Thursday, October 27, 2011

8. Digital Storytelling

October 27, 2011 - Digital Storytelling
Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Digital stories comprise images, music, narrative and voice to express the student thoughts from autobiographies to historical events across the curriculum.

Assignments:
1. Create a script and storyboard for your own digital story and bring it with you to next week's class.
2. Bring digital media (photos, video, music) to class next week that go along with your storyboard.
3. Explore the online resources for digital storytelling listed on the class website.
4. Comment on this post. Include ways you could use digital storytelling with your students, something you learned in class, or thoughts about a digital storytelling resource you explored.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

7. Wordle and Weebly

October 13, 2011 - Wordle and Weebly
Wordle - Wordle generates “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your students. 
Weebly  Weebly is a free web page creation site. It uses a widget style format, allowing users to create pages with only a few clicks. The user drags and drops different page elements (such as images, text, and Google Maps) onto a page and fills in the content. Teachers can use Weebly to build classroom websites, create student digital portfolios, and post their curriculum online.


Assignments:
1. Create a word cloud on Wordle or another word cloud site. Try making words different sizes and changing the fonts and colors.
2. Create your own Weebly account.
3. Create a teacher Weebly site.
4. Comment on this post. Include your thoughts about Wordle or other word cloud sites, your thoughts about Weebly, particularly compared to blogs and wikis, something you learned in class today, or thoughts about how you would use these tools as an educator.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

6. Wikis

October 6, 2011 - Wikis
A wiki is a Web 2.0 collaborative authoring tool that allows teachers and students to group collaborate on a Web page.

Educational Wiki Resources:
Check Out These Example Wikis!


Assignments:
  1. Create your own Wikispaces account.
  2. Create a teacher, class, or grade-level Wiki.
  3. Add 2 pages to your Wiki.
  4. Add text, a picture, a link, and a document to your wiki.
  5. Comment on this post. Include your thoughts about the possible benefits of wikis, something you learned in class today, or thoughts about an article you have read about wikis.