eBooks and Digital Storytelling

Today, I taught another technology training session for some co-workers at my school. I focused mostly on eBooks and digital storytelling since those are a huge part of my classroom. Here is the information I shared with the teachers below. You can also check out my LiveBinder too. Happy reading! :)

eBooks

We Give Books - http://www.wegivebooks.org/

WeGiveBooks has a plethora of eBooks that can be used for read aloud or during read to self time on the computer including informational texts and fiction texts. Some popular titles are the Skippy Jon Jones series, DK Readers, and llama llama series.

Free Kids Books - http://freekidsbooks.org/

Free Kids Books provides some free eBooks for kids. Some of the more popular titles are Tyrone the Horrible,  Some cost money but almost all books can be downloaded as a free pdf file. You could print these out as books to read in the lower grades.

Read to Me - http://www.readtomelv.com/

Read to Me is a site with online streaming videos of celebrities reading books. Some book titles include Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy, Duck and Cover, Duck Soup, and Chrysanthemum. Every book also includes a lesson plan to use for reading and/or writing.

Storyline Online - http://www.storylineonline.net/

Storyline Online is another site with online streaming videos of celebrities reading books. Some book titles include The Rainbow Fish, Thank You, Mr. Falker, Brave Irene, and Stellaluna.

Oxford Owl - http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Reading/

Oxford Owl has over 250 free ebooks in their online library. These books are part of the Oxford readers and include expository and fiction texts.

MeeGenius! - http://meegenius.com/store/books/free/

MeeGenius! includes a few free ebooks. Others are available for preview and purchase.

Magic Town - http://www.magictown.com/

Magic Town is a new site that just came out. It offers a few books for free but it may not be free once it’s out of the beta version. It does require a log in and is geared towards younger students.

Children’s Books Forever - http://www.childrensbooksforever.com/childrenpages/picture2.html

Children’s Books Forever includes a few classic ebooks for younger students to read.

The Little Big Book Club - http://www.thelittlebigbookclub.com.au/sites/all/ebooks/cat/flash.html

The Little Big Book Club includes ebooks that can be read or read to. This site is geared towards kindergarten.

International Children’s Digital Library - http://en.childrenslibrary.org/books/index.shtml

       ICDL includes international books written from various countries. Books can be searched by

       country, age, topic, or length of book.

One More Story - http://www.onemorestory.com/

Digital Storytelling

Storybird - http://storybird.com/

       Storybird allows students to create short, digital books inspired by art.

Zooburst - http://www.zooburst.com/

       Zooburst is a digital storytelling tool that allows students to write a digital 3D pop-up book.

TikaTok - http://www.tikatok.com/

       TikaTok allows students to create digital stories to read online or print as a book.

Kerpoof - http://www.kerpoof.com/

       One of Kerpoof’s tools is to create a story book. Students can share and print the story

       book when it is completed.

Little Bird Tales - http://littlebirdtales.com

       Little Bird Tales is geared towards younger students. Students can create a digital book by

       uploading or creating art, writing their story, and recording their story.

Xtranormal - http://www.xtranormal.com/

       Students choose characters for their story, type or record dialogue, and choose a

       background to create a digital story.

Domo Animate - http://domo.goanimate.com/create

      

Domo Animate allows students to add characters to create scenes In a slideshow format to

       tell a story.

Presenter: Kirsten Taylor

Livebinder: “Technology Tools” (Search for kirstentaylor in Authors)

eBooks

We love eBooks in our room! I thought I'd take a moment and share some of the eBook sites we've been using the last couple of months. Happy reading!

We Give Books

This is my latest fine and already a fav! We Give Books has several children's eBooks that you can use in your classroom. One of my new favorites is Goodnight iPad, similar to the book Goodnight Moon. 

These are all free eBooks.

KOL Jr. Stories 

This site has eBooks for young kids. Some of the stories are unknown but they also have books from the Arthur series.

Tumblebooks

Tumblebooks is a great resource for eBooks for kids.  Unfortunately, it does cost money. However, there are readable books, audio books, and even books that read to you! Most books also have quizzes or games associated with them. Our school purchases this program so our kids can use it at school and home. The kids absolutely love it! They are also more and more nonfiction books too.

Dr. Seuss Books

This is actually a link to an app for iPad or iPhone. Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite authors and I thought this is a great resource for classrooms using iPads, especially for the younger kiddos!

