Links to help you become Digital Teachers
DIGITAL TEACHING
To fully integrate digital technology into your teaching, you have to transform what you are doing rather than just use technology as a way to do what you did before. You need to stay on top of changes, be adaptive to enlisting your students to help and give to them some control of the learning process. All of this, of course, comes against a backdrop of new iniatives, not enough equipment and not enough training. So this ongoing and changing collection of resources, organizational tools and cool apps are intended to help you in your endeavors; while YWP doesn't specifically endorse these applications, we have checked them out and we've chosen these over dozens upon dozens of others to save you a little time. Our biases are these: That the application works, that it is low cost or free; that its relatively simple; that it has use in a digital writing classroom enviroment.
This is a wiki, a document editable by other members of this site. If you wish to add your links, please do so. This is a living breathing document that will be updated on a regular basis. -- geoff gevalt, director of young writers project, inc.
Digital Teaching - Books
Digital writing workshop, Troy Hicks (2009) Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH (166 pp.)
Drive, Daniel Pink (2009) Penguin Group: USA (256 pp.)
Teaching the new writing: Technology, change and assessment in the 21st century classroom, Anne Herrington, Kevin Hodgson, and Charles Moran, editors. (2009) Teachers College Press: New York, NY and National Writing Project: Berkeley, CA (228 pp.)
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson
Web Literacy for Educators, Alan C. November
Digital Teaching - Resources
Making Teaching Public Website. A digital exhibition of teaching experiences and tips from teachers around the country.
Teachers teaching teachers. Not the smoothest looking resource in the world, but filled with good stuff.
Edutopia -- A premiere resource for information about how to use technology in schools.
EduTecher -- Some good video tutorials.
Digital Teaching - Education blogs
Bud Hunt is a teacher who has been blogging and focusing on digital education for years.
Will Richardson is a former teacher who now does training, research and blogging about digital education.
Ewan McIntosh is also a formidable expert in digital education.
November Learning OK, a little self-serving, ywp's director Geoff Gevalt has a guest blog, but there are some really good folks on this blog and the NL blog itself is quite informative.
- For more blogs, check the "Blog Roll" on the front page of this site.
Digital Teaching - Information feeds
Google reader -- Set up a Google Reader stream of some of the educational blogs listed or others that interest you so that you can keep on tap of what is happening.
Twitter -- Explore Twitter as a way to FOLLOW great digital educators and see what they are linking to. Start by going to geoff gevalt's Twitter account and follow some of the people he's following and follow some of the people those folks are following...
DIGITAL CLASSROOMS
People often confuse a wiki or a blog with a digital classroom. A wiki is a content type that allows more than one user to edit. A blog is a content type that was originally an individual's Web journal, but in this context refers to a student's regular posting of school work, home work and independent work in a shared space. A digital classroom should have various content types, should be oriented toward student engagement and creativity (not classroom administration) and should facilitate commenting. A successful strategy is to get students to build community and consider the space their own.
Keyboarding, of course, is a vital skill in writing and blogging. A site that recommends good tutorial software for keyboarding.
Digital Classrooms - Ideas and exemplars
youngwritersproject.org: This is a a civil community of teens, presently only from Vermont and New Hampshire, who share work, comment and collaborate outside of school. YWP is taking a limited number of students from outside the primary geographic area and is strategizing on how to create similar sites for other states. Virtually all the content is observable by non-users; notice how these teens have created a community and relate to each other with remarkable civility. Digital civility fosters engagement and creative risk taking.
Secret Life of Bees Study Guide While this seems ancient, by Web standards, it shows how creating a wiki (shared document that more than one person can edit) still is an interesting example of what more and more classes are doing -- digital book reading groups, collaborative wikis on books.
A high school journalism blog site that combines student work with instruction.
A high school pre-calc class blog.
A sixth grade blog in Alaska, though it is dormant, it is a great template for digital class.
