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Engaging Learners through Digital Storytelling: 40+ Resources & Tips

Posted by  on Wednesday, February 8th 2012     

Currently, I am moderating a free online course, Digital Storytelling for Young Learners, with a dream team of moderators who are phenomenal at working with young learners, Esra Girgin, Barbara Sakamoto, Özge Karaoglu, Jennifer Verschoor, David Dodgson, and Michelle Worgan. Over 250 participants have joined and have shared incredibly imaginative stories in our online class portfolio. One of the most surprising discoveries, though, was that 62% of the teachers who took our survey said they had never had their learners create digital stories. Our language learners have powerful stories to share and often share personal stories in blogs, Facebook, Youtube, or Twitter. Through digital storytelling we motivate our learners to apply, contextualize, visualize, and personalize the language they learn. There are 100s of free digital tools and websites to inspire your learners to create extremely imaginative stories and share them with a global audience. I hope the following tips and resources will help you along your journey towards integrating digital storytelling into your curriculum.

Tips

  • Ease your students into sharing information about themselves by doing a fun icebreaker activity such as Show and Tell with a Cell! Simply have your students take out their cellphones, share one of their favorite pictures and tell the story behind the picture. If they can’t use their cellphones then have them come into class with a picture.
  • Teach your students about creative commons. Below I share some of my favorite websites.
  • For collaborative projects and more detailed stories, have students plot ideas in a storyboard. Kevin Hodgson has some fantastic storyboarding worksheets here!
  • I like to break my students into small groups of 4 and while they are creating their characters and drawing the scenes I elicit vocabulary from them. For example, I will ask questions such as, “Is this a boy or a girl?” “Is it hot or cold?” “Does she have blond or brown hair?”

Recommended Webtools

Literally, 100s of webtools and apps have been shared, but I would like to share with you the ones I believe are the easiest to use. We are listing these in a livebinder, which is being constantly updated.

Creaza- One of my favorite sites where you can create comics, make movies, edit audio, and more! Embed in a blog or wiki.
GoAnimate- Choose from various characters, type in the dialogue, choose your background scene, and create a free fun movie.
DVolver- Choose from various characters, type in the dialogue, choose your background scene, and create a free fun movie.
ZimmerTwins- Choose from various characters, type in the dialogue, choose your background scene, and create a free fun movie.
PicLits- Drag and drop words unto a beautiful image.
Bubblr- create your comic strip with Flickr pictures and add bubbles to tell your story!
Comicmaster – Cool graphic novel creator.
Stripgenerator – You don’t have to register in order to create a comic.
Make Beliefs Comix – Two, three and four panel comics that you can create in multiple languages.
Comic Strip Generator – You can upload photos or use web images in addition to their library of ready-to-use images
ToonDoo – the site allows students to share their comics, comment on other comics, and even save and edit a copy of a comic
Kerpoof – Create videos or an animated picture.
Googlesearch – Use Google searches to tell your story.
OneTrueMedia – Mix your photos and pictures with text and animations.
Blabberize – Make your pictures talk
Smilebox – Create videos from your pictures and videos adding design and music. You download this software to your computer.
Glogster – Create and online poster with your videos.
VoiceThread for Educators-Interactive way to present stories and have parents and other students comment on the stories. Several options. Embed in a blog or wiki.
Storybird-Students create beautiful stories by choosing beautiful art and adding the words. Embed in a blog or wiki.
Voxopop – Construct audio stories.
5cardflicker – Tell your stories through flicker photos.
Zooburst – 3D pop up story creator.
Scholastic story starter – Start your story randomly.
Thestorystarter – Start your story randomly.
LittleBirdTales – Upload your picture, record your voice to tell your stories.
Animoto- Upload up images, choose a soundtrack from the library (many nice holiday tunes to choose from, and click a button to make a free short video online and on your mobile device.

Creative Commons Music and Images

Musicshake – Create copyright free music for your video.
Compfight – Search Flickr photos for your videos.
MorgueFile – Find free pictures for your videos.
Free Music Archive, and Jamendo, and Royalty Free Music are all great places for free creative commons music!
SoundBible - FreeSound – Free sound effects.

