If you could have any backyard, what would it be? One of today's Web 2.0 tips is a tool that allows students to think about just that - and create their own, unique backyard. This can become the stimulus for a descriptive writing task: In my imaginary backyard there would be...
PBS (The American Public Broadcasting Service) has developed a tool that allows users to select from a wide range of backgrounds and then insert objects into the backyard. No account is required. It's easy and fun to use, and the image created can be saved and printed off at the end as stimulus for the above task. Find the tool here: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/offthemap/html/create_your_own.html
Students love Web 2.0 tools because they are visual. The next tool we want to discuss is Sketchcast - an online drawing tool. There are loads of online drawing tools, but what makes this one unique, is that you can record yourself doing your drawing and talking about it as you're doing it. The video can then be posted on Sketchcast's website. Students will need an account to use this site, but it only takes a minute to create. Once you have filled out your username, password and email address, you can get straight into creating a drawing and recording yourself.
There are lots of ways we can get students to use drawing as a learning tool in class. They can draw:
- Pictures or icons to represents characters from texts
- Important places in the setting of a text
- Create charts or concepts maps about ideas
- Draw pictures to represent vocabulary terms
- Draw pictures to represent any type of content they have just read
Drawing pictures requires students to actively think about the content they are trying to represent visually. If they draw it, and talk about it at the same time, it's great evidence that learning is taking place. Set students any of the above tasks, direct them to Sketchcast, and get them to record themselves talking about the picture as they draw it. Once a video has been created, it will have its own unique web URL and can be visited by your or any other student. See the tool here: http://sketchcast.com/
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