Create Stories Online: Digital Storytelling Sites

Myths and Legends Story Creator is a great site for kids who love to create stories. Not only can you create stories with several backgrounds and clip art pieces to choose from, but you can also read and listen to stories that other students have written. Click "Play" to play the story and watch as the stories animate and you can follow along with the narrator. Try making your own and sharing it with friends!



Story Top story creator is an online application similar to Myths and Legends (above) but with fewer choices. The website utilizes a drag and drop interface where you choose backgrounds, characters, and objects. Add text to your story. Choose to save it to the Story Top account or send your story to a friend when you are finished.

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Pixton Comic Creator: Privacy for Educational Platforms

Wow! I just came across a new comic creator called Pixton. (See video trailer embedded in my last post for more details.) Pixton allows you to create comics with the following features:

• Make comics without having to draw and share them with the world or your private community within Pixton
• Design and customize your characters according to skin color, hair color, facial expressions, body type, and clothing style
• Add props, scenery, and backgrounds
• Remix comics that already exist
• Animate characters
• Automatic language translator - 20 different languages currently available

If this isn't enough, Pixton realized the need for a private, educational space where students can post and view comics in a safe environment. As with any web 2.0 tool, there is always the danger of children coming across something inappropriate. Many comic creators that have been released in the past do not currently offer a privacy options to keep kids safe on their site (like Toondoo). Pixton's educational privacy settings is a paid feature, which runs about $1 per student per month and offers:

• Reinforcement of literacy skills
• Lesson plan banks where you can share lesson ideas with other educators
• Private, virtual classroom
• Password protected
• Collaborative environment
• Easy login - students DO NOT need emails to have an account
• NO software installation
• Unlimited storage
• FREE upgrades
• Customizable to add your school colors or logo
• Teacher - student messaging
• Permissions available to set exactly what your students can do
• Fully customizable comic editor
• Download comics as PDFs or embed them on sites online
• Automatic Language Translator

I think Pixton will pave the way for other web 2.0 sites in the future. Check it out!

Pixton: Take A Tour of the New Comic Creator

Practice Grammar with Grammarman!

Grammarman is a site where you can follow the story of the hero Grammarman, who saves the world from the evil villian, Sammy Colon. There are 6 stories written in comic strip style where you can choose to read the comic on your own, listen to the author read it to you, or watch it as a short movie on YouTube. This is great for English Language Learners! The comic, as you might notice, is filled with grammatical errors, which you have to find. Check your answers at the end of the comic to see if you identified all of them! I must admit this site is a lot of fun, and the creator of the site is a published children's book author and English teacher. Check it out!

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Word Games for Elementary Students

Word Games for Elementary Students

Are you looking for a fun way to practice word skills with your students? Here are a few sites that practice important concepts in a fun way, especially if you have an interactive whiteboard to use in your class.

Punctuation Paintball: Use the paintball guns to shoot correct punctuation onto the sentences provided. If you click the website and it asks you to register, choose "Maybe Later" to go directly to the game without adding any personal information. There are 3 different levels of difficulty to choose from.

Other games that can be used to practice word skills:

• Quiz Hub: Homophones
• Construct-A-Word (choose beginnings to match an ending to create a word)
• Synonym and Antonym Game
• Suffix Game
• Prefix Game
• Contraction Game
• Spelling City
• MadLibs Online
• Roy the Zebra interactive word games

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Lookybook: Preview Children's Books Before You Buy

Lookybook is a site that allows parents and teachers to preview kids' books before they buy them. Ever wonder about this as you look at books on Amazon.com? Granted, Lookybook does not have the same vast quantity of books as Amazon does, but the site is adding more and more books with time. Lookybook also allows you to embed the book into your blog or website so kids can get a feel of the story. Finally, if you like the book, you can click the link to buy it. You can browse Lookybook without a username and password, but if you create an account, you can add books to your "shelf" to flag your favorites. See example below:

Audio Books Online

Many special education teachers and reading teachers ask me about sites that have stories online where students can HEAR the book being read to them. While there are several sites that do this, very few of them have the words or captions that go along with the passage. These sites make good learning stations for students in your classroom. Here are some of my favorites:

Storyline Online is a website sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild. There are several celebrities who offer their talents to read a best-loved children’s book on video. Stream the video to watch the actor read the story complete with story book pictures and captions that you can turn on or off. A few of my favorites on this site are: Stellaluna, Knots on a Counting Rope, and The Night I Followed the Dog. This is a GREAT SITE! This site is for elementary school students.

Loudlit.org is a site that boasts “literature for your eyes and ears”, and they’re right. The website features novels, poetry, historical documents, children’s books, and short stories that you can read and follow along as someone reads it to you. You can stream the audio or download it. I especially like the poetry section since it helps students hear how poetry should be read with pauses and breaks. Famous pieces that are featured (and here are just a FEW): The Highwayman, The Raven, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Tale of Two Cities. This site primarily targets secondary students, but there are some selections for primary aged kids.

