teach students about story elements, dialogue, character development, and more. World language classes can label images, or tell a story in the language they are learning. Work together to complete biographies of famous people. Challenge students to tell the story of different famous events in history or explain their understanding of cell division using My Storybook. Art students can create a story around their artwork. Autistic or emotional support teachers can create stories demonstrating interpersonal behavior skills. Digital storytelling is an amazing way for students to internalize any subject or concept. It also is an excellent assessment tool.Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Products can be shared by URL
Comments
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Story Maker - ABCya
Grades
K to 6This site includes advertising.
tag(s): digital storytelling (147), drawing (74), writing (364)
In the Classroom
Story Maker is so simple very young students can use it successfully after a demonstration using a whiteboard or projector. Use this tool to design simple projects using student drawings to tell the story. At the beginning of the year have students draw and annotate stories to tell about their summer and share with classmates. Students of any age love to draw, so why not expand their learning by having them draw their impression of a message to the reader from a story and then explain it in writing on Story Maker?Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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100 Word Challenge - J. Skinner
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): blogs (77), digital storytelling (147)
In the Classroom
Share the weekly prompts on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Replace paper and pencil writing journals and have students respond to the prompt on your classroom blog. If you teach younger students or resource students, you may want to apply to the 5 Sentence Challenge, instead of the 100 Word Challenge. They are both available at the same URL. The benefits of participating in a blog like this go beyond just writing. Submitting your students' writing to either of these Challenge blogs will provide the all-important publish piece that students need in order to feel accomplished and to do their best. They can also build cultural understanding through reading the responses from others to the same prompt. If you would like your students to write their blogs more than once a week, you might want to visit Thought Questions, reviewed here.Edge Features:
Includes an education-only area for teachers and students
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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