Get to Know Your New Students Through Comics. As every teacher knows, it can take a while for new students to open up to each other and to you.
One way to get them to share stories about themselves is to have them put it into a fun comic story. Through creating comic stories you can have students share favorite stories from their summer vacations. In the process students learn how to use a new tool, practice developing storylines, and they let you in on a little bit of who they are as people. Here are a few web-based tools that your students can use to create comic stories to share with you. Comic Master is a free tool designed for students to use to create comics in the "graphic novel style" that is popular with a lot of kids in the ten to fourteen years old age range.
Storyboard That provides templates in which you can create your stories in a comic strip style. Make Beliefs is a free comic strip creation tool that provides students with a variety of templates, characters, and prompts for building their own comic strips. Odyssey.js - A New Way to Create Mapped Stories. Odyssey.js is a new open source map creation tool from CartoDB.
Through Odyssey.js you can create mapped stories in three formats; slide, scroll, and torque. In all three formats viewers will see a location on a map along with the text and pictures of your story. The slide and scroll formats are fairly straight-forward, you click through slides or scroll through a story. The torque format allows you to connect elements of your map to a timeline. Odyssey.js does not require you to know how to code, but it might feel that way the first time that you open it. Applications for Education Odyssey.js could be a good tool for students to use to create stories about historical events and current events that involve multiple locations. Odyssey.js does not require you to create an account in order to create a mapped story. H/T to Google Maps Mania and The Next Web. Super Storytelling with StoryBird. A List of the Best Free Digital Storytelling Tools for Teachers. Via Educatorstechnology.com Digital storytelling, the practice of combining narrative with digital content, is gaining more ground in the educational field.
Many schools and educational centres all around the globe are including learning method in their curriculums and the results are really promising: more of students’ engagement and a bigger degree of motivation. Telling a story is a powerful way to communicate with others. Think about those moments when you would share a story about yourself with your students and how everyone of them is dialed in waiting on the next word to come out of your mouth.
And when this storytelling is combined with a set of powerful digital tools it becomes a truly authentic learning experience that helps students develop a wide range of intellectual skills. Here some of the pluses of digital storytelling in education : Here is the list of some of the best free digital storytelling tools for teachers1- ZimmerTwins It is all about creative storytelling. Related. Narrative Editors. Story Starters: Creative Writing Prompts for Kids. Toontastic.... {best classroom app I've seen in a long time} Have you heard of Toontastic for the iPad?
Have you used it in your classroom on? Check out this intro video!!! What a fun and engaging way to teach story elements while using technology {and it's FREE in the app store!} From their website: Toontastic inspires the artist and writer in every child while teaching key storytelling principles that help to promote Creativity at a young age. Toontastic’s drawing tools bring kids’ wildest ideas to life alongside virtual playsets chock full of pirates, princesses, far away galaxies, and many other characters and settings to spark the imagination. I just heard about it a few weeks back during story time with our librarian. I think anytime you can find a tool that the kids are THIS excited about... it's a keeper! Need a planning sheet for your kiddos? Hope you all had a great Thursday... be back tomorrow with my Five for Friday post.
My StoryMaker : Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Story Starters.