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 – 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 – Nice site for making word clouds by just copying and pasting text.
- Word Sift - Excellent site for making word clouds and then editing them. Pictures are also generated to best represent your word cloud.
- VocabGrabber – Wonderful site, similar to Word Sift. Generates color-coded clouds.
- Tag Galaxy - Innovative site that visually represents words in a galaxy style format. A must see!
- Tag Crowd – Simple to use site for creating word clouds by pasting in text or a web page URL.
- Quintura – Visual search engine which returns results in a word-cloud format.
- TwitterSheep – Fun site that generates its results by keywords found in bios from a user’s followers.
The growing influence of technology is creating “new literacies” in which traditional skills of reading and writing are merged with 21st-century skills. Researchers say that technology requires students to think more critically when faced with an overwhelming amount of information available on the Internet, but that it also can prompt deeper reading as students become more engaged in genres through social networking and other Web-based collaborative tools.
Read the full story, CLICK HERE
“BigUniverse.com is an engaging online reading and writing community for grades preK-8. This award-winning, student-centered, website provides a large library of leveled nonfiction and 
fiction colorful online books, an online writing and publishing tool, a safe bookshelf sharing community, and many supporting tools such as reading logs and more. All these features inspire reluctant, advanced, and ELL students to read, write and learn anytime-anywhere while providing educators the necessary tools to differentiate instruction, teach balanced literacy and monitor student progress.
Today, Big Universe has 24 publisher partners and 3,053 books online covering all academic subjects. Our science, social studies, language arts, and math books have been read 965,734 times by 62,087 members from 153 countries. Members have created 20,714 books online using our engaging authoring tool for creative writing, book reports, and science projects. Underlying the reading and writing features, is a vibrant community that bolsters the impact of our reading and writing features, fostering a setting where students can motivate and learn from each other while safely sharing their written works and book selections (fun avatars and anonymous usernames safeguard students’ identity, privacy and security).
A colleague, Dr. Laurie Curtis shared this resource with me this morning, WOW. I am not a Literacy specialist, so had never seen it, but it is full of great resources.
“Choice Literacy is dedicated to providing innovative, high-quality resources for K-12 literacy leaders. Founded in 2006, the website has grown to include over 700 professionally produced and edited video and print features from top educators in the field, as well as promising new voices.” http://www.choiceliteracy.com
This issue contains some amazing resources:
GottaBook, by Gregory K. puts together his 30 Poets in 30 Days for National Poetry Month in April, and every year our subscribers beat a path to this blog for a new poem each day of the month from many favorite children’s poets.
Footnote is a fantastic resource on the web to provide historical context for the picture books and novels you are reading in your classroom. With over 70 million original documents online, you can find and share all sorts of intriguing artifacts to build background knowledge in students:
http://www.footnote.com/
If you’re hunting for audio for your students to listen to on the web, there is a fine collection from Reading in Action of book review podcasts for children:
http://www.readinginaction.org/bookcasts/childrens
Watch.Connect.Read, Book trailers are a wonderful way to connect students with new books, but it can be time-consuming to find and sort through the best ones on the web. Mr. Shu Reads is a blog that features book trailers from the perspective of a K-5 teacher-librarian. It’s a terrific mix of trailers and anecdotes from working with young readers:
http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/
If you want to discuss the issue of appropriate reading with your students, this post from the Reading Vacation Blog would be a fine place to start. It’s written by an 11-year-old who is a voracious reader, and articulate in explaining how she decides what books are appropriate for her:
Kidblog is a safe, simple, and free tool on the web for quickly creating student blogging accounts: http://kidblog.org/home.php
I am not a Literacy specialist, but I am finding their site and newsletter worth my time, Check it out.
Kelly Tenkely is a technology teacher in a private school. Kelly also trains teaching staff on integrating and implementing technology into the classroom. In addition, Kelly is the author of iLearnTechnology blog. Her story, 10 Technology Enhanced Alternatives to Book Reports included many great ideas. If you are sick and tired of tradition book reports, check out Kelly’s suggestions. Here is her list, but you’ll need to read the article to get all the details about how and what…..
- Let students create a cartoon version of the book they have just finished.
- Let students create a short video clip about the book.
- Create a virtual poster advertising the book.
- Encourage students to create their own virtual bookshelves with Shelfari
- Book Adventure is an online reading motivation program.
- Bookcasting is a recorded audio podcast about a book.
- Allow students to create a timeline of events in the story they just read in an online timeline.
- Wikis are an excellent place for students to share book reviews.
- Excite and motivate students to read with Book Wink http://bookwink.com.
- Voice Thread is an amazing site that allows students to create web 2.0 slide shows that become interactive and collaborative.
