Cool+Tools+for+Our+Institute

=** Cool Tools for Computers in the Classroom **=

[|Animoto] is a video editing tool that allows users to place photos or video clips into imaginative templates. Users can upload their own thematic music or choose from a pre-programmed musical library. In the classroom, students can use this particular application as a way to understand point of view or to demonstrate comprehension. Follow this link to see examples of Animoto in action: The first example shows how middle school students interpreted what defines a hero through visual art and through video interviews. Each student interviewed one another with a Flip camera. (The audio portion has been replaced with music).

Animoto in use!

[|Xtranormal] is a video application that allows you to demonstrate a script involving one or two characters. Creators choose from several backdrops and characters to animate the and ideas conveyed in various forms of writing. Students can develop an authentic feel for character development by enhancing their animated characters movements and facial expressions. The program also provides choices for background sounds and music.

Below are some examples of Xtranormal in action for classroom purposes.

Xtranormal in use!

Synthesizing and Summarizing New Knowledge with Glogster No more trips to the store to pick up poster board, no more slanted writing with various sized letters written in a single color, no more cut out pictures with glue oozing out the sides. Welcome to Glogster! This tool is an interactive poster maker, allowing students to demonstrate their understandings through multiple means including video, photographs, writing, animations, and sound in one place. We recommend using [|edu.glogster.com] with your students.

Below are some examples of Glogster in use for classroom purposes.

Glogster in use!

is where classroom instruction meets teacher created online content meets student created online content meets cooperative learning. Wikispaces is about collaboration. Wikispaces in the classroom can promote active learning. Students love it and teachers do too!

Below are some tutorials for getting started with wikispaces.

Wikispaces in use!

Collaborative Writing Using Google Docs Providing students with collaborative writing experiences and opportunities to practice evaluating their peers’ and their own work can result in improved writing. Allowing students to use, and in some cases even create, the rubrics with which their writing will be evaluated can help them better understand how to meet and exceed the requirements of an assignment. [|Google Forms] allows teachers and students to create, share, and use online rubrics so that students can assess their own and others‘ writing, receive feedback on their writing from multiple evaluators, and edit and revise their writing in order to ensure that it meets all criteria on the rubric.

__Helping all students find their voice. Collaborative discussions, presentations, and inquiry work using Voice Thread__. In order to prepare all students for college and the workplace, teachers must provide frequent opportunities for them to contribute to meaningful conversations with one another about a variety of topics and ideas across multiple domains. Technology has expanded and transformed the ways in which students can engage in speaking, listening, and other forms of communication for the purpose of gaining and sharing knowledge. VoiceThread allows teachers and students to create and engage in group conversations around common types of digital media, such as pictures, video, presentations, and documents. Once these media are uploaded, others can provide comments about them in 5 different ways - via text, audio, video, drawing, or telephone - in order to deepen, extend, and enrich conversation and thinking.

= = [|Wallwisher] is an online bulletin board. It is a perfect way to encourage community interactions about any curriculum topic, field trips, inquiry questions, community events, etc. It is as simple as writing and posting notes on a bulletin board. Click here to found out more and see some examples of Wallwisher for classroom use.

=Other Cool Tools (That We May Not Get To in this Institute):=

Using Taxegdo to Emphasize Theme and Analyze Texts Taxegdo is a web application that allows the user to visually represent a selection of prose, text or lyrics. One can cut and copy any selection of words into this application to see what visual depiction appears. This application, along with the many other word cloud apps, helps to emphasize main idea or word repetition. This is a simple and engaging way to capture the attention of any audience by offering an alternative presentational style.

Accessing Digital Texts: Free Tools to Empower Striving Readers = = At times it seems that more and more of our students are struggling to access content, and digitized text provides an avenue to assist many students in becoming more independent as learners. Readability essentially removes the “clutter” that is often on a website, allowing the student to see the text. Using the tools on Readability, they make some choices such as size of the text, size of the margins, color of text and background, and location of hyperlinks. Natural Reader is a free online reader. It includes a floating toolbar that allows students to have websites read to them. These tools are good for students in all grade levels. Links: Readability – Add-on for Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari: @http://www.readability.com/addons NaturalReader 9.0 --

iReader – PC/Mac based: []

Add voices to images with Blabberize. It's simple and fun. It's a great way to get children to add internal thinking to characters, perhaps to show character motivation or to develop characters for their own stories. Give it a try!

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 * [[image:Google_Maps_Logo.jpg width="128" height="44"]] Here's an alternative way to write digital stories using Google Maps:**

Google Maps: [] Associate steps of your stories with locations on a map. Editing each one allows annotation of locations with mages (e.g. using links from flickr), and other rich text features. Now they provide cut and paste code (via the "Link to this Page") so you can embed the maps in any web page. Examples: [|America's Highway: Orak Histories of Route 66] and [|Whirligig Lit Trip]

Deepening Comprehension through Character Analysis: Using My Fake Wall At the core of literacy is comprehension- students' understanding of the texts they read. Carefully and critically thinking about characters in literary and informational texts will aid students understanding of the text as a whole. At each grade level in the new MA ELA and Literacy Framework, students are asked to consider the characters in increasingly complex ways with increasingly complex texts. My Fake Wall, a stand alone Facebook-esq wall, is one way students can critically and deeply think about the characters in the texts they are reading.