Enrich Your Curriculum WeLearn Conference 2014

Photo editing tools and toys

As a teacher, you can create an account. You can add students under your account. You will be able to download a spreadsheet of your students IDs and passwords. With an account, students can work on projects, save them, and go back to them at any time. You can view and download content created by your students. Without an account, students can still create projects, but they must complete it in one sitting. They can then save projects to their computer. These projects can then be submitted in many different ways to the teacher.

Students can make trading cards about an historical figure or historical event. Student Sample

Students can make a magazine cover to summarize a unit of study, historical event, famous person, etc. Student Sample

There are many different ways you can use memes in your classroom. This is an example of a language arts activity on synonyms. Here the students used the thesaurus to find a synonym for thirsty. The motivator/meme allows them to illustrate that while these two words are synonyms they do not mean exactly the same thing.

Application that allows you to speak through a picture

Blabberize is a very easy application that allows you to speak through a picture. Students can manipulate the picture to say what they want. You can create a Blabber without an account. In order to save it or share it, you must create an account. To create an account, students will need an address. Teachers can: Use a Blabber to introduce a new vocabulary word or concept. Create a Blabber with instructions for an activity or assignment. Post the Blabber for students to access if they need to be reminded of the directions. Students can: Create a Blabber of an historical figure giving a famous speech or stating a quote. Use a Blabber to give a brief biography of a person or to tell an account of an event in history.

A Blabber can be shared through a link or The Blabber can be downloaded.

A social platform for sharing content

ERLY allows you to create a collection of text, videos, images, & websites in a slide show type format. Guests that are invited to the event through a shared link can access the information in the collection. They can also comment on the individual links, videos, images, and text. Guests that are registered with the website can add to the collection. Here is an example of an ERLY Event: states# states#

As a teacher you will want to set up an account to share events with students. Anyone can access your event from the link you share. If you want your students to be able to add content to the event or create their own events, they will need their own accounts. To sign up for an account, students will need an address.

Teacher: Use to share information for a unit of study. Use as a way to post various types of information and allow for it to be used as a discussion board. Post a topic and require students to find and post links, videos, images, etc. about that topic. Use as a collaboration tool with teachers. Students: Create an event to store research for a specific project or report. Students can collaborate and share information through events. Students or groups can use it to present & summarize main ideas from historical events, people, and places.

Allows access to your bookmarks anywhere

This site allows you to organize tiles for websites on a webmix. There are many tiles already created for popular sites. You can also create your own tile for any site. Teachers can use this to organize and share specific sites they want students to use on a regular basis or for a specific unit. Students can create webmixes with sources for a research project. Teachers can create webmixes to share with parents with resources to help students.

Create, read, and share visual stories.

Storybird is a great tool to use with reluctant writers as well as to inspire students to write creatively. When creating a storybird, the students choose a stack of artwork to use for their story. These pictures will guide the student’s story helping them to come up with ideas. As a teacher, you can create a class and your students will be given usernames and passwords. Here you can assign stories or allow students to create on their own. When stories are published, other members of your class will be able to view, read, and comment on these stories. They can also be ed as well.

Where students can become a real authors

Teachers sign up their class or classes for Boom Writer. You assign a story start, which is the first chapter of a book. This story start could be written by a professional writer, a teacher, a student, or maybe even a celebrity. There are many to choose from in each genre and age range. The students are to take the story wherever they envision. You can assign a length of time and a length requirement for the second chapter. After each chapter, you can open up the voting. The students will anonymously vote for the best piece of writing. The winning piece of writing becomes chapter 2 and the students are then given the chance to write the next chapter. You can choose how many chapters you want a story to be. Check out this video explaining how Boom Writer works.

Turn images and text into stunning video slideshows

Teachers can apply for a free Animoto Plus account to use in the classroom. With the Plus account, you can make unlimited videos with no time limits. Students can create their own accounts using an address. They will be allowed to make an unlimited amount of videos, but each video is limited to 30 seconds. There is also an app that is very user friendly. With younger students, you can use the app on multiple Ipads and have your account open on all of them. Videos can easily be shared with an individual link, through twitter, by , or can be embedded on a class website or blog. “Animoto is one of the marvels of Web 2.0. It is a wonderful initiative and a true benefit to teachers and students.” Discovery Education

Use to do a quick summary of a historical event. Each student could be responsible for a different event or person in a unit of study. Then the links for all videos could be posted for students to use to study and review. Example: Commercials Video timelines Compare & contrast viewpoints from history Use to explain an economic term or other concepts

Word cloud generating tools

Students do not need any kind of account to use these sites. Word clouds can either be printed, saved to computer, or you can use a screen caption tool to keep the image. Use a word cloud to: Introduce a new topic Discover the main idea of a piece of text Review a lesson Check for understanding Brainstorm a topic Practice sorting and classifying skills

A meaningful video discussion tool

In order to create a vialogue, you will need to create an account. Students must also have an account in order to be able to respond to a vialogue. You can upload videos from youtube, vimeo, or video files. Videos can be posted for others to comment on and start a class discussion on a specific topic. You can also create questions as specific points in the video. As a student watches the video they can answer these questions.

You can easily create multiple choice questions that students can answer. You don’t see individual student responses, but you can see a percentage breakdown for the class. alogues/play/6963?ak =ad1b6b1ce9d0ec3fd5 b28be979d7e79f alogues/play/6963?ak =ad1b6b1ce9d0ec3fd5 b28be979d7e79f If you want to start a discussion or post an open ended question, you can use the post comment feature. Students can reply back to individual comments. All comments are posted for everyone to see. alogues/play/6991?ak =52368f671edd54c06 e3047a2158ab605 alogues/play/6991?ak =52368f671edd54c06 e3047a2158ab605

An quick and easy way to collaborate

Padlet allows for meaningful collaboration on any topic among any group of people. A wall is created with a topic and is then shared through a link or QR code. Collaborators can then add a sticky note to the wall with a response. Responses can be in text, a link, photo, or even a video. These can be used to activate students’ knowledge, discuss current events or events in a story, summarize a character, brainstorm for a research report or essay.

Computational knowledge engine A wealth of online resources organized in virtual binders A fast & free way to make cartoons This site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. It just recently began to have a fee for school usage. A presentation tool that allows you to share information

Step 1: Think of your next SS unit. Choose 1 Web 2.0 Tool and find 1 meaningful way to include it into your curriculum. Step 2: Use a teacher created item to teach the students. This allows them to become familiar with the tool. Step 3: Once you have become familiar with the tool, have the students use the tool to supplement a lesson. Step 4: Plan for problems. The first time you try the tool things won’t go perfectly, but that is ok. Many times the students can troubleshoot through the problems themselves. Step 5: Once you become comfortable with one tool, then it is time to try another. Step 6: Have fun and don’t be afraid to take risks!

Shanan Riegle 5 th Grade Teacher Yorktown Elementary School Follow me on “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” -John Dewey