Literacy+2011

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 * Literacy 201 **

**Reading**
"For children, stories are the window to the outside world. Stories continue to tell generations that the world outside is filled with great adventures, heroic princes and beautiful princesses. It also has ogres and monsters that we must battle to keep it that way. I bet all of us have our own favorite stories from childhood. Most of us also have fond memories of hours spent in storytelling. The digital avalanche may have hit the generations that have followed us. They may be growing up too soon. But stories continue to hold their place in the imagination of a child. Hollywood and Disney may also be coloring TV and the movies. But thanks to interactive websites, children’s stories have got a wider canvas to tell their tales. From classical literature to folk tales, and even modern children’s fiction, today’s child can take his pick to read, listen, and watch." [|Check these out.]
 * 10 Websites For Reading Children’s Stories Online**

"We'll focus on three core skill areas - defining, summarizing and comparing using my guide to "[|18 Strategies for Struggling Readers.]" Plus I'll introduce some great websites that they can use with the strategies - the new digital literacy meets the old text literacy. " [|Well worth checking out!]
 * How to Use Web 2.0 to Teach Literacy Strategies to Struggling Readers**

'This is an interactive website based on the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books/games. The characters of Harry Potter have been thrown into The Hunger Games (as tributes or mentors) by Lord Voldemort. The player chooses one of the characters and must read each passage, then makes a decision for that character, which could result in becoming the Victor...or "Reenervate" to try again. If you have students who like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, they will have fun on this website. New characters are unlocked daily & we plan on writing more stories - one with the characters rebelling against Lord Voldemort and breaking out of the arena. It is great practice for reading skills - some characters have longer passages, some shorter. Some have up to 144 different scenarios (that's 144 pages of text). The least amount of reading for a player is 19 pages. So think about your low readers - that may be more than they read in a week by just playing one character. The writers who have/are contributing to this non-profit project include teachers, high school students, college students, professional writers, graphic artists, musicians, librarians, and so many more. We're all fans of both series, of course. :) " @http://www.thepottergames.com/
 * For your older readers:**

"Children’s Books Forever is a simple site that packs a powerful punch for instilling a love of reading at an early age. These are free children’s books that have become classics and children’s favorite books from around the world. The books can be used on an interactive whiteboard, power point, overhead projector, on iPads (or other iDevices), or classroom computers. Did I mention they are free? These fun picture books are downloadable in pdf format and are wonderful for expanding your classroom library. New books are being added regularly to Children’s Books Forever so be sure to check back often!" Description source.
 * Children's Books Forever**

**Writing**
Source [] "The more we podcast and have our students create video clips or other digital storytelling projects, the more we need to teach storyboarding as part of the process. Being able to pre-visualize how your story will unfold is becoming a vital skill to have for storytellers."
 * Storyboarding: Pre-Writing Activity**

Source [|TECHNOLOGY TIDBITS: THOUGHTS OF A CYBER HERO] [|Wordle] - Probably the oldest and most popular of the word cloud creators. Word clouds can then be edited w/ different fonts, colors, and layouts, and even shared w/ others online. Tagxedo - A great way to make word clouds from sites, different social networks, and then change shape to meet your needs (ie, star). Tagul - Similar to Tagxedo, a very easy to use site to create different shaped word clouds. Worditout - A nice site for making word clouds by just copying/pasting text. Word Sift - A excellent site for making word clouds and then editing them by altering the criteria in how it's created. Pictures are also generated to best represent your word cloud. [|VocabGrabber]- A wonderful site similar to Word Sift in making word clouds. However, the clouds generated are color coded for best displaying clouds. Tag Galaxy - An innovative site that visually represents words in a galaxy style format. A must see!!! Tag Crowd - A simple to use site for creating word clouds by pasting in text or a web page URL. Quintura - Is a visual search engine where results are returned in a word cloud style format. TwitterSheep - A fun site that generates it results by keywords found in bios from a user's followers.
 * Top 10 Sites for Creating Word Clouds**

Interactive fiction lets the player explore your worlds and stories through text. Write adventure games, historical simulations, gripping stories or experimental digital art. Inform is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language. It is a radical reinvention of the way interactive fiction is designed, guided by contemporary work in semantics and by the practical experience of some of the world's best-known writers of IF. Give your written language programme some real purpose!
 * Interactive Fiction**

Word Tamer is a neat site for learning the process of developing characters, settings, and plots in creative writing. Word Tamer is set up as an interactive journey through a carnival of literary devices. As students move through the carnival they develop characters, develop a setting, and develop a plot for their stories. At each stop in the Word Tamer carnival students can print out the words they have written. Along the way there are videos to help students understand the roles of characters, settings, and plot development in crafting a good story. Source.
 * Word Tamer - An Interactive Story Builder**

**Digital Storytelling**
Bitstrips for Schools "In my day, reading comics in school was in the same category of forbidden activities as chewing gum and making paper planes. Confiscation was guaranteed. Luckily for kids today, perspectives have shifted, with more and more teachers starting to embrace comics as a tool to engage students and stimulate their interest in reading. An idea that’s getting less attention so far is the potential comics have to improve students’ writing. This isn’t too surprising, since relatively few kids have the combination of patience and artistic skill needed to hand-draw comic strips. That’s where Bitstrips for Schools comes in. It’s a web-based resource that enables any student to write their own great-looking, original comic strips without having to draw." Sourced from Teacher Challenge: Connecting teachers through free professional learning FlipSnack Convert PDFs into stylish page flip books. FlipSnack is an online flipping book software that allows you to convert PDF documents into Flash page flip digital publications. It's the ideal solution for those who wish to embed a book, magazine, catalog, newspaper, portfolio or any other kind of document into a website or blog. Once created, you can embed your flipping book collection, download them or share them on social networking websites such as Facebook.