Digital Teaching - Cool apps
ywpschools.net Young Writers Project works with about 35 schools each year in VT and NH. We are nearly full for the 2011/12 year, but are interested in 'pilots' in urban areas or in other countries. This service is offered at a price scaled to a school's ability to pay. Includes training, mentoring during the year. Contact Geoffrey Gevalt for more information.
edu2.0.com This seems more oriented to classroom management, but it's free and people are using it for class blogging.
kidblog.org Also a free service for student blogs; good functionality in being able to encourage commenting and see what others are doing.
To create your own:
- wordpress.org This software is relatively easy to use and set up. It's free. But it does take some time and effort to do right.
- blogger.com Again, can't beat the price and a great way to get started. But hard to administer and keep track of.
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glogster.com Middle school kids love it because it allows them to create visually arresting displays of their words, pictures and voices. Finished work can be embedded in most blogs. Free.
- edublogs.com This has a limited free offering -- storage is low and some advertising. But worth looking at. This service was great and free, but they changed the financing model.
- ning.com This was also headed in a very nice direction -- intuitive, free -- but recently started charging. Check it out though; has many fine features.
More links on blogging -- for beginning adopters
COMMENTING
Active, constructive commenting is, without a doubt, the key to strong digital classroom communities. While attention is always given to cool applications and multi-media, it is the peer-to-peer engagement, the community building, the critical observation that comes from commenting that determines whether a digital classroom is successful.
IMAGES
They say an image is worth a thousand words but the fact is an image can stimulate a thousand words. Images can be powerful as prompts -- for quick, 7-minute writes or for exercises to create short stories. Powerful personal images or related images can be the foundation for a photo story or a digital story (one that also has sound).
Images - Resources
The National Archives is the granddaddy of all archives and has some amazing material over and above images -- historic speeches, videos, documents, etc. A fantastic digital resource for use in all manner of things.
Here is the link to the National Archives Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives
Shorpy.com has some fantastic antique photos of all sorts -- some odd, some famous. It has collections of Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine and Ansel Adams, much of it in the public domain.
Other sources of photos:
- Stock Exchange
- Pics 4 Learning
- Library of Congress American Memory
- Flickr photos that are under creative commons licenses
- Wylio - When Google Images is blocked
Images - Organizational tools
Picasa -- The big cheese; now owned by Google, this is a pretty comprehensive service, storage, editing, collage making, synch to your computer. Definitely worth checking out as a class storage/use area. Also allows you to create shareable and embeddable (is there such a word) slide shows.
Flickr -- Yahoo's version; this has been around for a while and is a great photo sharing platform. This has many uses, though it's not quite as robust as Picasa.
flickandshare.com this is a terrific free program that allows you to share some of your entire Flickr "sets" with others, or to download your own sets to another computer or application. Very handy; for instance, YWP has a private library of photos designed for prompts and story development; we can easily share those links with you and you can download those fotos for use in educaitonal settings.
Drop Gallery - Load, Sort, Save, and Share photos
Yogile - Easy photo sharing and gallery making
Drop Event - Online Photo Sharing that allows others in the class to contribute without having to sign in.
Images - Cool apps
5-Card Flickr -- This is a great invention and, of course, an idea that you could do on your own. This site offers random 5 photos in horizontal sequence and kids can write a story based on those photos. You could do this yourself, but this site is kind of fun. Project the photos on a screen.
Shape Collage - Take pictures and make them into a collage with a shape
FlickrPoet - This is unique; try it out. Insert Text, get pictures to match text
Photovisi - Online Collage creation with your own photos
Picnik - Online photo editing
SOUND
Sound as a prompt can be more daunting for students, particularly younger ones, but in the right setting can also be incredibly powerful. Creating podcasts, or having students read or perform their pieces, is a great tool to get them to understand voice, to see potential revisions, to understand tone and style. Podcasting is also a great tool for world language learning and for students with special challenges.