Digital Storytelling Apps

Posterous- With this app, learners can include a mix of text, photos, audio, and videos as well as tags and location information in a blog post. Share immediately on Facebook and Twitter! Even allow others to add to your posts (set this up through the web app vs. the mobile app). Free version available online as well as various mobile devices including the iPhone, iPod, Android, and Blackberry.
Flixlab- Like Animoto. Free app to create incredible slideshows on the iPhone, iPod, iPad. Soon available on the Android. No website editing like Animoto but longer videos when using the app. CC library of music, themes, fonts, and more.
StoryRobe- It’s incredibly easy for children and adults to create audio/visual stories on the iPhone and iPod Touch using this app. Use the built in microphone, or any 3rd party microphone to create audio recordings with photos and videos. You have the option to upload to Youtube or send it through e-mail. If it’s in their e-mail, then the parents can easily e-mail their child’s production to their friends! You don’t need an Internet connection to create the stories, but you do to send them! Available on the iPad and iPod.
Splice- Best video editing app for the iPhone, iPod, and iPad that is free. Add audio, transitions, images, and more.
Fotobabble- It’s incredibly easy for children and adults to create audio/visual stories on the iPhone and iPod Touch using this app. Use the built in microphone, or any 3rd party microphone to create audio recordings with photos.
Sock Puppets- If you enjoy playing with sock puppets, you’ll love this app that allows students to create a sock puppet show. Choose the sock puppet characters, personalize the characters by adding your voice, select the scene and props, and record a video. Send this by email or upload to Youtube. Watch this great example. Available on the iPad and iPod.
Puppet Pals- IChoose the western characters, personalize the characters by adding your voice, select the scene and props, and record a video. Send this by email or upload to Youtube. Available on the iPad and iPod.
StoryKit- Create an electronic storybook by drawing on the screen, uploading images, recording sound effects and voice, laying out the elements of the story (text boxes, images, paint, and sound clips) freely by dragging them or pinching to resize, reordering pages, and uploading to the StoryKit web server. Email a link to the story. The application includes four public domain children’s books to rewrite and rearrange into a new story. Available on the iPad and iPod.
Animoto- Upload up to 10 images, choose a soundtrack from the library (many nice holiday tunes to choose from, and click a button to make a 30-second video. Sync your videos with your Animoto.com account, download videos for offline viewing, and make longer ones with an All-Access Pass. Available on the iPad and iPod.
Videolicious- video creation in 3 easy steps
Create A Comic App- free comic creation app for Android and i-devices.

Free ebooks

Digital Storytelling Tools by Silvia Tolisano
Effective Mobile Learning: 50+ Tips & Resources by Shelly Terrell
Digital Storytelling in the Classroom by MicroSoft

Check out my Pinterests with these bookmarks and more!

Challenge:

Try a digital storytelling project with your students this year.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

category: Cool Sites, Effective Technology Integration, Tech Tips, What Works for English Language Learners
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On the Horizon: 20+ Free Professional Development Opportunities for 2012

Posted by  on Monday, January 2nd 2012     

Part of the Cool Sites series

January is the month when many of us are motivated to accomplish our goals for the year. If you are like me then you may have experienced several years of getting goals accomplished then felt defeated. In April 2009, I joined Twitter and began collaborating and communicating with educators and found that this interaction helped me accomplish goals and so much more. With free social media platforms you can begin to develop and harness the power of your Personal/ Passionate Learning Network (PLN) to accomplish goals. Social media provides us with incredible opportunities to choose the way we want to develop professionally. You can choose the topic, the medium, and who you want to learn from. Moreover, online professional development is packed with various types of multimedia experiences, such as webinars, virtual learning environments, discussion forums, live video, podcasts, web 2.0 creation tools, and more. The experience is usually dynamic and motivating because you are learning with others around the world! Below is a list of courses, programs, and webinars that offer you the opportunity to continue learning in 2012.

