Todd's Tuesday Tech Tip #19: Story Starters

Are you looking for a way to jazz up your writing time?  Do you want to have a 'center' where your students can do some creative writing and you want them to have a little guidance?   One of my favorite tools for generating story starters is a tool from Scholastic called: Story Starters.  Guess what?  They are not just for kids.  I have turned to this tool several times when I was 'stuck' and needed some guidance to get myself writing again. 

Story Starters is an interactive tool that allows you to generate an infinite number of beginnings to four different types of stories.  For this example, I signed in as a 4-6 grader.  The varying levels increase or decrease the vocabulary and complexity of the plot.

 

I decided to try an adventure.  Once I clicked on it, I was presented with a slot machine interface.  I 'pulled' the handle and I received four elements for my story starter.  

 If I didn't like this, I could just 'spin' again.  Or, I could re-spin a specific part of the starter by spinning only the one wheel I hoped to remove.

I decided to go with:  "Describe the appearance of a stubborn gerbil who must locate a secret vault."  Kinda fun huh?

 

Next I was given four choices for how to format my story.  I chose the Postcard.

 

When you click on the postcard, it takes you to a writing page where you can begin crafting your story.  

  I like that it keeps your 'prompt' in front of you all the time.  See it there on the right above the 'Done Writing' bubble?  If at any time you want to change the format or change up your story, you can simply click the back button.  Here is my beginning:

 

When you are done, it gives you a variety of ways to output your story.  You can print directly or download it to your computer.  In this particular example, I could have drawn an image for the front of my postcard, or I could do it afterward, which was much more appealing to me than drawing with my mouse!

 

The three other 'modes' all provide equally quirky and fun beginnings.  

 

So, there you go.  The next time you are stuck, or want to help your students to do some creative writing, I suggest giving Scholastic's Story Starters a try!  I'd love to hear your thoughts about using this tool.  How do you think you might use it?  Please post your thoughts in the comments section.

Todd's Tuesday Technology Tip #18: Random Name Selector

I've used popsicle sticks, chips, slips of paper and just about any other tool for selecting students while doing review or choosing students for presentations, etc.  Well, today I wanted to share with you a new tool to try with your students.

It's simply called Random Name Selector Tool. It was created by John McLear and works incredibly simply.

John has created a short video that explains how the tool works:

 

So, what do you think?  Do you think you might use this tool?  What are some other uses of a tool like this?  

Todd's Tuesday Tech Tip #17: Using Wordle

Today I’m going to share with you part one of a two part series about word cloud creation tools.  Wordle is a tool that has been around for a while.  Most of us have seen Wordle Word Clouds. Wordle allows you to choose font, color and arrangement of the words to make very attractive visual representations of the words you input.  The feature that I love most about Wordle is that the more times a particular word is input, the larger the word becomes in the final design.  This is a fun way to analyze your text.  For example, I took the text of Dr. Seuss’ Oh the Places You’ll Go and made a word cloud out of it.  I thought it was interesting that the words waiting and go showed up so large in the design.  It’s kind of fun to see how those two words pop out of the design.

I have a PDF of these steps at the bottom of this post.  

It’s really simple to create a basic Wordle.  Simply copy and paste in your text.  (There is a more advanced set of features which we’ll look at later in the tutorial.) Then hit GO.

You’ll see that it randomly arranges the words, chooses fonts and colors for you.  If you like it, swell.  If you don’t, all you need to do is make some adjustments.  

Hit Randomize and it will choose a whole new set of colors, fonts and orientation.

Now, you can go into the various settings, for Font, Layout and Color and tweak it as you wish. 

One of the newer, and more creative features of Wordle is the ability to use the URL of any blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed.  This is an interesting way to analyze your favorite web page or blog too.

For example, I took the feed of this blog and pasted it into the window.  After several randomizations, I came up with this design that I like a lot.

In the advanced features of Wordle, you are able to really tweak the settings.  If you have any coding or HTML experience, you’ll notice that you are able to weight certain words to show up more frequently and tailor the specific colors using HTML data. 

Also, for our readers who are also teachers, HERE is a fantastic link to 108 Ways to use word clouds in the classroom. 

Here are a few of my favorites:

1.  Create a group word cloud of the entire class or sub groups in the class. This could be in reaction to a discussion, an idea, a reading, or video. Students work in groups to come up with 20-30 descriptive words and then make a word cloud. Using advanced tools they could rank them or color code them.

2.  Have a students analyze their frequency of word usage in a writing piece.

3.  Have students write a book review and put it into a word cloud. Find write ups of books and create word clouds to promote a book.

4.  Put words in a word cloud that will be part of spelling tests and vocabulary investigations.

5.  Students create a word cloud to illustrate their favorite artist or musician and do not include the name. They then present word cloud to class and students try to guess. Finish by including their word cloud as part of a poster with a picture of artist/musician, name of artist/musician, and paragraph about him/her.

So, there you have it.  Wordle is a fun, free and exciting way to work with your words.  Go ahead, take some of your text and make a word cloud.  I think you will be pleased with the results.

If you would like to download a copy of this tutorial, here is a link to the PDF.