Sound - Resources
archiv
e.org This site has a treasure trove of public domain sounds, images, videos, music and text. Sound effects are very cool to use as writing prompts or to have students to use in complementing their story. Many of the materials can be used for digital storytelling.
copyright friendly music and sound
More copyright free music:
Video2MP3 - or listentoyoutube.com YouTube to MP3 converters
Sound - Cool apps
audacity.com This is a wonderful, free, open-source program that allows you to record, edit sound, create tracks and convert any audio file to an mp3 for easy upload to the Web. To download: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ NOTE: You also need to download a related file called LAME for converstion to mp3; put this file in your audacity folder and the first time you export to mp3, it will ask you where this file is; from then on your computer will remember. The download link for the LAME file.
ipadio.com This is a free service that allows students to use a ubiquitous piece of technology -- the telephone -- to make a podcast, or as ipadio calls it a phonecast or phlog. This is a free service, with a free account AND free call-in. Easy to use. Students can read their piece, or say their peace, then download the mp3 and upload it to their digital classroom, blog or classroom management system. Sound quality is decent for what it is -- easy to use. Also has voice to text services.
podomatic.com is a free service for students to create a podcast and it can be embedded on the school blog. For a run through on this: Bill Bryson's blog on how to podcast
aviary.com The best way to describe this program is that it's Audacity on steroids. In fact, the tools package and the ability to create free educational accounts make this almost a must. Kids can create mixes, record directly onto the computer, draw from a sound/clip bank and upload their own podcasts or sounds. Very cool. Also Image editor, music creator and more. Check it out.
vuvox.com This is a good example of how a great idea doesn't quite get developed to its full potential. This site, created in 2007, was sold to eBay in 2008 and has not seen much development ever since. While it advertises that it can handle sound and video files, don't bother -- it's too quirky. HOWEVER, this is a fun site for horizontal collages and for adding text over pictures and collages.
MULTIMEDIA
There has been more development in this area of Web apps than anywhere. There are many applications that allow students to combine music and sound and images and words; here are a few.
Multimedia - Resources
archive.org (again) This site has a treasure trove of public domain videos and music Many of the materials on this site can be used for digital storytelling.
Multimedia - Cool apps
prezi.com If ever there was a software that kids could figure out before adults, this is it. A cool way to present a project that allows for text, images, sound and video. And it can be manipulated to move all around and present in an interesting way. A slide show that seems to know no physical bounds. Fun.
museumbox A British site that allows for creation of presentations on a cube -- text, attachments, photos, sound and video.
Multimedia - Video apps
Vimeo.com YWP highly recommends this site. Very easy to use; free and the upgrade to a school account is dirt cheap. Great storage spot for videos and slideshows, easy to download, embed or share.
YouTube.com Many schools block this but you should try to get kids' access to it; it contains tremendous archival, historical footage as well as breaking news footage. There's junk and there is incivility but perhaps that should be part of what you teach the kids -- how to deal with inappropriate words and content. As a video storage space, this is very easy to use and free.
DragonTape - Create online video mix tapes
Photobucket – Edit videos within a browser using Flash and remix photos and home videos with other elements, such as music, video captions and transitions.
[UPDATE: While this app: Jaycut - Online Video Editor was cool and was a creation of the Aviary.com group, it looks as though it has been spun off and sold to RIM (the Blackberry folks) has put this project on hold. Check back with it to see what they are doing, but we fear this will become a pay service.]
Video2MP3 - or listentoyoutube.com YouTube to MP3 converters
TubeChop - Chop up YouTube Videos and the sections you like.
Stylized services -- where students video, images, etc can be mashed up with set styles and sounds or choices of media to showcase or include: Less control, but easy and fun.
- animoto.com is a site that allows students to use their photos and music and sound to create a video slide show. Works well as a complement to text.
- Stupeflix - Digital Story Telling; kind of goofy backdrops, but fun and easy, particularly for younger kids.
- Masher - Digital Story Telling, free servicer allows you to upload photos and videos, sound and to access a variety of public domain resources.
- One True Media - Digital Story Telling, pretty easy to use, choose from styles and background music.
