Students Can Have Fun Adding Characters to Their Stories!

     There are many projects that students create that can use characters.  Students can make cartoons, video games, ilustrations, posters and other visual materials.  There are many books that they can use to learn how to better draw the characters that they want.

    
     There are also programs that students can use to draw comics on the computer.  A simple program with preprogramed choices is the Comic Creator.  I did this example on that site.  You select items from choices they give you.  The comic can then be printed.  There is not a way to color them on the site but you could have the students color them in after printing.

You can make your own at http://tinyurl.com/yaggkuc

Students Can Create Cubes!

     Thinkfinity is an online resource site for teachers, students and parents.  It is funded by Verizon and partnered with 11 other educational organizations to offer free educational materials and support. You can explore each of the 11 partners from this site also. There are discussions and blogs that are grouped by subject area.  You can visit the main site at http://www.thinkfinity.org/ 

     There are many materials, tools and games that you can use from their site.  They offer categories of materials broken down into subject areas, grade levels and items that can also be used at home by parents. 

 One tool that can be useful for creating stories is the Cube Creator.  It is a fun way for students to create a story with guidelines from the planned program or guidelines that you can put into the program as the teacher to suit your own lesson. 

     This is a good tool for students that are visual spatial thinkers because it breaks down the story into its individual parts but also connects them together.  The program begins by the choice of one of the story templates.  This can be one that is created by the teacher in addition to the preprogramed choices they offer.  The choices given are a biography, a mystery, story and create your own.

When the student completes the program, it can be printed and made into a cube they can keep.  This could be a way for the students to do a beginning outline for their story or it can be a complete final composition.  The website also has worksheets and some sample lesson plans that can be used with the program.  You can make your own at http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/cube_creator/

Hints for Creating Tutorials on Pindemy

     Pindemy is a new website that  is an easy way to create multi-image step-by-step tutorials, how-to guides or photo stories.  You can then use them in your classroom from your computer or put them into a website or blog.   There is a tutorial on the website that explains the process but I have a few hints to make it easier to use.

1.  Gather the photos that you plan to use ahead of starting your tutorial or story.
2.  If you are going to only use them electronicly it is best to reduce their size on your photo program before you start..
3.  All the fonts and type colors are consistent so there is no choice or creativity there so if you need  a different font or color shown , you will need to load that as a photo.
4.  The photos are easy to rearrange once they are loaded so don't worry about the order to start. 
5.  The descriptions are also very easy to edit and change,  no worries there either.
6.  You can save and add to your work as many times as you would like so you can work on it in parts if you want.  I found it easier to save a few sections at a time to let my computer load the photos properly helped.
7.  You can pin them to your pinterest boards when you are done and also have them in your pindemy account so they are easy to find.

     Overall, I found Pindemy to be a fun and easy site to use!

You can create your own at http://pindemy.com/