Storyline Online

This is actually a site of videos where actors are reading well-known books. I like to use these from time to time for a reading lesson when I want to put a little novelty in my lesson. 

Barnes and Noble Online Storytime

Barnes and Noble has some books online read by authors or actors. This is great for younger kids!

Google Activities for Kids

This session was presented by Tammy Worcester.

Tammy started off with talking about blogging with kids. Blogger is hosted by Google and students do not have to log into Google to comment on the blog.

You can easily set up your blog so that you can email your blog posts instead of logging in and posting on your blog.

Collaborative Blog

Students can email a picture and/or text to your blog.

Blog Comments

•        Learning Journal
•        Dear Gabby
•        Reading Response Journal
•     BatchGeo

Google Presentations

Google Forms 

Paste your location data (from Google forms) to generate a free map. Tammy used a Google form that we filled out and she created a map of where we are all from. 

She also took the characteristics of a teacher that we typed into her Google Form and pasted them into a Wordle. (Hint: Be sure to tell students not to use capital letters. Otherwise, capitalized words will show up as different words in Wordle.) You can do a similar thing with Tagxedo as well.

Examples: students' favorite vacation spot, where they were born, how far they've traveled, etc.

Ways to Use Wordle: Whale of a Wordle - words that have to do with the ocean, Wordle for George Washington,

Quiz Competition: Create a Quiz in Google Docs
(Tip: Don't add a theme to the quiz if students are using cell phones or iPads to complete the quiz. It slows it down.)
You can create two fields: Name and Answer so you can use it over and over for quiz competitions or quiz bowls.

If you have ever been to one of Tammy's sessions, you know she goes quickly through her stuff. I feel like I didn't get a chance to type in everything she discussed. However, you can always go to her site to find out all of the info she shared in the presentation. :)

All of her presentations for TCEA are available on her website here.

Sweet 16

Sweet 16

16 Digital Projects for K-5 Classrooms

This was a great session all about 16 different digital projects you could do in your K-5 classroom. I learned a lot of great ideas for simple digital projects.

Word Clouds

• Famous Speech
• Poems
• Text from a book
• Student written essays

 Ideas:

• You can have students paste their paper in Wordle to see what words are used the most.
• You can also copy and paste text from a book to determine main idea. 

Tools:

• Wordle -  www.wordle.net
• Word Sift – www.wordsift.com
• Tagzedo – www.tagxedo.com

Comic Strips

Autobiography

Practice New Vocabulary Words

Social Skills Training

Foreign Language Practice

Strengthen Conflict Resolution Skills

Tools:

Make Beliefs Comix – www.makebeliefscoix.com

Kerpoof – www.kerpoof.com

Kidspiration

Aven’s Corner – avenscorner.com

5 Photo Frame Story

Digital Storytelling

•             Paper Slide
•             Kid Pix
•             Digital Camera
•             Photos

5 Frame Story Outline

Establish characters and location - Title

Create a situation with possibilities

 Involve the characters in the situation

Build to probable outcomes

Logical, but surprise ending

Story Spine

Digital Storytelling

            Photo Booth

            Kid Pix

            Keynote/Power Point

            Digital Cameras

Six Word Memoir (Tell a story using only six words.)

Slide Show

• Photos set to music
• Students display work
• iPhoto
• Keynote
• iMovie
• PowerPoint
• Photostory3
• Discovery Education has several pictures you can use.  You can also use music from FreePlay music and download samples onto the Student Drive for students to use in their presentations.

Graphic Organizers

• ReadWriteThink
• Inspiration/Kidspieration

Avatars

• Student profiles
• Student graphs
• Class website - have students create an avatar that represents them
• Classroom displays
• Presentations
• Digital storytelling
• Tools: Build Your Self Wild, Clay Yourself, Grabba Beast, Voki

Reflection Video

• Student uses PhotoBooth to record reflection for teacher use only.
• End of unit
• End of book
• Formative assessment
• Example

Scrapbook

Newspaper

Radio Broadcast

Can be created with Garage Band, iPod Touch, Audacity

Pecha Kucha

• 20 images, no text
• 20 seconds per slide to advance automatically
• Presenter speaks along to each slide
• Here's a little history behind 'Pecha Kucha' 

Music Videos

Paper Slide Video

• Teach a concept
• Show comprehension
• Retell a story
• Free songs on Discovery Education 

