Image Source: Parenting4Tomorrow
Tag: reading
Resources from Storybird Hands-On Workshop at #MSMECA13
Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas and at all grade levels. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.
Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.
Below are my slides from the workshop that I’ve taught a couple of times this week at the Mississippi Educational Communications Conference (MECA) in Jackson, MS. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.
Related Articles
- More from the annals of micropublishing: Picture books from Storybird (pandodaily.com)
- Storybird (stickyknowledge.com)
- Part 2… Creativity In The Digital Classroom… Web 2.0 Tools… Are They In Your School? (21centuryedtech.wordpress.com)
Call for Chapters: Digital Tools for Writing
Dr. Becky Anderson and I invite you to consider contributing your expertise by submitting a chapter in a soon-to-be-published edited book. Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings: Student Perception and Experience is timely because students are currently using technology to write both in and out of the classroom. In particular, students are writing outside of the classroom in ways that are not well documented or understood. Research is needed to report what students are doing both in and out of school and the implications this has on their learning. As a result, there exists a need for an edited collection of chapters in this area to 1) keep educators abreast of how to use the growing number of technology tools, 2) address the growing emphasis on writing instruction in both K-12 settings and in teacher education programs, 3) meet national standards and current initiatives that expect teachers to integrate writing across the curriculum, and 4) inform practice for the growing number of educators involved in K-12 online teaching and learning.
Working Title
Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings: Student Perception and Experience
Editors
Rebecca S. Anderson (The University of Memphis, USA)
Clif Mims (The University of Memphis, USA)
Call for Chapters
Proposal Submission Deadline: March 15, 2013
Full Chapters Due: July 20, 2013
Introduction
Currently, more emphasis is placed on writing instruction in K-12 schools than ever before. Unfortunately, however, students continue to perform poorly on national writing assessments. One possible solution to helping students become better writers is for K-12 teachers to use the growing number of digital tools to teach writing. Another possible solution is for content area teachers (i.e., math, science, social studies, and language arts) to integrate writing assignments into their curricula. Consistent with the present national STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) initiative, which also embraces writing across the curriculum, students are no longer taught how to write just by the writing teacher. Instead, teachers at all levels, and in all content areas, are expected to use writing to help students both become better writers and to learn content knowledge. Therefore, it is important that K-12 teachers learn how to use new digital tools to effectively teach writing in the content areas. In particular, it is important to learn which technologies students are using, both inside and outside the classroom, and the implications this has for teaching and learning. As a result, there exists a need for an edited collection of articles in this area.
Objectives of the Book
- To provide research about using digital tools to support writing instruction with K-12 students.
- To disseminate information about how students use digital tools to write in school settings.
- To disseminate information about how students use digital tools to write outside of school settings.
- To disseminate information about students’ perspectives on using technology to write.
- To discuss issues and concerns related to students using digital tools for writing.
- To discuss the teaching and learning implications of K-12 students using digital tools for writing.
Target Audience
The target audience of this book is educators who are, or who work with, K-12 content area teachers. Thus, the primary audience will be professionals and researchers working in the field of K-12 education and teacher education. Additional audiences are higher education and adult education professionals who can adapt the practical and effective applications for using new technologies to teach writing in their respective content areas.
Recommended topics include, but are not limited to the following:
- Hardware (e.g., iPads, Audiobooks, Smartboards, etc.) Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
- Applications Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
- Software Applications Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
- Web-based/Online Tools for Use in the K-12 Writing Curriculum
- In-School Writing Using Digital Tools
- Students’ Out-of-School Writing Using Digital Tools
- Action Research: K-12 Classroom Teachers Studying Students’ Digital Writing Tools
- Training Teachers: Providing Professional Development for Digital Writing Tools
- The Future Use of Digital Writing Tools
Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before March 15, 2013, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by March 29, 2013, about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by July 30, 2013. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.
Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This book is anticipated to be released in 2014
Important Dates
Proposal Submission Deadline | March 15, 2013 |
Notification of Acceptance | March 29, 2013 |
Full Chapter Submission | July 30, 2013 |
Review Results Returned | September 30, 2013 |
Revised Chapter Submission | October 30, 2013 |
Final Chapter Deadline | December 15, 2013 |
Inquiries and Submissions
Submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document)
Rebecca S. Anderson, Ph.D.
Professor, Reading Education
The University of Memphis
406 Ball Hall
Memphis, TN 38152
USA
Website, Email, Phone: (901) 678-3977
Clif Mims, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Instructional Design and Technology
The University of Memphis
406 Ball Hall
Memphis, TN 38152
USA
Website, Email, Phone: (901) 678-5672
Dr. Seuss Reminds Us to Read to a Child
I saw this quote on the Dr. Seuss Google+ account and thought I’d share it.
Storybird: Encourage Creativity, Promote Writing, & Add Excitement to Reports, Presentations, & Tutorials – for #isummitconf
Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.
Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.
