Create A Talking Character with Voki

If you are looking for a creative way to provide content, procedures, or announcements to your students then look no further! With VOKI you can create your own customized digital avatar.  Here is a description from the site:

"VOKI enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character. You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc. Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone,  typing of text, upload, or phone."

A VOKI can be embedded into your blog, website, Moodle course or just about any other website. When creating a Voki you can customize his or her appearance, language/accent and gender.  Below is a VOKI I created.


Get a Voki now!

The integration ideas for VOKI in the classroom are endless. Here are some of my initial thoughts:

World Language

• Students may create a recording in which they speak in the language they are studying.


• Students may create a news report spoken in the language they are studying.

• Create a Voki of a historical person.


• Create a news reporter that is reporting on a historical event or current event.
  


• Create a PSA announcement.


• Create a lecture about an important event.

• Create a Voki that teaches other students about an important class topic


• Report the findings of an experiment.
  

Free Ebooks from Google

Google has released a Ebook store. Google Ebooks can be accessed online at the following website: http://books.google.com/ebooks.  The ebook store houses a large collection of ebooks that can be downloaded. The books are available in formats for the iPhone, iPad, iTouch,  Android, the general web, Nook and Kindle.

What is unique about Google Ebooks is that Google stores your books in the cloud. That means you can access your purchased or free books from any of the above mentioned devices. Once you purchase or download a free ebook it is stored in your online Google account. You can then read the book from your computer at school and then open the same book from your ipod touch at home.  Books can be downloaded directly to a device for when internet access is not available.

There are thousands of free public domain books available.  A complete listing of the free titles can be found here. Students may sign into Google Ebooks with their Google Apps for Education user name and password that we have created for them.

The accessibility of ebooks in the cloud offers many advantages for teachers and students.

• For public domain books used in instruction (example: Great Expectations) teachers may only need to purchase a class set.


• Students can access the book at home from their computers or mobile device. A student who forgets a book at school can access it at home.


• Faculty members can easily differentiate classroom reading assignments with the availability of ebooks.


• Faculty and staff can download professional development books and access them on-demand from any mobile device or computer.


• Students with disabilities can utilize many of the assistive technology features available on electronic devices such as highlighting, text to speech, enlarging of text, and color options.


• Students may publish reviews of the books they read on the site.

Enjoy!

Comic Writing with Toondoo

Toondoo is a site that allows for the creation of comic strips. They offer  free accounts and private school account for a fee. The free accounts are very feature rich. The site does require the student to register for an account. This requires and email address to register. That limitation makes this a more valuable tool for older students.

Students can create multi-frame comic strips. There are a variety of backgrounds, props, characters, text boxes and clip art to select from. The site also allows for the addition of images from the web or a personal image. There are many editing features available.  Upon completion of your comic you can save it or send it. Students can save their strip and access it at a later time. They can also publish their comic online for the  world to view.

There are a number of ways that his tool can be used as an instructional tool or assessment.

• Have students create a comic as a first day back project to discuss their summer.


• Students create a comic that depicts a conversation between characters in a story or historical figures.


• Teachers create comics with various emotions to teach behaviors to special needs students.


• Students create a comic to kick off a creative writing assignment.


• Students create a comic using new vocabulary words that are being taught.


• Students in a world language course may create a comic that contains text written in the language studied.


• Have students create a comic to demonstrate knowledge of life skills such as speaking with a bank teller, ordering at a restaurant, speaking with a doctor or going on an interview


• Students may create a political cartoon.


• Students may create a comic that explains how to solve a math problem or provides an explanation for a science topic such as photosynthesis.


• Students may create a comic that consists of a conversation between historical figures or one that depicts an event from history.


• Students may create a comic that provides a first person account of a current event.


• Students may create a comic to interpret a scene form a story, analyze a character or an alternate scene or ending.

www.toondoo.com

Enjoy!

Interactive and Collaborative Story Writing Smartboard Lessons

SMART and Scholastic have worked together to create a series of Smartboard lessons that teach students the process of story writing and analysis. There are a series of four lessons that cover:

1. Planning Stories

2.  Story Styles

3. Creating Characters

4. Re-inventing Stories

The lessons are designed for students in grades 2 or 3 but may be modified for other grade levels. Each lesson is fully interactive and includes a page turning audio story book. These are really great activities for teaching students not only the process of developing stories, but how to analyze the parts of the story. Some of the activities focus on the various reading strategies that pair well with the stories.

http://exchange.smarttech.com/search.html?feature=Scholastic10Q3

Enjoy!