Fakebook Page

• Students can make a fake FB page for a person they are studying.
• There's a great blog article with 5 fake Facebook templates  for student projects here

You can find all of the information on this presentation at www.livebinders.com

Search for "ebenno" under author and you can see her 7 public live binders. The LiveBinder for this presentation is entitled "Digital Resources for K-5 Teachers'

Elizabeth Benno – Digital Learning Coach

Puster elementary School, Lovejoy ISD

Elizabeth_benno@lovejoyisd.net

Livebinder-ebenno

Using Cool Tech Tools in the Classroom

This session was all about tech tools to use that coincide with Bloom's Taxonomy.

Know

• Googling
• Bookmarking
• Tools: Doc.Jax.com (document search engine), Kidrex

Understand

• Advanced Searching
• Blog Journaling
• Twittering - Twiducate
• Tagging (Diigo)
• Commenting (WallWisher)
• Annotating
• Subscribing
• Tools: Inspiration, Popplet

Applying

• Running (a program)
• Loading (a program)
• Playing
• Uploading
• Sharing
• Editing
• Tools: Prezi, VoiceThread, Animoto, Podomatic, Screencast-O-Matic, Sound Cloud, Audacity, PBWorks, SlideRocket, Skype

Analyzing

• Mashing
• Linking
• Validating
• Media Clipping
• Tools: Inspiration or Popplet (comparisons), Skype (conduct interviews), GoogleForms,

I love using Google Forms with my class. Here is a quick video how-to so you can start using them in your classroom easily.

Evaluating

• Blog Commenting
• Reviewing
• Posting
• Moderating
• Collaborating
• Networking
• Testing
• Tools: SimCity (simulations), Biology in Motion, 3rd World Farmer, Illuminations, 

 Creating

• Programming
• Filming
• Animating
• Video Blogging
• Mixing
• Wiki-ing
• Publishing
• Videocasting
• Podcasting
• Tools: YouTube (built in video editing tools), MovieMasher,  Xtranormal, ToonDoo, Kerpoof, Animoto, Scratch, UStream, Wix

You can also Google "Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Pyramid" and see several examples of digital tools separated out into each taxonomy level. Click here to see an example.

Teaching Digital Learners

This session is all about how to reach our "wired" kids who have grown up online and texting.

"Television is a push technology. Computers are a push/pull technology. It pulls them in."

The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Might Deceive Us

• This was quite an interesting video! Check it out above. I can see using this video with my kids and having the discussion about slowing down and really paying attention to details. "Shark it"(The laptop looks like a shark closing it's mouth) - We can't let students be overdrive the whole time. 

"You have outsourced the warehousing of data to a peripheral device or devices." Yet, we shut our kids off of their devices when they get to school. Bring Your Own Device to School districts are changing this....letting students use their digital tools.

"Kids can make 110 decision a minute." (based on Harvard research) - They can apply all this to video games and real world situations.

Tools to Use with Digital Students- Here are some of the tools he discussed in his session...there are many more available on his site.

Writing

• Storyjumper
• TikaTok
• Little Bird Tales

Collaborative Tools

• Lino It
• ToonDoo
• WallWisher

Creative Tools

• Google SketchUp!
• The Hero Factory
• Jewel Beat

Odds and Ends

• Discovery Education Clip Art
• EdHeads

I think the most interesting tool was Google Sketch Up. 3D images would really engage my kids. There are quicklinks to a bunch of Google Sketch Ups here.

Presenter: Kevin Honeycutt
http://www.kevinhoneycutt.org/

A Toolbox of Web 2.0 Tools

The presenter started out by saying her site, Producers Toolbox, is a toolbox full of Web 2.0 tools designed for kids to use. This toolbox has tools categorized into Videos & Presentations, Voice and Sound, Comics, Fun Tools, and Reference and Search. Some of the tools are ones I learned about earlier today, and some are new.

One of the sites we learned about is EduTeacher TV. There are some great informative video clips about Web 2.0 Tools out there. One focused on ZooBurst which is a collaborative writing tool I learned about earlier today. You can check out the video here. I can't explain how neat ZooBurst is without the use of this video...so fascinating!

You can check out the Producers Toolbox to check out all of these Web 2.0 Tools. :)

Presenter: Kimberly Ball
www.producerstoolbox.weebly.com