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This site was so cool. I created my own comic story. I was able to play brain buster games I read stories and had stories read to me, and watched videos about how to create a comic.. This site was created by Jim Davis, creator of the comic strip Garfield, in conjunction with Ball State University and PAWS, Inc. It give kids the opportunity to explore, create and connect safely with kids around the world. Jim Davis created this site because he felt there was a need to provide a high-quality, free, and engaging web site that could motivate children to achieve their full potential. The approach is kid-centric and tries to close the achievement gap between what kids seek to do on the Internet and standards-based educational activities. The mission of Professor Garfield.org is encourage children to explore academically sound literacy activities and provide them with tools to express themselves through creative writing prorams. It's an Internet destination that is safe, free and fun! The Professor Garfield and Sparktop sites (both found on this link) provide all kids of ways for kids to shine and showcase their talents and abilities! Students can record their own "talent" for Sparkstage (our American Idol-like competition), arrange music with the awesome music mixer tool, create their own comic strip in the Comis Lab, learn to sculpt, or be taught to draw by professional artists in the Art-Bot section. On Sparktop.org kids safely connect with other kids who knwow what they are going through. They find information about how their brain works and get tips on how to succeed in school and life. And they get to showcase their creativity and be recognized for their strengths. Millions of children from around the world visit the web site every month.

"A great way to engage students in productive literacy practices is to provide them with the tools and opportunities to help them compose and narrate stories through the use of  a mixture of multimedia materials that include pictures, text, audio, and video. Besides enhancing their writing skills, this form of composition helps them express themselves multimodally and develop complex ways  of communicating their ideas. In the list below, we are sharing with you a sampler of some of the best apps students can use on their iPads to create beautiful story books. Most of these apps are ideal for all grades from elementary to high school."

Stories about time: Interactive timeline tools. This is a helpful resource that outlines a variety of timeline tools that could be used educationally.

This is a cool site to checkout and bookmark the tools that you may be able to use at some point. Timelines are great in that they provide a way for students to organize their thinking about a particular topic. Check out some of the timeline tools outlined in this link.

This is a great site to teach the story elements to elementary level students.

This site is really cool. I passed it along to my elementary diigo group.

NBC Learn has launched this website called Finishing the Dream. It chronicles the h istory of the civil rights movement. It includes more then 100 stories from NBC News archives. Materials include documentaries on significan events over the course of 60 years, including the Montgomery bus boycott; the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; the Freedom Riders; and more. The content provides the opportunity for community leaders, teachers, and students to discuss the impact of the civil rights movement and to consider related modern issues that affect people today.

news stories for all levels

Good Article on Whiteboards' Impact. A good tech integrator will always be on the lookout for articles that show both sides of the story.

Kerpoof is one of my favorite creation tools for elementary students, it allows them to draw, create pictures, cards, books, and even movies. My original post about Kerpoof can be found here. Kerpoof has added some new features that make it worthy of another post. Students can now save their pictures, cards, stories and drawings locally (on their computers). On each canvas is a JPEG icon that will allow any picture to be saved to the computer locally. They are working on making it possible to download the movies locally soon. Kerpoof also introduced info bubbles. In the Make a Picture object library, students can drag out a picture onto the canvas. Now there is a new question mark button that shows up on an object. When students click on the question mark, a little bubble of information pops up. Students will gain all kinds of information from these little fact bubbles. They can learn everything from: who wrote Treasure Island, to learning the national animal of Austrailia.

Neat site for elementary

"The ancient tradition of storytelling meets the digital age. When students create a movie or interactive slideshow to tell their story, learning becomes personal. With digital storytelling, students can: Improve their writing. Show creativity. Have a voice. Digital storytelling projects lend themselves well to portfolio assessment"

Resource for teachers about digital storytelling.

Collection of tutorials and teacher stories of Skype use in Education

Digitales is a great site to assist in the development of evaluation rubrics for a variety of project types.

Digitales is a great site to use to create rubrics for a variety of proeject types.

A good break down of easy and free ways to ad images, video, and music to your classroom. It list free sites and software for teachers and students to use to create slideshows with music or videos with music. It also includes a site (Discovery Education streaming) that features videos of student adventures around the world. This article is also accompanied a link to another article that features students exploring story telling of a real life adventure.

Article about a Massachusettes teen who hanged herself due to ongoing bullying.

Teaching our children about internet safety and anti-bullying is critical. This is a sad story for all involved.