Upcoming Free Professional Development

Free Online Classes Throughout the Year!

Although many of these don’t necessarily start in January, these free courses are worth keeping an eye on for the rest of the year! They are free online courses taught by authors, subject matter experts, and university lecturers.

  • SEETA Courses- The South Eastern Europe Teachers Association offers several week courses with a guest author or expert in the field. You will have to register, but the courses are free!
  • MOOC- Massive Open Online Courses where 1000s attend for free through discussion forums and free webinars. Follow the hashtag #MOOC for the latest MOOC. University professors, TED speakers, and notable educational theorists moderate these courses. You learn from the very best in our field! Topics range from Personal Learning Networks to Mobile Learning!
  • MIT Open Course Ware offers over 1900 free online courses in over 20 subjects. You can subscribe by RSS or get e-mail updates.
  • Stanford on iTunes- Download courses, faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports that will play on your iPod, iPad, iPhone, Mac or PC.
  • 17 Universities with free online courses- Find out how to access these free courses from some of the most respected universities in the world! This article also describes the experience of learning through these online classes.
  • 250 Free Online Courses- Find a list of several more free online courses from the top universities categorized by subject.

Challenge:

Try any of these professional development opportunities and blog about your experience.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What are your favorite ways to learn online? Did I miss any other great professional development opportunities starting in January?

category: 30 Goals, Cool Sites, Effective Technology Integration

Motivating Students to Learn During Breaks: 20+ Tips & Resources

Posted by  on Tuesday, December 20th 2011     

Many believe that learning occurs incidentally. Children will naturally learn by interacting with the world around them even if educators are not in the picture. Sometimes, that is true but I have found that as a facilitator and guide I can help motivate my students to learn in more challenging ways. Let’s face it, many of our students will be watching TV, playing video games, updating their social networks or texting their friends this holiday. They won’t think about the learning potential of these technologies unless we help guide them. And yes, I feel that is important because if not then many will tend to be couch potatoes and not choose to explore the world around them. Let me suggest some activities that will help you as an educator show your students learning happens anytime, anywhere and can be very fun and active! By the way, these activities are always optional for my students but I find even if they aren’t graded they complete a majority of them.

Slide Presentation

These ideas are outlined in the presentation below but I will explain them a bit more in this post.

Motivating Students to Keep Learning During Breaks

Make the Learning Resemble Video Games

I watched this incredible presentation from Paul Maglione where he outlined things we can learn and adopt from video games. His presentation inspired these thoughts of how we can try to make learning in our classes resemble the learning in video games:

  • It’s social- Sometimes you need a little help from your friends and often in video games this will be with several on social forums sharing tips or cheats; many games also have virtual worlds players can be a part of
  • It’s a representation of the world teens and kids want to be immersed in because it integrates movement, visuals, multimedia, popular music, graphics and more
  • It is goal-oriented- Aim to reach the next level; each level is more challenging, but achievable; and the learner must complete tasks
  • It teaches learning is all around- characters must collect items that help with the journey and must search for these all around them
  • It is a great analogy of what happens when we learn something new in that the learner discovers a new world each time a new level is achieved
  • It focuses on positive stress- yes learning is difficult but most learners are willing to invest several hours to complete tasks they enjoy or reach an outcome they want
  • It shows that failure is part of the journey- learners try again till they reach goals and are not punished with grades, they are allowed to try again with no penalty except the time invested
  • It focuses on the journey- in a video game, every kid can be a hero as long as they keep trying but in schools we punish kids if they stay too long on any level

Tips for Integrating Games into the Curriculum

Ways to integrate games into the curriculum during the break include:

  • Add suggested games by theme and topic to a wiki, blog, or website like I have done in my wiki, English Story Time
  • You will notice many of the activities for the kids involve online games and games that can be played in a room or outside.
  • You will also notice I encourage parents to play these games with their children. Engage parents by listing free events in the community or directing them to free publications with free coupons. In San Antonio, for example, some of our museums are free every Tuesday and we have the SA Kids publication that lists all the library free craft days.
  • For kids, you can find several games at the Kindersite
  • For teens to adults, get them to practice problem solving ways to improve the world by playing Evoke

