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Meet Candy Carter I'm an AP Language and Comp teacher at McQueen HS in Reno, NV. My students lead very busy lives: they're in sports, band, choir, journalism, debate...and on and on. They also do not necessarily live close to one another. In past years, I had had nonfiction book groups in which students chose books from a list and completed projects and presentations on their reading. Over the years, it seems to have become increasingly difficult to find time for them to confer, and the presentations in class took too long. I needed to come up with a way for them to share their ideas in a different way, and I needed to have a way to hold them accountable for their work. I also was aware of the increasing importance of social networking sites in my students' lives. Candy's Perspective I had been introduced to Tapped In at a teacher workshop two or three years ago but had never made the time to really explore it. I was also a bit concerned that some their parents would object to them being online so I wanted to come up with an anonymous way for them to participate so that parents would not worry that their children's names were "out there" online. I hit on the idea of using Class ID numbers (which my students already use for peer reviews to ensure writers' anonymity). I was able to get all three of my classes into the system. I set up a calendar so groups could discuss online without bumping into other groups. Overall, this turned out to be a successful way for kids to share ideas about books. They enjoyed the novelty and talked about their reading in kid-speak, not just so they could impress their English teacher. Except for some technical snags (some kids are not as computer-savvy as others; they also needed to have Java on their computers, which turned out to be a problem for a few of them), this was relatively easy to monitor and manage. I loved reading what they said online--very authentic.

ReadWriteThink offers a collection of online Student Materials to support literacy learning in the K-12 classroom. These interactive tools can be used to supplement a variety of lessons and provide an opportunity for students to use technology while developing their literacy skills. Click on the name of each interactive for a brief description of the tool and a list of the ReadWriteThink lessons that use the tool. From there you'll also be able to directly access the tool and use it in your classroom.

A free Website that allows teachers (or students and parents) to enter their own spelling words. The students can then learn the words, play games with the words, and take a test on the words. Now, the site has added a gradebook feature. The site works great with the SMART Board or other interactive whiteboards.

Explore the power of language! This collection of video segments, activities and lesson plans from public television focuses on literacy skills for early childhood readers through high school students.

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary - Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate. Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections. * It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus! * Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists. * The online dictionary is available wherever there's an internet connection. * No membership required.

Blog About Books Presented by National Geographic for Kids, DogEared is a blog about books-good books, funny books, adventure books; books about animals, friendship, pirates, faraway places . . . every kind of book that kids enjoy. Why is the site called "DogEared"? You know when you read a book and you turn the top edge of a page over to mark your place? That's called a "dog-ear"! Students mark ("dog-ear") the Web page so they can return to it often in order to read real kids' reviews and recommendations. They also share their own opinions and create their own reading wish list-as if it were their own online book club.

Animated Poetry created by film students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in association with the Poetry Foundation

Varying projects that can be done between students worldwide using writing skills.

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