There are lots of great websites out there for creating music: Image from: http://www.openclipart.org/detail/366 My favorite is Aviary'smusic creator - Choose instruments, and draw them on a page of empty circles. Try it out and you will see what I mean...
Here is a simple song I literally created in under a minute. Imagine what could be done with more time...
Sketch Music- Create music using a sketch pad. Draw with the piano, drums, clarinet, or trumpet. Click on the composer to hear your drawing. From the site Creating Music. Play A Piano- Play a digital piano using your keyboard or mouse. Audio Tool- Make music from your web browser, connect with other users, remix other peoples tunes. Audacity- free program for recording and editing sounds.
A collection of excellent sites to help with brainstorming!
eyePlorer- a graphical knowledge engine! Check out the video below for a simple explanation of eyePlorer:
Lexipedia- type in a term and a colour coded web of verbs, adverbs, adjectives, fuzzynyms, synonyms, and antonyms will be created. Scroll over the words to see the definitions, usage, and click on it if you wish to hear the pronunciation. Visuwords- an online graphical dictionary. Type in a term and a map of associated terms and other words and concepts will appear. Below is a sample image of a visuword created for the term education:
Live Plasma- Type in a term related to music and movies for an interactive mind map.
Touch Graph- Creates interactive mind maps of Google searches. Wikimindmap- creates mind maps of wiki inspired content. Mappio- a collection of mind maps. Upload your own mind maps or search for one already mad. Here is a mind map on energy saving tips for schools.
Mapul.com- create and browse through a collection of mind maps.
Image from: www.openclipart.org/search/?query=music&page=9 Whether working on a digital story, creating a podcast, or making a radio play, these resources provide a variety of unique sound effects:
Freesound- A database of Creative Commons sounds. Soundjay- Free sound effects including human, domestic, machine, nature, and transportation sound effects. Mysoundfx- quality free sound effects. PartnersinRhyme- Free music loops and sound effects Sounds- Free sound effect library.
Soungle- A simple search engine for finding sounds.
Websites can be used in the classroom for a variety of purposes. Students can create an online portfolio or create a site on a specific topic. The class can create a website featuring newsletters to parents, links to educational games, student work, pictures, and so much more.
Weebly- website creation has never been so easy, simply drag and drop elements and edit them to create a professional looking website.
Wix.com- Create a flash website without the use of flash! A little bit more advanced then Weebly.
Yola.com- easy to use website creator. Upload images, pdfs. and more...
Lifeyo - Another simple website creator. Choose from custom themes, add a photo gallery, and add a blog to your site.
Webs- create a site that works for you. Add a blog, invite members , and bring your site to life!
Image: pureclipart.com Chatbots are robots that respond to text. Chatbots are a great way for EAL students to develop basic conversation skills either by talking to a chatbot or developing their own chatbot. Bots as language learning tools is an article that discusses the potential for bots to benefit EAL students. Below are some chatbot sites:
pandorabots- create your own chatbots! chatbots.org- A large collection of chatbots. jabberwacky.com Speak to George or Joan in text or say it aloud. cleverbot.com Type questions into a text box to talk to the cleverbot. icogno.com Speak to Joan a videocentric avatar.
Below are some Chatbots shared by Shelly Terrell:
BELL- A female chatbot that responds to messages typed in by children and adults.
ESLFast- Students can speak with Tutor Mike, a male bot, or the female shopping bot. There are many dialogue examples on the right side of the website. English language learners can listen and read the various dialogues for various situations.
Elbot- This is a robot that chats with students. Click on the red button on his stomach to chat with him.
Timelines provide a nice visual of when things happened or will happen. Have students make them to create a historical overview of events, record class birthdays, document school events, summarize the plot of a story and the list goes on...
Capzles - Quite simply one of the nicest timeline creation sites around, w/ a beautiful user interface as well as the ability to embed into a site.
Time Rime - An excellent site w/ educational instance (great for teachers) that allows users to create multimedia timelines.
xTimeline - Share wonderful looking timelines w/ audio, video, and pictures. Very user friendly too!!
TimeGlider - Great site that not only lets users create multimedia timelines but legends as well. There is a "plus upgrade" in the works specifically for education!
Dipity - Create beautiful timelines w/ the ability to add video/pictures.
Time Toast - A bullet point centered timeline w/ text and pictures.
Preceden - A fun easy site to use to create interactive timelines.
Timelinr - A very simple to use timeline generator that only displays text.