Tips for Getting Your Curriculum to Resemble Game-based Learning

Make it social

  • Set up a class blog, wiki, Facebook group, Ning, or Edmodo site. Features include private chatting; creating profiles; uploading files, videos, and more; commenting, polling and embedding

Set-up tasks in an advent calendar

  • For each day your students are off they can click the calendar to find a new task worth points.
  • Sharon Hartle includes a PowerPoint advent calendar here that you can edit and customize
  • Use this template to create a calendar in PowerPoint
  • This post by Kelly Tenkely will help you create one through Glogster or Wix
  • Mix up the tasks to include various activities like visiting museum, attending a play, snapping a picture outside, or using an online web tool
  • Provide a points system where they can cash in later to collect prizes
  • Tasks could look something like this:

Mission: Snap a photo of graffiti you think could be art and tell us through an audio recording why you think it is art versus just graffiti.
What You’ll Need: Fotobabble App or visit Fotobabble.com
Points Worth: 10
Bonus Points: Post a short reflection in your blog for 5 more points.

More Ideas

  • Set-up a scavenger hunt. Do this easily through the SCVNGR hunt app for Android and iPhone where students win prizes for going places, completing tasks and checking in
  • Organize a global project! Chances are another school around the world is not on break and this is a great time to sync a meeting with time zones
  • Host weekly meetings through Google Hangouts (only 10 videos), Skype, Second Life virtual field trips, or other platforms
  • Let the students organize their own chat topics and times. You can do this by having students set-up a calendar and organize their own chats. They may want to have a chat for those interested in discussing poetry, another for music, another for a book club, and so forth. Determine student leaders in your class to lead and manage the discussion.

Upcoming Webinar Friday!

If you want to learn more about these ideas then join me Fri., Dec. 23rd, at 4pm EST (New York Time), 3pm Austin, TX, 1pm LA, 7pm Brasilia, 9pm London, 10pm Paris, 11pm Athens/Istanbul, Sat 8am Sydney time, and Sat. 6am Tokyo time for a free presentation, Motivating Learners to Use English During the Breaks

Challenge:
Try one of these tasks and see which motivate your students to keep learning during the holidays!

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

How do you inspire your students to keep learning away from school?

category: Cool Sites, Effective Technology Integration
tags: , , , ,

30+ Holiday Apps for Creativity & Learning

Posted by  on Tuesday, December 6th 2011     

Part of the Cool Sites series

Recently, I presented a webinar with Simple K12, Holiday Apps for Creating Gifts. Children, adolescents, and teens can create very meaningful gifts for friends and family members using several fun apps. The apps are very easy to use, often free, and have various multimedia options. Many integrate images, audio, text, video and extras. Moreover, students write, read, and present digital stories that tie into their real world experience! Children can also easily send the messages, videos, and cards Christmas morning for parents to wake up and see on their phones. Many of these apps have the ability for users to share their productions through online communities, e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter! Some even allow editing online on a website and embedding options.

The Presentation Slides

Holiday Apps for Creating Gifts & Learning

Holiday Video Creation Apps

These are some of the great video apps that are especially geared with Christmas and Hanukkah backgrounds and extras!

  • Flixlab (I-friendly)- Great way to create collaborative holiday videos!
  • Holiday Video by Vlix (I-friendly)- so many cool effects and options.
  • Animoto- Upload up to 10 images, choose a soundtrack from the library (many nice holiday tunes to choose from, and click a button to make a 30-second video. Sync your videos with your Animoto.com account, download videos for offline viewing, and make longer ones with an All-Access Pass.
  • Talking Santa (Android/I-friendly)- search on the app market for your phone’s free version; mimics your voice in the form of a Gremlin
  • Talking Gremlin (I-friendly)- free for a limited time; mimics your voice in the form of a Gremlin
  • Talking Gingerbread Man (I-friendly) mimics your voice in the form of a Ginderbread
  • Wishstix (I-friendly)- record a video of you as an elf telling Santa what you want for Christmas and email to friends.
  • StoryRobe (I-friendly)- It’s incredibly easy for children to adults to create audio/visual stories on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Use the built in microphone, or any 3rd party microphone to create audio recordings with photos and videos. You have the option to upload to Youtube or send it through e-mail. You don’t need an Internet connection to create the stories, but you do to send them!
  • Super Dance Elf Christmas with Friends ($0.99; I-friendly)

Holiday Card Apps

These are some of the great apps that are especially geared with Christmas and Hanukkah personalized cards!