- Kizoa - Online Slideshow Maker
(If you are brave, here's a good source of all sorts of links and services related to video: http://mashable.com/2007/06/27/video-toolbox/ )
DIGITAL STORYTELLING
Digital storytelling is the use of images, sound and narration. A simple version is a photo story which is a narration and one image. These are great projects to do but plan them out as progressive steps -- Idea >> draft >> add image >> create podcast >> create slideshow >> add music or, considered another way, a Quick Write >> Revision >> Podcast >> Photo Story >> Digital Story.
Digital Storytelling - Equipment
To do a digital story to share on the Web, you'll need some basic equipment or access to this equipment:
- Computer with a mic or digital recorder (best ones are those that save to a flash card for easy uplaoding to your conputer)
- Sound editing software
- Scanner for hard-copy photos
- Internet connection
- Blog or Web site
Digital Storytelling - Resources
Folk Streams, a national preserve of documentary films about American roots cultures
Creative Narrations, a digital storyboard.
The Story Center, (Center for Digital Storytelling) is the leading edge site for digital storytelling.
Digital Storytelling - Ideas and Exemplars
digitalteachers.net/frankglazer
http://www.storycenter.org/stories/
http://www.storycenter.org/stories/index.php?cat=3
http://www.streetside.org/stories/tech-tales/2006-07/angelicaE.htm
http://winooskims.ywpschools.net/node/603
http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=2265
Digital Storytelling - Cool apps
There are many desktop software programs for creating slideshows -- Photo Story for Windows and iMovie for Mac are two. This document is mainly for doing the project on the Web or for uploading to Web apps where they can be easily stored, shared and embedded in your digital classroom.
Soundslides is really the best. It's inexpensive. Robust and fairly easy to use. And it allows for desktop creation and uploading to the Web. The latter is a little tricky, but very much worth the learning curve to use this software.
Once you have uploaded the "publish_to_web" folders and your soundslide is working, here's a widget to get the embed code: http://tools.soundslides.com/embed/ Just type in the EXACT url of the sound slide file (including the index.html) and it will give you the embed code to put directly into your blog.
photopeach.com is another service that allows you to create a slideshow with sound and you can then embed your finished story on another Web site.
googlesearch videos this is a little different take on the practice of digital storytelling, but it's interesting.
Projeqt - This is a BETA site, but very cool. Stories through a photo/text timeline. Looks like you can embed video as well, but have not yet determine how you can embed straight audio.
SlideShare - This is probably best as a presentation tool but can be used for digital stories. As with many Web programs, this now has ads.They seem innocuous enough, but keep that in mind. It costs $20 a month for no ads. You can easily add audio to your slide shows, and synch it.
Prezi - This is best described as a "non-linear" digital story creation tool. Great for presentations or projects, too.
SlideRocket - This is akin to SlideShare but has a lot more features and is easier to use than PowerPoint and Keynote on your desktop
280 Slides- Online Slide Presentation creation app; beta
onetrumedia.com allows you to upload and arrange your slides.
DIGITAL TEACHING - Word clouds
Creating word clouds is fun -- its visual, and it shows something. But what? These are great tools for analyzing text -- speeches, say -- to determine what were the most important words. Which leads to the question of why? So word clouds can be created of politician's speeches, as an example, and student can then use the cloud to analyze the message or write an essay.
abcya.com -- VERY easy way to create a jpeg of a collection of words. Kids will love it.
Wordle - Great site for making graphic representations of words.
tagcrowd.com -- (Thanks to Ewan McIntosh for this one) this has much simpler fonts than wordle and is, actually, much clearer in highlighting which words are used more and are, therefore, more important.
Digital Teaching - Collaboration
Google Docs, is handy, though it requires gmail.com accounts. We recommend getting the entire Google Educational apps; you can create some good interactions and collaborations. A little bulky but lots there. And Google is, after all, going to be around for a long time.
Skype.com Hard to say where this tool fits in but it's terrific and should be part of every classroom's tools to connect with people all over -- schools in other locations, people to interview; real time communication, a kind of free Web conferencing, lots of uses.
iDroo - Collaborative Whiteboard for Skype. YWP has not yet tried this out, largely because it requires a Windows based operating system computer. So if anyone out there has tried it and can tell us whether this should be recommended, let us know.