ByGosh.com is a good source for digital text online, although it doesn’t read the text to you. However, many teachers have the use of text-to-speech software that allows them to copy and paste text into the program to read it to the student. This site has items for elementary and secondary students.

At Childtopia, there are seven stories that you can hear read out loud to you. This is definitely geared for elementary school students.
My favorite of these sites used to be Tumble Books - not featured here since they have recently turned their site into a paid site. Previously their content had been completely free. If your school is willing to pay for a subscription, this site would be worth your time and money.

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Madlibs online for kids

Madlibs Online for Kids!

Speaking of childhood favorites, remember Madlibs? We used to buy them at book fairs and take them with us on road trips to keep us entertained. Little did we know at the time, it was a fun way to practice parts of speech.

Now Funbrain.com has Madlibs online for kids! There are different themes to choose from: School, Once Upon a Time, Prehistoric, and Alphabet. Once you choose your theme, the Madlibs generator appears asking you to fill in a part of speech. For example, if it asks you for a “noun”, there are several floating nouns around for you to choose from. Click your choice and click OK to continue. When you are finished, a pop-up window appears with your printable story. Fun!

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Interactive Whiteboard Links

If you have an interactive whiteboard (Promethean, SMART, or Polyvision), it’s always nice to know where you can find websites that work especially well with your board. A site that may not be suitable to use with your class in the computer lab could be very valuable once you use it with your interactive whiteboard in a whole group instructional setting.

As I was searching for interactive whiteboard links, I came across this site by ETTC (Educational Technology Training Center). The site has tons of links suitable for your interactive whiteboard. But the best part of the site is that the links are broken down by elementary sites, middle school sites, and high school sites. ETTC also separates the links by subject area: math, language arts, science, social studies, music, PE, art, software, tutorials, and other.

It’s the best list I have seen to date. I looked at about 70% of the sites under “elementary” and was astonished that the sites were of high quality. There is nothing worse than a hotlist of sites that stink.

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ReadWriteThink: Comic Creator

ReadWriteThink is a website sponsored by the International Reading Association to provide teachers and students quality resources online. They have several interactive activities online including their comic creator (see above). Students can determine the number of panels they want for their comic and then add characters, text bubbles, and props to create a funny scene. Unfortunately, the only way to view their finished product is to print it out. Also, the comic creator isn’t as sophisticated as other comic sites and is difficult to get rid of items once they are placed on the page. However, this would be a wonderful site to get children interested in writing. Once they print out their comic, they can color it! One of the nice features is that there are lesson plan ideas and resources for teachers to use with these interactive tools. Check out the other interactive sites by ReadWriteThink:

The list below is only a partial one. To see the full list, see the link above.

Character Trading Cards

Flip Book Creator

Flip-a-chip (vocab practice with affixes and roots)

Mystery Cube

Story Map

Timeline

Venn Diagram

Word Family Sort

Doodle Splash

Construct-a-word

Interactive Spelling Practice with Spellingcity.com

Wow, teachers and parents! Have you seen Spellingcity.com? This is the best free spelling site I have seen in a long time. Basically, the teacher or student can enter a list of spelling words and the site will provide you with interactive practice. First, the site will say the word to you (in a very natural voice, I might add) and you type the word. The site will speak a sentence with the spelling word in correct context as well. Press the button to check your answers and the site corrects your work. If you get one wrong, you have the option of completing extra practice with the word.

Here is what Spellingcity.com boasts on their website (and well deserved boasting!):

“SpellingCity is a fun new educational site that can help children improve their spelling skills:

• contains over 25,000 words, including plurals, contractions, future and past tenses


• uses a REAL human voice that says both the word and the word in a sentence


• a ‘Teach Me’ function that spells out the word using both visual and auditory input to improve retention


• teachers and parents can enter and save their own spelling lists for their students/children


• students can play games with their words or any saved lists


• teachers and parents can save and share their lists.


• the forum allows teachers and parents to share lists and ideas”

Hands down - this is the best interactive spelling site on the internet that I have seen!

Sight Words with Samson

Sight words with Samson is an interactive site to help children learn basic sight words in English. There are very few good sites online that allow children to practice sight vocabulary, but this site is worth mentioning. Sight words with Samson also outlines 10 reasons why practicing sites words are important to a child’s development on their site. I recommend this site for children learning to read as well as English-as-a-second-language learners. Even though it is a paid site, the fee is nominal. For one family, it will cost you $29.95 a year. For one teacher, it will cost you $79.95 a year, but the teacher will also have 30 usernames associated with the registration so that everyone in the class can have his or her own username.