  • RedStamp (I-friendly)
  • Holiday Cards by Sincerely (Android/I-friendly)
  • A Card for That (Android)
  • Fotobabble- Quickly create and easily share talking photos in 3 steps (Snap or select or a photo, speak into the microphone to record audio, share with friends via email, Facebook or Twitter). You do get various holiday themed backgrounds. Example- Here’s Rosco, my pug’s holiday card to you!

Holiday Reading Apps

Inspire kids to read holiday classics with these great apps!

  • MeeGenius- helps kids read (Android/I-friendly)
  • Christmas Tale- Interactive ebook (Android/I-friendly)- Search for the name in your phone’s app store for the free version
  • Santa’s Village- Interactive games/reading (Android)
  • Tales2Go- Audio Stories (free for 30 days; I-friendly)

Holiday Music Creation Apps

Create holiday music or send a singing carol with these great apps!

Holiday Miscellaneous Apps

Create holiday books, write letters to Santa, and so much more!

  • StoryKit- create a holiday book (I-friendly)
  • Letters to Santa (I-friendly; search for the free version)- kids write unlimited letters to Santa Claus who responds
  • Toca Hair Salon Hair X-mas- style Santa’s hair (I-friendly)
  • Christmas coloring (Android/I-friendly)- search in your app store for free versions
  • Santa NaughtyorNice- upload pictures of your friends to see who’s on Santa’s list (I-friendly)
  • Christmas Advent Calendar Kids (Android/I-friendly)- search in your phone’s app store for free versions
  • Norad Santa Tracker (Android/I-friendly/Blackberry)- search in your phone’s app store for free versions; track Santa as he drops off his gifts.
  • Audio Boo (Android/I-friendly/Blackberry)- Free app that allows you to record and upload audio for your friends, family or the rest of the world to hear through Facebook, Twitter, and email. Idea- Share a poem, song, or story inspired by your loved one! Example- Here’s a story about my father called, 2 Feet Tall Trophies! My father used to be a championship bowler!

  • Santa Hat Sewing (I-friendly)- is a brand new arts and crafts app that will lead you all the way to design and sew that perfect Santa Hat for your kids. This art and craft app has been specially designed for the kids to take an active role in making a Santa hat.The Santa Hat Sewing app will teach you and show you how to make a great one. Idea- Create a Santa hat for a favorite doll or loved one with a cute title like Mrs. Claus!
  • Comic Touch Lite (I-friendly)- Create a comic by adding various bubble captions to photos. The free version has the company logo. Example- Below is Rosco’s example!

Rosco the pug

Challenge:

Try these apps with your students and blog about any exciting ways you use them!

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What apps do you love using to send your friends holiday cheers?

category: Cool Sites, Effective Technology Integration, Mobile Learning
tags: , , , ,

18 Educational Apps for Halloween

Posted by  on Monday, October 17th 2011     

Part of the Cool Sites series

Halloween is one of the most fun holidays. Kids love the spooky monsters, sounds, music, dances, treats, traditions, haunted houses, and costumes that surround the holiday. As an educator or parent that has an iPad, iPhone, or iPod you can capitalize on this time to help kids learn while celebrating the holiday. Here are free apps to help encourage math, literacy, and problem-solving skills. Some of the apps are just fun!

Apps

ScrapPad Halloween- Kids create a scrapbook with various creatures, words, and their own images. Have the students write stories to accompany their books. They can even work in pairs. They can email the scrapbooks to their parents or friends or post on Facebook. Only works on the iPad.

