Friday, August 19, 2011

Week 8 Thing 21

I previewed the digital storytelling site called storybird, but didn't find it to my liking.  Unfortunatley, I didn't even know where to begin.  So, I was pleased to see that Goanimate said easy to make in minutes!  Anything fast is for me, because I lead a fast paced life in the classroom.  Don't waste your time trying to create your own template.  Use one of theirs like the wildlife characters.  My third grade team decided to use a cloze style type of poem with our students on the first day of school.  I thought it would be fun to create my own using this Goanimate.  Check it out,  I think my students will love it!

GoAnimate.com: A good friend by Rightstuff

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Week 8 Thing 20

Digital storytelling is so much easier to create with animoto.com than photostories.  Nowadays they can be shared among teachers without the fear of photographs not being "zipped" properly.  One of the ways I used digital storytelling in my class was to create science presentations.  I uploaded pictures from Pics4learning and used my own voice to share key concepts with my class.  It was amusing to see how entraced my students were with hearing my voice on the audio.  A perk was that the students could view it over and over as a center which they actually requested.  Absent students were able to view the lesson they missed at their convenience. 

To get started, I would recommend trying Voicethread.com


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Week 7 Thing 18


Wordle is a great instructional tool for spelling words, vocabulary, synonyms, antonyms.  I copied the vocabulary words for my first few weeks of my science curriculum map for third grade to make this wordle. 

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Week 6 Thing 13

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/iTFso8lSKD

The first classroom application for this website that immediately came to mind was wishing students "Happy Birthday."  I would think they would get a really big kick out of this activity. 

Once I started brainstorming, I was thinking you could make a wall for a concept such as mammals.  The students could search for images on Pics4learning and then post an image of a mammal on the wall.