Instagram and Vine

I decided to start separate accounts for Instagram and Vine to use exclusively to communicate with my students. These are two more resources that can be used to spark student interest in the classroom. There are many uses for them, all you need to do is be creative and start playing with them before you introduce them to students.

Creating Screencasts

A screencast is a digital recording of a computer screen and is usually narrated. It is used to explain a process as it is being done on a computer. These can be used for a variety of uses, especially in education. As with podcast, these add a visual of the process or topic being taught. You can use them to explain a concept, a process, as a tutorial. Students can also create their own screencast as a form of assessment. Screencasting is simple and fun, they can last a few minutes or longer.

Toons and Comics

A great way to engage students is by using comic strips. Kids love seeing graphics and characters come to life. I've used comic strips before in my classroom and you can too. Here are several ways you can begin using them with your students.

• give information
• provide directions
• illustrate an idea ( vocabulary or idioms)
• rewrite or summarize a book/story
• illustrate a poem 
• journal response

There are a few free websites that can be used by virtually anyone to create comic strips.

Videos & QR Codes in the Library

So it’s mid-July and we’re just one month shy from returning to our classrooms.  As I’m preparing for this new and exciting school year I started working on book trailers for some of the books we’ll be reading in class this year. Last year my students read Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. I could not believe how much students wanted to read the book; every day they begged to read it. I plan to start off the year with this novel and created a trailer using Animoto.com. I will let my students access the trailer through QR Codes. I love QR Codes and use them religiously for instructions, questions, photos, quizzes, etc. I swear that my students get so excited to scan the code and find out what the will be doing that day.