Our Timelines - Create timelines by using preexisting forms (text only).
Read Write Think - Very similar to Our Timelines for creating text only timelines.
There are many great sites out there to assist teachers with making interactive quizzes, games, and so much more. Check out some of the great resources I found:
Classtools.net is a website where you can create your own interactive flash games on any topic. Here is a guide from technologyintegrationmentors.com on how to use classtools.net. Here is an example of a quiz I created:
Superteachertools.com features a variety of flash game creators including jeopardy, who wants to be a millionaire, and a board game creator. This site also features a variety of classroom management tools including a seating chart maker with drag and drop, a random name generator and a group maker.
Yacapacao.com allows teachers to create quizzes, surveys, tests, eportfolios, and more.
Kubbu.com allows you to create basic crosswords, games and quizzes.
Jeopardylabs.com is an easy way to create jeopardy games that can be played online. You can also play the jeopardy games created by others.
Quizlet.com create and share sets of flash cards. Great for creating simple study guides.
Hot Potatoes is downloadable freeware for creating interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the web.
Students can use avatars and cartoon character creating tools to recreate historical figures, represent themselves, or to design characters for a story!
Build Your Wild Self- Is a site where you can create yourself as a human choosing from clothes, hair, ears, etc. Then you can add animal parts such as a tail, horns etc. and email or save your creation! Above is my wild self... DoppelMe- An excellent avatar creator. Creature Creator- Create a creature choosing from claws, eyes, tails etc. and paint it any colour. My Avatar Editor- Create an avatar using the same characteristics as characters found on the Nintendo Wii. Create a Dragon- Make a dragon on this site! Grabbabeast- Create a monster avatar!
Storybird is a site that allows you to tell short stories using artwork submitted by others as inspiration. First you choose a collection of art, then you write your story arranging the art and pages any way you wish. You can also collaborate with others by inviting them to join you while you write a story. It is extremely simple to use and would be easy to incorporate into early elementary classes. Watch the video below to learn more about Storybird...
Picture Book Maker is a site for creating children's books. Choose from a variety of settings, animals, and props to create a scene and add text. Email or print your completed book!
Tikatok is a site where children can write, illustrate, and save their story for free. These books can be ordered as a softcover, hardcover, or pdf ebook for prices listed on the site. Children can create a story from scratch or use a storyspark to prompt them. They can upload their drawings to illustrate their story. This site features a free teacher registration that includes a teacher dashboard and ideas for using Tikatok in the classroom.
Storyjumper - is a place for children to publish their own stories. The site provides 7 steps for writing stories for those who do not know where to start. you can use your own illustrations or pictures in your story and share your story online for free.
Storysomething features various children stories that can be personalized by changing the names of the main characters.
BigUniverse is an excellent site for creating stories. Choose from thousands of images, arrange and resize them the way you want, add a background, and add text! Also read the stories created by others. Both free and premium options are available.
Zooburst is a site where you can create digital 3-d pop-up books.
The Art of Storytelling is a site created by the Delaware Art Museum. On this site children can use artworks to inspire their stories. They begin by choosing an artwork under tell a story or they can go to picture a story and choose the genre, background, characters, and props. Next they write a story based on the scene they have created and then they can tell the story using audio recording. They can share their story through email and submit it to the Delaware online gallery of stories. This site features a teacher resource section with lesson plans for grades 3 and up.
One Million Monkeys Typing is a collaborative storytelling website. This website would be great to use in a high school classroom.
The website provides a nice explanation of how it works:
1. Read Start reading. When you finish a snippet of text, click 'read more'. You will be presented with three unique paths that continue the story. If you like your options, keep reading.
2. Write If you reach an end, or simply don't like the story's trajectory, graft a new snippet and take the story's direction into your own hands.
3. Publish Publish so that others may add on to your story. If it gets ranked well and has enough offshoots it stays, if not, watch it wither and die.
The Story Starter Jr. provides 729 story prompts for kids. There is also a Story Starter site for all ages with more than 763 million story ideas. These sites are great for generating creative writing ideas!
VoiceThread is a unique way to share images, documents, and videos. When you upload an image, document or video, you can comment on it using a phone, microphone, webcam, by typing a comment, or by uploading another file. You can even doodle on it while commenting. If you share your voice thread others can also comment on it.
My favorite is Aviary's music creator - Choose instruments, and draw them on a page of empty circles. Try it out and you will see what I mean...
