Get Students Engaged in Writing!

Every heard of BoomWriter?  It sounds like a very cool Web tool that I think will engage all types of learners.  

BoomWriter in a nutshell is an online storytelling application that presents the first part of a story and then leaves the next part up to the students.  After the students write each of their chapters, they are submitted and then the other participants read all of the submissions and vote on the best one.  The best part is that the writing is anonymous so the students are voting solely on the written work, not who wrote it!!

Take a peek at the video below - it gives a much better introduction!

Keep me posted if anyone tries this out in their school  :-)

Tablets

It is amazing how many tablets there are to choose from now!  My school has pretty much evolved into a Mac-centric school, thus far investing in 200+ iPads and many other Apple devices.  As much as I love our iPads, they are not the easiest to manage.

I have come across a few other tablets that are designed strictly for education; Kuno, iStartSmart (for early learning, check out this article), Nabi and most recently Amplify.

The way that these tablets are designed make curriculum, assignments, lessons and your students more manageable and creates a more student-driven, individualized environment!

Check out these two videos demonstrating use of the Amplify Tablet




If you have used any of these tablets please leave a comment as I would LOVE to hear your feedback and opinion.

Wallwisher Update

I am sure many of you have used Wallwisher in the past, but it was recently brought to my attention that it is now called Padlet.  I am pleased with changes; the layout and user friendly interface make it a great web tool.  You can still add files from your computer, images from your device's camera and URLs.

The creators have recently announced the launch of Streams as a layout option.  This layout gives you the option to have structure to your layouts instead of the posts being in freeform.  This layout arranges the posts one below the other in chronological order, which will allow for even more creative ways to use this tool.  Students could work on a story or other text collaboratively, you could begin a story and have your students work on it by adding their own parts during literacy stations or from home, post a discussion topic and have students add their thoughts/opinions, use it as a message board having students post questions or comments about the content...be as creative as you want.

Here are some other ideas listed on Padlet's website.  Visit the site to see examples!

I am sharing a job aide that may help new users start a Padlet.