Creating posters with scissors and glue is "so last year." Instead, try creating multimedia Glogster posters (called Glogs). Students can choose from a wide variety of backgrounds and add interest by uploading photographs, embedding videos, adding music, and incorporating visually-appealing text and animations. Glogs are saved on the web, so students can work on the same glog at home and at school, without the hassle of transporting materials. Teachers can set up accounts for their students, and students can view the glogs of their classmates. For an end of the semester novel project, when given the option of creating a traditional poster or a glog, approximately half of my freshmen chose Glogster.
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Art Rage is a great art program that mimics the appearance of real paint, chalk, colored pencils, crayons, etc. The texture is impressively realistic. Art Rage offers a free version, which is enough to keep almost any teacher happy. If you want even more features, there are higher-end versions available at varying price points. I first learned about Art Rage from Tom Barrett's slideshow about Interesting Ways to Use Your Interactive White Board. Interesting way #16 recommends using a (clean) paintbrush along with your Smart Board. My students have really enjoyed this program, and frequently ask to play with it if we have a few extra minutes at the end of class. Note: I highly recommend visiting Tom Barrett's blog for a ton of information on numerous topics, including technology-based projects. Also, he's been kind enough to include some of my ideas in his slideshows. E-mail him with ideas that you are using in your classroom, and you might show up in his slideshow, too! I first heard of Spell with Flickr at a breakout session run by Meg Ormiston, a wonderfully knowledgeable tech expert (a tech-spert?). Spell with Flickr is a great way to create catchy graphics for web pages or Publisher documents. I also created a vocabulary game for use with my Smart Board, where students have to drag letters into the correct order to spell a word after I supply the definition; using letters from Spell with Flickr gave the activity a little more pizazz than using a standard font, such as Times New Roman. After sharing the resource with students, I noticed a few of them wound up creating inserts for their writing binders using Spell with Flickr. It was neat to see students coming up with their own applications for this website. I've also noticed a trend in artwork that uses similar images to spell out family names and other words; this framed artwork can get pricey. Why not do it yourself using some nice glossy printer paper? Note: Consider visiting Meg Ormiston's blog for a wealth of resources. She's by far one of the most enjoyable presenters I have had the pleasure of learning from at years of Tri-County Institutes. Note: If you like Spell with Flickr, try The Visual Dictionary. Instead of searching for letters, it searches for entire words. As of January 2011, The Visual Dictionary boasts 7500 images of over 4000 words. PicLits calls itself "Inspired Picture Writing." I like it because it's great for visual learners, and it combined writing with grammar. Students can select from a wide collection of photos, and then drag-and-drop words from grammatical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) to create sentences, poems, or to brainstorm words and phrases for a longer composition. I spent one whole day during the summer creating my own PicLits as story starters for descriptive writing practice. I dragged words from the adjective and adverbs columns (making sure that each picture contained a few words that I thought my freshmen would not be familiar with) and then I had students write descriptions of the photos using the descriptive words on their PicLit. It went so well that I laminated them for reuse. I was amazed at the compositions that developed out of this exercise and, while the words weren't completely of their own selection, most students eagerly turned to a dictionary in order to find the meaning and were able to use the words appropriately. I also have students return to this previous writing at times, when they feel uninspired by the descriptive writing muse. Crazy Talk is a software program that must be downloaded to your computer in order to use it. It is not free (I purchased the "bare bones" basic package at the educator rate of $39.95, and it has been more than enough to dazzle my students. Essentially, Crazy Talk allows you to use any picture and, after lining up a few dots and dropping in an audio file, animate it! For my first project, I used a picture of Langston Hughes and an audio files of him reading "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." I loved the reaction from my students! Now, this can become a time-consuming project, if you are a perfectionist who insists on everything looking completely perfect, but I have to admit that it is a lot of fun. Also, the company offers a free trial version (the final product will appear with a watermark) so you can try before you buy. If this seems too complex and it's just not for you, I recommend trying Blabberize for a similar effect. The drawback to Blabberize is that the end product is not nearly as professional-looking; however, the time and money saved might be enough to keep you happy. www.qwiki.com Like many of the sources that I find and instantly fall in love with, I first discovered this on the Free Tech for Teachers blog, which is an excellent source in and of itself. I would describe Qwiki as Wikipedia, but designed for the multi-media-obsessed-visual-learners-with-attention-span-issues out there like me. You simply type in a search topic (I searched Romeo and Juliet because my English I unit on Shakespeare is quickly approaching. Needless to say, I was truly impressed with the quality of information provided. The multimedia, picture-rich entries are not long-winded, and easily captured my attention. One of the best features was that, if you want more information on a topic, related videos will pop up at the bottom of the entry. Also, words and phrases that have related entries appear in blue during the entry that you are watching. |
AuthorDr. Jessica Pilgreen, Ed.D. Archives
December 2020
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