Tools for Students to Publish Book Reports or Essays?

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Permalink Reply by Marvin Lee on January 11, 2011 at 11:32am

You could try voki, toondoo, wordle, tikatok, photopeach, Big Huge Labs, Prezi.

Permalink Reply by Lorrie Applebey on January 11, 2011 at 7:05pm

1. Create book trailers.

In short, a book trailer is a short video created by students to highlight the key points of a book. When creating their book trailers students should be trying to "sell" viewers on a book. To create their videos your students could use Animoto for Education, JayCut, or PhotoPeach.

2. Create animated or stop-motion videos about a book's plot.

To make an animated video try Memoov which is a free service that your students can use to create an animated video book review. Memoovallows users to create animated videos up to five minutes in length. Creating an animated video with Memoov can be as simple as selecting a setting image(s), selecting a character or characters, and adding dialogue. 

If stop-motion videos are more your speed, Kevin Hodgson's Making Stopmotion Movies is a fantastic resource for directions and advice on making stop-motion movies. 

3. Create literature maps.

Using Google Maps or Google Earth students can map out the travels of character in a story. Google Lit Trips has many examples of teachers and students using Google Earth in literature courses.

4. Create 3D augmented reality book reviews.

ZooBurst is an amazing service that allows you to create a short story complete with 3D augmented reality pop-ups. Students could useZooBurst to create short summaries of books that really jump off the screen.  You do have to login as the teacher and there is a limit of 10 books in the free version.  ZooBurst currently offers two types of accounts. "Basic" accounts are 100% free and let you to get started using ZooBurst right away. "Premium"" accounts offer a number of advanced features, including sound integration, ad-free browsing, unlimited books and a powerful "classroom management" tool that makes it easy to use ZooBurst with your students. 

 

5.  Use PowerPoint to create, upload to YouTube and publish on a school website!

Permalink Reply by Alline Sada on January 11, 2011 at 10:37pm

Great suggestions! I fell like turning in book reports myself!

I like the ReadWriteThink student interactives. They allow the students to use technology and still turn in the traditional worksheets. I find it helps my non-tech teachers baby-step toward the more powerful tools.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-imteracti...

Permalink Reply by Chapelle Brunk on January 12, 2011 at 11:13am

Hi Julie and others! I just joined this group to stay updated on trends in Instructional Technology and how funny that the most recent post relates directly to my company! I'm not meaning to SPAM the group and didn't even intend to do any posting in here but can't help myself with this question :). Of course, alot of the sites you've listed, are areas to publish online and the resources listed are great. If you are looking for physical publishing, definitely check out StudentPublishing.com. Not sure what grade level you work with, but we have free programs for grades K-8 where each student receives a free paperback copy of their own 'book' or if you were looking for essays, you could try the classbook program where each student gets one or two pages and the class gets 1 free hardback. We are coming out with our first free Anthology program for high schools in the next month or two. Let me know if you want more information.

-Chapelle

Permalink Reply by Julie Elkan on January 13, 2011 at 8:09am

Wow thanks to everyone! I love my PLN! I'm connected to so many smart people!

Permalink Reply by Debbie Martin on January 24, 2011 at 7:53am

I have recently heard of a Web site called Mixbook. This site allows users to create digital books on the content of their choice. I am getting ready to try this with a self-contained 7th grade English class.  Here is a link to a blog where I found out about Mixbook: http://clancytech.blogspot.com/search/label/Mixbook

~Debbie