Halloween Card Creator- Kids create e-cards with various choices in backgrounds, characters, and their own images and text. Have the students e-mail the e-cards to friends of family members.

Halloween Origami- With this great app, kids learn to create various spooky creatures in origami. Kids can watch videos after seeing the step-by-step instructions.

Halloween Counting & Words Games- Created for the iPad, this free app features 8 different learning games for kids to celebrate Halloween and learn math, spelling, and vocabulary.

Carve A Pumpkin- With this great app from Parents magazine, kids create a jack-o-lantern that lights up after it is carved. Kids can even add spooky stickers to their pumpkin. There are various pumpkins to choose from and backgrounds. Have the students e-mail the e-cards to friends of family members. A follow-up task includes having students get into pairs. Student A describes the pumpkin created. Student B must try to recreate the pumpkin by the verbal description. Make sure the students save the pumpkin to their photo library to compare. You can also have students try to carve their pumpkins in real life after the drawing.

Halloween ebook- Students read this story and it has a personal touch. Kids upload their own photos for a surprise ending at the end of the story.

Talking Skeleton- Like the famous Talking Tom app, kids speak and an animated skeleton repeats their words in a funny voice. Their messages can be recorded through video and sent to parents in an email. Have the students send Halloween greetings to their families or friends or create a video of them doing a Halloween rap.

WordSearch Halloween- This app provides several word searches. These are divided in levels from easy to difficult. Listen to scary music or your own while you play. There are over 200 puzzles under 3 categories- Halloween, costumes, and treats. This app would be great to encourage students to learn various vocabulary. Try getting the kids to then use the words the find in a story or poem.

Word Search- Another Halloween wordsearch app with cool backgrounds but less features than the above app.

Haunted Hangman- Guess the Halloween word and get a pumpkin with treats. If you lose the pumpkin is carved then becomes sad.

Make a Zombie- Students create zombies and choose from various backgrounds, bodies, clothes, eyes, hairstyles, heads, pair of legs and mouths.  A follow-up task includes having students get into pairs. Student A describes the zombie created. Student B must try to recreate the zombie by the verbal description. Make sure the students save the zombie to their photo library to compare. You can also have your students create stories about their zombies and read them in a circle aloud.

Mash-o-Ween- This app is for teens. It is based on a famous game that I played in my teens before mobile devices were mainstream. Teens type in various options for categories and at the end this app tells their future. Have the students work in pairs then after read the fortune to each other. Some of these deal with romance, costumes, and more.

Landon’s Pumpkins- This book has several features to help kids follow along the story and learn vocabulary. At the end a recipe is given for Roasted Pumpkin seeds, which would be a great reward for a teacher to make with a class after reading a story.

It is Halloween- Kids create Halloween scenes with characters and backgrounds. They can even animate them. Have the students write stories to accompany their scenes. They can even work in pairs. They can email these to their parents or friends or post on Facebook.

Halloween Countdown- Features include a Halloween countdown with sounds, various sounds (some you pay for so be careful), ringtones, background music loops, 100s of costume ideas, wallpaper images, trivia, and a flashlight for trick-or-treating.

Halloween Voice Transformer- Only the reaper voice is free, but kids speak into the mic and record their message which then is played back in a spooky voice. Have the students email Halloween greetings or messages to their families or friends or even record a spooky story or song. Thanks to Tara Benwell for recommending this app and sending me a spooky message in my email!

Ace Math- Learn multiplication, division, and addition and celebrate Halloween. This is basic math.

MouthOff Lite- This app works best on the iPhone/iPod. Kids choose between various silly mouths and hold the device to their mouth while they talk. This always brings a lot of laughs. Encourage students to repeat vocabulary or even tell spooky stories in a circle.

If you enjoyed this post, check out other apps I recommend to encourage learning!

Challenge:

Try one of these apps and let us know how they worked for you!

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What Halloween apps have you discovered to encourage literacy?

category: Cool Sites, Effective Technology Integration, Mobile Learning
tags: , , , , , , ,
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