The Writing Fix Website: Six Traits of Writing

The curriculum in Frederick County Public Schools will be focusing on the Six Traits of Writing model in reading and language arts. The website called The Writing Fix provides extensive resources for the six traits of writing for teachers and students, and it’s FREE! Teachers know it can be difficult when kids say, “I don’t know what to write.” This website allows students to access writing prompts for left brained or right brained learners as well as prompts for picture books, chapter books, and classic literature. The prompts, like in the picture above that shows the “superhero” theme, give the student the opportunity to click different story elements or parts of speech to randomly generate a story prompt. Now the kids have a several ideas for writing! Another section has online games for writers such as scrabble, hangman, word searches, anagrams, and crossword puzzles. In addition, lesson plans are available for teachers. The only draw back that I have found on this site is the layout. It tends to be crowded and has so much information that it may be overwhelming to some people.

Digital Storytelling with Microsoft Photo Story 3

Digital storytelling is a powerful tool to motivate reluctant writers in the classroom. Microsoft Photo Story 3 is a free download that works on Windows XP and Windows Vista and is incredibly easy to use.

How can you use Photo Story to motivate writing in the classroom? Try these ideas:

1. Write about a field trip using your digital pics from your destination
2. Act out reader’s theater scripts or stories, take pictures, and have children write about the plot, conflict, solution, setting, or theme
3. Visually show your classroom routine using Photo Story
4. Visually emphasize new vocabulary
5. Narrate the steps to a science project or math investigation

There is a visual tutorial of Photo Story for those who like to see what they are downloading before they commit to it. I recommend it if you are one who doesn’t like to “play” around on software in order to figure it out.

Basically, there are 6 steps to creating a photo story.

1. Open Photo Story and import your pictures using the icon. Select multiple pictures in your folder by using the “shift” or “control” button. Click “upload”.


2. You’ll see all of your uploaded photos on a filmstrip bar at the bottom of the screen. Click and drag them to change their order in the story. Click “next”.


3. Add text to the pictures by clicking on an individual picture and adding text in the caption box. By clicking on the “effect” button under the individual photo, you can add and effect such as “black and white”. Click “next”.


4. Add narration to your story. Using a microphone, click “record” and speak your narration for each slide. When you are done with each slide, click onto the next one and continue speaking. Photo Story will automatically add timings to your photos based on how long you talk. Clicking the “Customize Motion” button under each photo will allow you to choose transitions between photos.


5. Add background music. Choose your own music from your files or use music provided to you from the software.


6. Save your story.

That’s it! By including a group of photos in a file folder on a shared drive in your school, you can have students access photos easily to create digital storytelling projects. Try and let me know what you think!

Fun Educational Websites for Kids

There are so many websites, and so little time. How do you find websites worthy to share in your class? First, network! If you find a good site, post it to your del.icio.us account, an online website where you can share your favorite websites with anyone. Here are some of my favorites:

1. While bbc.co.uk is located out of England, it has several content based games that range from simulations to trivia to drill-and-practice. One of the my favorite game-based simulation is The Pyramid Challenge, where you are playing the role of the head-of-state in charge of building the king’s pyramid. You need to make several decisions: location of the pyramid, what building materials to use, how many workers to employ, and so on. If you make the right decisions, your pyramid is constructed. It’s not as easy as it looks, and you learn many facts along the way. However, BBC has the best games and simulations for middle school and high school that I have seen as of yet.

2. Another site of interest is Learning Vocabulary Can Be Fun! The site has several clean, motivational games to help kids learn new vocabulary words. ESL learners can use this site to reinforce new words and practice English in a fun way.

3. Scholastic is well-known for their book orders, but they also have an extensive website of lessons and games for all subject areas and ages. While the games are advertised for Pre-K through 12, I have consistently heard from middle and high school students that the games seem too young for their classes. Check it out and be the judge.

Magnetic Poetry: use with your interactive whiteboard!

Check out the Magnetic Poetry site online! How many of you remember the fad in the early 90’s to cover your refrigerator with magnetic words so you could create deep, thoughtful, or funny poems for everyone who wanted a cold drink? Well, now you can have the online experience. At first glance, you may think that this site would be boring if you used it with your class in the computer lab. But think of using this site with your class on the Promethean Board, Smart Board, or Interactive Whiteboard! Instantly you can create an activity that reinforces sight words, reading fluency, rhyme, and spelling while promoting cooperation among students. Have the kids come to the board in teams of 2 or 3 to create a line of the poem. The second team to come to the board is challenged to create a line to rhyme with the first line. Rules: Each student must touch the board at least once to drag words into place. What a quick and easy way to practice basic reading objectives! Give it a try and let me know that you think…

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