I have found two different web based creation tools that ELA and Social Studies teachers may find useful. They have potential for really enhancing your curriculum while engaging your students. The first one is the Historic Tales Construction Kit. It is based on the tapestry of Bayeaux, a masterpiece of the Middles Ages. The second one is Myths and Legends Story Creator. Storytellers get ten pages to share their stories and may select among a library of characters (some animated), sound effects, backgrounds, and objects, or they may upload their own images. They may scale, rotate, and move objects in front of or behind others. They may narrate by recording audio. They may add text bubbles and comic bursts. Students will enjoy the impressive sound and image galleries. The site also offers a library of supporting content. A how-to section supplies both dramatic and technical advice. What are myths, legends and folktales? offers valuable background relating to story genres. A Myth Map locates stories geographically. Professionally told stories serve as models for young storytellers and may be also used for classroom sharing. Text and related images are also provided for these classic tales.
Wordle is a great tool to work with at all levels and subjects to create word clouds of important vocabulary or important words to illustrate content or important events. It was created by IBM Research Senior Software Engineer, Jonathan Feinberg. You literally can get a pictorial implication of some text by pasting it into Wordle. Here’s the description from the Wordle site:
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
Click below to hear an interview with Jonathan Feinberg:
can_i_have_a_wordle_with_you
Here’s a Wordle I created using part of the text of a poem by James Russell Lowell titled Vision of Sir Launfal. It’s title is “What is so rare as a day in June?”
This is a great free resource from the Federal Government. It includes videos the government had commissioned and now they are available online in digital format. This is the description from their site
FedFlix is a joint venture with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). Each month they send us government videotapes. We upload them to the Internet Archive and YouTube, then send the government back their videotapes and a digital copy for their files. No cost to them, more data for all of us.
You can watch them on the Internet Archive or You Tube. I found some very interesting titles when I checked it out:
- Island of Hope - Island of Tears (1989), awarding winning film from the National Park Service about Ellis Island
- From Dreams to Reality - A Tribute to Minority Inventors (1986), from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
- Duck and Cover (1951) - cartoon film from the Federal Civil Defense Administration ~ Some of us may be old enough to remember this film in school!
Each film has images you can download from each minute of the film. You can download the videos or stream them (full-screen if you choose) on your desktop. This is a great resource for all areas of the curriculum. It was fascinating to watch some of the historical films.
Karen Vitek | January 15, 2009
