Why you should use blogs and wikis with your students

I have been reading various articles about teaching and education this past week, and one word keeps popping up over and over: collaboration. Collaborating with others by sharing ideas and resources is an important skill for students to have, and one that employers highly value. Using digital media to work collaboratively is one of the ISTE standards for students.

Blogs and wikis are just two of the many web 2.0 tools available that allow students to interact and collaborate with each other. If you would like to learn more about using blogs and wikis in the classroom, you can view the Voicethread I put together below. In it, I describe some of the benefits of blogs and wikis, and ways you can use them in your classroom or library.

https://voicethread.com/share/7597895/

Blogs-and-Wikis Voicethread Script

Happy collaborating!

 

 

Digital storytelling tools – tools every librarian should know!

This week in my grad class, we had to play around with various Web 2.0 tools. I focused on digital storytelling tools like the Tarheel Reader, Mixbook, and Storybird. I really liked all of the educator features that Storybird has, so I focused on that tool and made a screencast of how to use it.

Storybird allows students to create their own digital stories online. Storybird is a unique tool because it has professional artwork that students can use as illustrations and as inspiration for their written work. In addition to writing stories, students can also use the Reading section and read stories from other students in their classes, or any of the stories published on Storybird.

Storybird supports the Common Core State Standards in writing. Some of the connections to the anchor standards for Writing are:

Standard 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences.

Standard 4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Standard 5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

Standard 6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

Standard 10. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

There are plenty of ideas already out there online for ways to use Storybird in the classroom. For this project, I used Storybird as part of a third grade writing unit on narrative writing. In Frederick County, as part of the 3^rd grade English-Language Arts curriculum, classes go through a unit on narrative writing.   Over three or four weeks, students create a writing notebook where they start several different stories. Then they go back and choose one of their stories to develop further into a published piece. Storybird is a great tool for this, because it can be the place for students to keep all of their stories, and for their final published piece. Here is an example of a digital storybook I was able to create using Storybird:

http://storybird.com/books/narrative-story-the-witch-of-the-forest/?token=9ab92hxywy

If you would like to learn more about Storybird and how to use it, feel free to watch my screencast here:

http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cDn2rD1c69

Enjoy!