Bubbl.us - This allows you to create a series of connected "bubbles" to reflect brainstorming or process steps and then export the creation as a .jpg. Would be interesting to have kids use this as part of a process writing piece. While you can't have simultaneous creation by multiple users, there are ways it could be used collaboratively.
Type with me -- A website that allows you to write collaboratively with another person, in real time, and the export the document in multiple formats. Free and simple.
Digital Teaching - File sharing and file conversion
This can be handy if you want to share some documents for kids to download at home AND they don't have the right programs Again, Google Docs is the rave, but there are some drawbacks: For instance,when you upload a file, it must be converted to the Google equivalent; sometimes this is not what you want to do. And, sometimes going the other way, the text doesn't line up aw well. The advantages are that it's an easy way to get input on content.
Zamzar - File Conversion Site. This is very handy for converting a .wpd to a .doc or just about any file to just about any format
YouConvertIt - File conversion
Dropbox a free service to save documents online and share them. This seems to be the best of a bunch of similar services and it has a few related apps to allow for secure retrieval and secure requesting of files if security is an issue.
DROPitTOme - Securely receive files from DropBox
AirDropper - This is a secure way to request a file from anyone through Dropbox
Ge.tt - Simple File Sharing... Simple is the word. Dropbox can be a tad confusing, and this is simple; but the files disappear after 90 days, which is fine if you're just transferring and don't need a little storage.
Digital Teaching - Comics & Cartoons
Chogger - Online comic creation that allows you to draw, type, and upload images from Google.
Xtranormal - Turn text into cartoons to create your own unique movie.
Comic Master - Online comic creator that resembles a graphic novel of sorts.
Toonlet - Simple and easy comic strip creation that utilizes pre-made character features and attributes.
Digital Teaching - Presentation/publication tools
SimpleBooklet - This is an interesting little app that allows you to create booklets or simple little inserts in a blog. No sign up needed
Jing -- This is a free (paid version is better and cheap) Web based software to create screen casts; this can be helpful for showing students how to do things. (Or, maybe, for some of your students to show you how to do things.) This is a TechSmith product which also sells Camtasia, the desktop version with lots of editing tools.
screenr.com -- Another free screen saving program that records and turns it into a video.
scribd.com -- This is an excellent site for converting pdfs into ezine type documents. Easy to use and is a way to convert student work into a combined ezine. Scribd is in the process of going to html5, which means they can be read in iPad, but at the moment it doesn't feature page turning, as in a kind of ebook format. They say it will return.
Digital Teaching - Miscellaneous
International School Matching Network This (iNet) is a part of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in London and, for a small fee, helps schools connect with each other around the world.
The Plagiarism Checker - This works. And you can upload a Word Document
One Word - This is a fun exercise place -- a word and you have a minute to write. That's all. It works as a blog and kids can post and keep track of what they've written and see what others have written.
polleverywhere -- Polling via texting, smart phone or web; dirt easy, free (or you can determine what level you need and change on a monthly basis) easy to embed on your own website.
MATH ALERT! Khan Academy -- Amazing video tutorials on math, math and more math. Awesome.
MATH ALERT 2! MathTrain -- Is a fantastic sources of math tutorial videos by kids for kids.
CREATIVITY ALERT! 99 Awesome videos They are. And there are 99 of them.
CREATIVITY ALERT2! -- This site, newtools.org is the brainchild of John Davitt, writer, broadcaster, digital toolmaker. Check it out. AND he's working on a totally new Web site set up and he has a iPhone app version of this.
INFORMATION ALERT! knol is a google beta and it is a cross between wikepedia and blogs by smart people. Interesting resource.
Learn It In 5 - Tutorial Videos for Learning Web 2.0 Tools in 5 minutes. Some of these could be edited better and, in fact, be less than 5 minutes, but they're pretty good.
TechTrainingWheels - A Site with videos explaining technology tools
CNN Student News -- This is great if you can bring it into your digital classroom via RSS
