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The most dreaded word in school reading for students: book reports. Teachers assign them, viewing them as a necessary component of assessing reading comprehension. Book reports can be a contributing factor to 'readicide'. "Read-i-cide n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools." http://stenhouse.com/html/readicide.htm. So, how can we as teachers continue to monitor our students understanding of reading material without killing the love of reading? Enter technology. Technology can help bring some excitement and creativity to the traditional book report while still displaying students understanding of reading.

In a broader and more educational system, blogs are about communicating. You observe your experience, reflect on it, and then write about it. Other people read your reflections, respond from their perspectives by commenting or writing their own blog article. You read their perspectives, often learn something through their eyes, and write some more. 1. Blogging is about reading and writing. 2. Literacy is about reading and writing. 3. Blogging is about literacy. (dfw)

Enter your Lexile measure, select your interests, and find books you'd like to read! Whether you're reading for school or for pleasure, you can use this site to build a custom reading list on the subjects that interest you the most.

Ever heard of an Exquisite Corpse? It's not what you might think. An Exquisite Corpse is an old game in which people write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over to conceal part of it and pass it on to the next player to do the same. The game ends when someone finishes the story, which is then read aloud. Our "Exquisite Corpse Adventure" works this way: Jon Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, has written the first episode, which is "pieced together out of so many parts that it is not possible to describe them all here, so go ahead and just start reading!" He has passed it on to a cast of celebrated writers and illustrators, who must eventually bring the story to an end. Every two weeks, there will be a new episode and a new illustration. The story will conclude a year from now.

Love this idea to share with teachers & students!

Big Universe® is an award winning web community devoted to beautiful children's picture books. READ hundreds of offerings from today's best children's book publishers, CREATE e-books with the help of an easy-to-use Author Tool, and CONNECT with other Big Universe members to share your creations and to learn what books they have read, created, or recommend. Parents, teachers, kids, authors, and others can share and learn while they enjoy this educational and entertaining website.

Kids love to learn. PBS KIDS Raising Readers is a national literacy campaign, and part of the Ready To Learn initiative, focused on building reading skills at home, at school, in child care, and in the community. Funded by a Ready To Learn grant from the United States Department of Education, the Ready To Learn initiative is developing engaging PBS KIDS Raising Readers television programs, exciting games, playful Web sites, and easy-to-use learning resources for kids, parents, caregivers, and teachers-all with the goal of helping children ages 2 to 8 get ready to read.

A simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you are reading.

"Readable is an application that helps you read more of the web. It transforms text on any website using fonts, colors, and layouts of your choosing. By presenting content in a format that you're comfortable with, Readable makes the reading experience much more enjoyable - and faster too. Readable is the most customizable solution for manipulating content (on the web) and making it readable. It's also very simple to use and completely free."

Site used for students to read, listen to, or watch books online. It pairs fiction and non-fiction books of various topics and you can choose whether you want to watch the story or read the story. Some of the books even come in Spanish! All you need is your library card to use the site.

Welcome to the CAST Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Book Builder! Use this site to create, read, and share engaging digital books that build reading skills for students. Your universally designed books will engage and support diverse learners according to their individual needs, interests, and skills.

ReadTheWords.com is a free, web based service that assists people with written material. We do this by using TTS Technology, or Text To Speech Technology. Users of our service can generate a clear sounding audio file from almost any written material. We generate a voice that reads the words out loud, that you request us to read.

Easy to read: TTJunior.com offers easy-to-read news stories for 2nd Graders, 3rd Graders and advanced 1st Graders, as well as remediation and ESL for all grades. Easy to write: Students can post blog comments that teachers review before publication. Click below to sign up. It's fast, easy and free!

Makes the connection between podcasting and reading comprehension.

MrsP.com was created with the goal of giving kids the wonderful experience of having a trusted, skilled storyteller read them classics of literature. Rather than simply presenting an audiobook, Mrs. P recreates the look and feel of "story time," a magical ritual many kids might not otherwise get to enjoy.

"Read this whitepaper to learn how to prepare for the movement to mobile and digital learning in the classroom by exploring the necessary requirements for network and budget along with understanding the benefits of going digital. "

QuizEgg is essential for parents, teachers, professors, instructors and other educators. The online quiz maker let's you quickly and easily make sophisticated quizzes that can be completed by your students online. Quizzes are automatically graded for you, so there is no need to spend hours correcting them yourself. All the quiz results are analyzed and aggregated for you in easy-to-read reports.

Lessonwriter creates lesson plans and instructional materials for teaching English language skills from any reading passage. * Copy & paste any text you choose into LessonWriter. * LessonWriter analyzes text for vocabulary, grammar and usage, pronunciation, and word roots and stems. * Then, LessonWriter writes a lesson plan and a lesson that teaches the skills you chose in the context of the passage - automatically.

"Well, we were very interested in two ideas. One was how do the patterns of brain activity differ when you're doing an internet search versus reading, since computers are such a big part of our lives these days? And then we also wanted to look at different groups of people, people who were internet-savvy and had lots of computer exposure and experience, and compared that to naive subjects - with "naive" we mean people who don't use computers or the internet very often."

"Sophie is open source software for writing, reading and visualizing rich media documents in an interactive, networked environment."

Online lessons, videos and interactive for topics such as computers, career skills, reading and math.