Resources for Teaching about Thanksgiving

Here is a small collection of websites and smartboard activities for teaching about Thanksgiving: Click on the names of the sites to visit them.

Smartboard Lessons for Grades K-6 - The smart exchange has a nice collection of teacher made smartboard lessons about Thanksgiving. You can preview them before you decide to download them. Once you do download them you are able to edit them to your liking.

Smartboard Lessons for Grades 6-12

The First Thanksgiving by Scholastic - This is an excellent site full of interactive activities that can be used to teach students about the first Thanksgiving. This site will work very well on an interactive whiteboard.

You are the Historian - This is a fully interactive adventure in which students learn about the first Thanksgiving. It comes with a teacher's guide that should be used to facilitate the adventure. The application is available for download which will help avoid slow service because of a high volume of users.

BrainPop - Thanksgiving Movie - Our school login info is required.

BrainPop Jr. Thanksgiving Movie - Our school login info is required.

History Channel Videos on the History of Thanksgiving

Teacher and Student Resources for the American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving - From the National Museum of The American Indian

Google Docs Editing on Mobile Devices

Google has just announced that they will begin supporting the editing of Google Docs on mobile devices. For a while now Google Docs could only be viewed on mobile devices such as Android Phones, the IPhone and IPad.  Google as announced that they will be supporting editing of documents by the end of this week.

Here is a snippet from Information Week Magazine:

"According to Google, Android devices running 2.2 Froyo and iOS devices running 3.0+ will be able access these new feature from their device's browser. Users will need to navigate to docs.google.com and sign into their account. Once a document is open, users will have to toggle an "Edit" button in the nav bar to have access to editing features (as long as they have permission to edit that particular document).

Editing features include inline changes to text, the ability to edit tables, and, for Android users, the ability to input text via spoken dictation. Users will also be able to edit spreadsheets." Zeman , Eric. "Google (Finally) Brings Docs Editing To Mobile Devices

InformationWeek." InformationWeek | Business Technology News, Reviews and Blogs. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2010. <http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/mobile/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228300058&cid=nl_IW_grok_2010-11-18_html>.

Our district has recently begun an implementation of Google Apps for education. This new feature set will offer many opportunities for us as we explore the integration of IPADS, IPOD Touches, and Android based tablet computers.  Imagine being able to read and comment on student work while waiting in a doctors office from your phone. How about typing and editing a lesson plan while a passenger in a car from your phone?  How about writing curriculum on a shared Google Document with 4 other colleagues simultaneously within a Google Doc from a chair on the beach with your smartphone or Ipad! You can even quickly review or respond to a shared document from anywhere in our schools with a phone or tablet computer.

Enjoy!

Publish your own page turning book with Story Jumper

Story Jumper is a web 2.0 site that allows students and teachers to create their own page turning, online story book.  You can make adventure stories, fairy tales, treasure maps, photo books, calendars... whatever you can imagine! The software is easy to use and comes with a complete set of directions.

As a teacher you can setup your classes to access story jumper from home or from school. The classroom edition provides:

• An interface to manage and review student work


• Enable kids to share stories between the classroom and home


• Maintain strict privacy controls over student information


• Enable educator discounts when ordering books

When a teacher created his/her account they are able to create a class password as well as user names and passwords for each student. The software provides the teacher with a printed handout for each student that will supply the directions and information for accessing the software at home and at school.  There is even settings to control the duration of time that the students may login.

Upon completion of the storybook the student may share and view online. He or she may also order the book in printed form. Discounts are available for class purchases. There is also an option to print a paper copy of the book for free.



If you would like to see an example of a Story Jumper book click the link below:

http://www.storyjumper.com/book/index/18532/The-Lonely-Acorn

For complete directions to setup your class and student accounts click this link:

http://www.storyjumper.com/main/classroom

Classroom Applications:

• Story Jumper is a great resource to allow students to publish their writing for an audience. Students will be able to author their very own children's book and share it.


• Students in Middle and High School may write a  book that teachers younger students about a topic. An example might be a book that explains what composite numbers are or the life cycle of the plant. Research has proven that students better comprehend material when they teach it to someone else.


• Teachers may use the software to write stories that can be used to teach reading skills. These books may be read on a Smartboard or individually in a center activity.


• As part of the universal design for learning framework, students may be given the opportunity to create a Story Jumper book on any assigned topic in order to demonstrate knowledge of a topic/subject.