Group items tagged

Nice click and drag story boarding site. Easy to use to set up characters, setting, etc.

Edistorm takes the metaphor of sticky notes on a boardroom wall and brings it online allowing anyone - anywhere to brainstorm with only a web browser. Each user picks their favorite ideas and Edistorm brings the best ones forward.

Persuasive writing websites with lots of examples

Chris Harbeck's class blog from this last year. A great practitioner and great example of utilizing a blog for instructional purposes.

Great explanation of social bookmarking from a GREAT source, National Writing Project. 

Obviously,I'm not a writing expert, but I love how this post describes the writing process this teacher is using at Duke with her students. The peer editing process is tested and this approach uses a screencast (video that can include audio of what is happening on a computer- mouse movements, ability to highlight text while commenting, etc.) I think it's right up our alley and incorporates free technology.

We introduced Diigo to WJHS this summer and I thought I would pass this news along to everyone, but especially that group. I still think Diigo is an incredible tool for collaboration in the classroom for research, group work/accountability, formative assessment, reaching beyond classroom walls both with students and colleagues. Additionally, Sean does some nice simple video production (with totally FREE tools) that I want to share with other teachers. It's easy to do, is a way of getting information to your students easily and in a manner that allows them to access the information as many times as they like/need.

I've always liked timelines as an educational tool. They offer the ability to show related threads compared to each other easily. I loved having students investigate a single topic, create a timeline for that topic, mash the timelines together in a BIG overarching timeine, and then have students start to look for connections. I stole the concept early in my career from the TV show Connections (too bad it didn't make it, GREAT GREAT show).

I've always liked timelines as an educational tool. They offer the ability to show related threads compared to each other easily. I loved having students investigate a single topic, create a timeline for that topic, mash the timelines together in a BIG overarching timeine, and then have students start to look for connections. I stole the concept early in my career from the TV show Connections (too bad it didn't make it, GREAT GREAT show).

Washington County Library/reading wiki. Lisa Burkhead has done a fantastic job of integrating the wiki into her literature course and her library work. There is lots of student voice and apparently a lot of reading going on at Washington County High School!

Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student their own, unique blog. It's SAFE, simple, and free (at least at this time). You can set up your students without student email addresses!

Digital storytelling continues to evolve and grow, yet another post on some really interesting tools that you can use to create digital stories. 

As usual the NY  Times gets it right! Great tool for creating visualizations of data. The data is from the Times articles so it's a wonderful opportunity to have students read and then create compelling visualizations of data. 

My kind of poetry, ACROSTICs. Nice site for sharing student/teacher acrostics. 

Use your twitter or facebook feeds to create a newspaper to really maximize your PLN. Paper.li links to posted links, and puts them into categories.  Similar to PostPost for Facebook. Check out this great example: http://paper.li/ITLynda If you have a classroom twitter account this would be a great way of organizing all of the classes  tweets into publishable 'paper'

Another plagarism detection tool. I don't like to promote this from a negative perspective, but it does help teachers educate students about the needs to give credit to other people about their ideas, and to help students learn how to paraphrase.

I think this post or article is incredibly flawed and lacks a lot of basis for the positions being advicated, but if you have a Diigo account, it is a great example of participatory nature of the internet. You can leave a note for other Diigo users. It would be a fantastic way for students to read something, include their notes, respond to each other, and discuss in class the next day.

Simple example of a blog post that has lots of power. This is the kind of blog post that I think we can do at CTL as an on-going piece of our work. It captures the ideas that we generate all the time, applies them to the work we are doing, provides a systemic way of producing new material that we can later turn into finished pieces of work. If we begin now, capturing these kinds of thoughts in a library, we can launch a CTL blog with a catalog of ideas that we can turn into posts. If the authors need some help clarifying/fine tuning that is where the system comes into play. By the way this is a fantastic post about the potential of something that is already in many students hands, but repackaged for use in an educational way. I imagine this as part of any distance network that we create, especially with Africa.

skills to solve equations, explanations of events from a Civil War Battle, aspects of an ecosystem, fill in the blank.

Different tutorials to help people learn how to use Diigo and utilize Diigo in the classroom/research/work. Made me realize I need to create more groups and share more specific examples of links with math teachers, etc.

If you are thinking of using a flipvideo camera in your classroom, this is a good place to go early in your study. It is practical, has examples, and offers a variety of uses.