Below are my slides from this workshop that I’m sharing today at iSummit in Atlanta, GA. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.
Halloween Brothers on Storybird
Related articles
- Developing Young Authors with Storybird (clifmims.com)
- Introduction to Digital Storytelling by Alec Couros (speedofcreativity.org)
- Storybird: Providing a Tangible Outcome (boxoftricks.net)
Developing Young Authors with Storybird
Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print. It is a fun, collaborative, storytelling website that can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s writing development.
Below are my slides from this workshop. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.
Halloween Brothers on Storybird
Related articles
- Storybird: Providing a Tangible Outcome (boxoftricks.net)
- Alice (alicecarroll.net)
- Introduction to Digital Storytelling by Alec Couros (speedofcreativity.org)
Suggested Reading: Literacy and Mobile Learning
Book Apps: A Reading Revolution, or the End of Reading?
“Even if high-quality apps do manage to change the way we read, though, it’s unclear how many current readers will respond. The mere fact that something is possible does not automatically make it desirable.”
Books vs. Screens: Which Should Your Kids Be Reading?
“Canadian author Margaret Atwood thrilled her 285,000-plus Twitter followers by defending their kind as “dedicated readers” who are boldly exploring new frontiers in literacy. Calling the Internet in general “a great literacy driver,” she defended even the most minimal form of screen-based reading as an unalloyed good – “because reading is in fact extremely interactive from a neurological point of view,” she said. “Your brain lights up a lot.””
For Some Kids, a Book Is Just an iPad That Doesn’t Work
“[Calvin] Wang designs interactive storybooks for the iPad. He was inspired, he says, by watching his daughter interact with a movable cardboard book. Since then, Loud Crow, his Vancouver-based firm, has turned an array of children’s picture books that take the pop-up concept into the digital age. Books such as Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit now respond to touch by moving, twirling, speaking and noise-making.”
Digital Lit: How New Ways to Read Mean New Ways to Write
“The e-book is changing the publishing business, but will digital technology actually change the way we tell stories, the way writers write – for better or for worse?”
Related articles
- No place in class for digital illiterates (guardian.co.uk)
- Immersive Book: SO! The Tale of Tom Kitten by Beatrix Potter (themactrack.com)
- Margaret Atwood says Twitter, internet boost literacy (cbc.ca)
- From Dickens To iPads To Harry Potter: Why Backlit Is Bullish On Teen Reading (forbes.com)
- eBooks or Real Books? (searching4meaning.com)
Children’s Book Author Encourages Our Youngest
As I mentioned last week our youngest and I had a great time reading The Pout-Pout Fish. It was an evening filled with lots of silliness and laughter. We had such a great time and I liked the book so much I wrote a blog post about our fun and included a few ideas regarding educational connections that could be made with the story, rhymes, etc. Less than 3 hours after my blog entry posted I received the following message on Twitter from the book’s author, Deborah Diesen.
It would be an understatement to say that our youngest was excited to have received a message from the book’s author. The reaction was so strong that I felt compelled to tweet the following reply to Deborah.
Needless to say, we since have read The Pout-Pout Fish many more times, we have enjoyed Pout-Pout Fish-inspired videos, a full-scale search is underway to get access to Deborah’s other children’s books, and our youngest has a renewed interest in reading and writing.
Many, many thanks, Deborah!
The Pout-Pout Fish
Our youngest and I had a lot of fun reading The Pout-Pout Fish this evening. It’s a fun tale about Mr. Fish who always has a pout on his face despite many efforts by his friends to cheer him up. The artwork and surprise ending made us laugh with enjoyment.
Educational Connections
- Younger readers will enjoy and benefit from the repetition of verses.
- The author incorporated some clever rhymes and introduces interesting vocabulary to youngsters.
- Provides great opportunities to play with rhythm, alliteration, and dramatic reading.
Bill Nye Headlines 2011 Martin Institute Summer Conference
The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence is excited to announce that Bill Nye will be the keynote speaker for the 2011 Summer Conference.
About Bill Nye
Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life. “My family is funny,” he says, “I mean funny in the sense that we make people laugh, not just funny looking.” Bill discovered that he had a talent for tutoring in high school, and while growing up in Washington, DC. He spent afternoons and summers de-mystifying math for his fellow students. When he wasn’t hitting the books, Bill was hitting the road on his bicycle. He spent hours taking it apart to “see how it worked.” <Read More>
Featured Speakers
Other featured speakers at the Summer Conference include Tom Barrett (a.k.a. @tombarrett), 21st century educator from Nottingham, England; Vaija Wagle, Harvard University Project Zero Group Leader; Carol Vukelich, distinguished educator in early literacy; and Tiffany Boyd, literacy coach and consultant with Heinemann Publishing.
Registration
Registration details for the Summer Conference are forthcoming. Sign-up to receive an email notification once registration begins. The 2011 Summer Conference will be held on Wednesday, June 15 and Thursday June 16, 2011, in Memphis, TN, USA.