Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Literacy: Digital Ways to encourage Writing

Here is a couple of websites that I have seen used successfully this year to motivate and encourage students to write.

I think what has been key this year is giving students an authentic audience to write for.  When you can put your ideas and thoughts out on the Internet and have other people, sometimes strangers, comment on what you did...the feeling is unbelievable! 


Click here for links and details http://sqworl.com/mmwk3r

Thanks to Shelley Friesen for showing me Sqworl, the cool visual bookmarking tool!  Let us know if there is anything we can do to help!

12 days of Educational Technology

On the twelfth day of Christmas my Ed Tech shared with me


Twelve must have items,
Eleven parts of Google,
Ten Video Options,
Nine Ways to Wiki,
Eight Keys to twitter,
Seven Presentation Tools
Six Cartoon Generators
Five Avatar Creators
Four Word Clouds
Three Blogging Tools
Two Sticky Walls
One Creative Commons Search

Please check out the full course http://ecommunity.pwsd76.ab.ca/course/view.php?id=947 (there is a moodle zip if you wish to deploy it in your own moodle)

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

IT/ET Board Meeting Presentation

Some of the files, slideshows, links and videos that we hope to use during the 40 minute presentation.


IT Darcy's handout




Peace Wapiti School Division Facebook Page


PWSD Educational Technology on PhotoPeach




Writing Prompts: 5 Card Flickr

I got this wonderful idea from this presentation, which is part of the Interesting Ways series.


Here is an example of a 5 Card Flickr Story. 


How To

(1) Go to 5 Card Flickr website and start choosing the images that you will write from.  Each time you pick an image the page will refresh with different images.

(2) When you have 5 images selected you will get a dialogue box to type in the title of your story, your name and the story.

(3) Once you have submitted, and your story is now published on the web, you are given the URL of the story.

(4) We then had students add their URL to a forum in Moodle so that they could visit each others stories and add comments!

Comments and Concerns
  • Make sure students use their first name only for publishing
  • Students were initially concerned about online publishing but ended up loving that other people could read their stories
  • Writing for a "real" audience changes how you write, right?
  • Have fun!