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by Jordan Shapiro "Upper One Games is the first indigenous owned video game company in the United States. "Announced at the 2013 Games For Change Festival, the partnership between E-Line Media and Cook Inlet Tribal Council aims to make “meaningful and scalable social impact by creating world-class games and game-based learning infused with Alaska Native values and culture.” "Their first consumer game will be a top line indie game to be released on major consoles. And Upper One Games is not holding back. They’ve handpicked top commercial talent who are excited to be working on games for impact."
This interactive cube creator will help your students to start their own story writing. It breaks the writing process into six distinct parts which will guide students to write their own biographies, mystery stories, short stories, and free planning of story, a blank template that they can customize.
Via Inma Alcázar, Stacey Py Flynn
"Once again this shows the power of the mind to create a story to make sense of its surroundings. Your brain is happier to believe there are connections between the things that it sees. This is a vital insight for your brand experience. If you do not control the story, your audience will find their own and maybe it’s not the story you want to tell."
Via Gregg Morris
In 2008, Fran Simmons, an English teacher at NewDorpHigh School in New York—at that time one of the lowest-performing secondary institutions in the nation— devised a simple test for her students in an effort to keep district officials from pulling the plug. First, she asked her freshman class to read Of Mice and Men. Then, using information from the novel, she asked them to answer the following prompt in a single sentence: “Although George …” She was looking for a sentence like: Although George worked very hard, he could not attain the American Dream. What Simmons received was alarming in the truest sense of the word. Some students wrote passable sentences, but many could not manage to finish the line. More than a few wrote the following: “Although George and Lenny were friends.”
Via Beth Dichter, Dennis T OConnor
by Sarah Brown Wessling "You can start with the overview video and then move on to the three separate lessons that provide a detailed look at Ms. Brewer’s approach.
Analyzing Texts: Brainstorming Before Writing
Analyzing Texts: Putting Thoughts on Paper
Analyzing Texts: Text Talk Time
"Whether you’re an ELA teacher or using nonfiction in whatever discipline you teach, Ms. Duvoor’s video will make contextualization clear!"
By Maryellen Weimer "Here's a great story. A graduate student is attending a lecture being given by one of her intellectual heroes, the Brazilian educator and theorist Paulo Freire. She takes notes furiously, trying to capture as many of his words as possible. Seeing that she is keenly interested in what Freire had to say, his translator asks if she would like to meet him. Of course! She is introduced and he begins by inquiring about her work. Then he graciously agrees to respond to a set of questions she and her colleagues hoped they would get the chance to ask him. She is impressed beyond belief, but time prevents her from asking one last, difficult question. They meet accidently once more at the event and he wonders if she asked all her questions? No, there is one more. "Given your work, we want to know 'where is the hope'?" Without hesitating he moves toward her, takes her face in his hands, looks into her eyes, and replies, "You tell them, 'you are the hope, because theory needs to be reinvented, not replicated ... it is a guide. We make history as we move through it and that is the hope."
"As a creative practitioner, you're probably familiar with twitter as a key social media platform for marketing your projects to today’s internet-savvy audiences.But did you know it’s also a great storytelling tool "But did you know it’s also a great storytelling tool? "Fiona Milburn, from Transmedia NZ, gives us five examples from storytellers who have embraced twitter as either a standalone story platform or as part of a wider story world."
"Making Learning Connected (#clmooc) is a collaborative, knowledge-building and sharing experience open to anyone who’s interested in making, creativity and learning. As we design and then engage in “makes” that tap into our personal (and professional) interests, share what we’ve done with the Making Learning Connected community, learn from each others’ experiences, and reflect on our own growth, we’ll be agents in the recursive creation and re-creation of this experience known as a Massively Open Online Collaboration (MOOC). Throughout the MOOC, we’ll engage with and employ Connected Learning principles as they relate to making and learning. "All are welcome to engage at whatever level and to whatever extent makes sense. Making Learning Connected includes pathways – for making, for connecting, for sharing – that allow for greater and lesser degrees of independence and guidance. Follow a linear thread through the six weeks of this MOOC or dip a toe in at one place or another, to create a unique path. For more information, visit the Making Learning Connected FAQs."
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By Maria Popova "The secrets of good writing have been debated again and again and again. But “good writing” might, after all, be the wrong ideal to aim for. In About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews (public library), celebrated author and literary critic Samuel Delany — who, for a fascinating factlet, penned thecontroversial 1972 “women’s liberation” issue of Wonder Woman — synthesizes his most valuable insights from thirty-five years of teaching creative writing, a fine addition tobeloved writers’ advice on writing. One of his key observations is the crucial difference between “good writing” and “talented writing,” the former being largely the product of technique (and we know from H.P. Lovecraft that “no aspiring author should content himself with a mere acquisition of technical rules”), the other a matter of linguistic and aesthetic sensitivity:"
Excerpted from review article on TechCrunch:
"This week the teacher-turned-entrepreneur Adam Below officially launched eduClipper, a platform that allows teachers and students to explore, share and contribute to a library of educational content. In both function and design, it’s essentially a Pinterest for education, with one notable difference: Because eduClipper is built exclusively for teachers and students, unlike Pinterest, you probably won’t find it blocked by your local school.
Educators and students can explore thousands of pieces of educational content, find lesson plans, resources and videos and search for the most popular content by subject or interest.
With eduClipper, users can share individual eduClips (or pieces of content) or eduClipboards (collections of content) with colleagues or students while cross-posting or embedding that content on other social platforms or sending them through email.
EduClips are created through the site’s bookmarklet (a Chrome extension), so once it’s installed in their browsers, teachers and students can grab any content they find on the web, Google Drive, Google Apps and more, and add them to their collection, i.e. their eduClipboards. Once grabbed, the site automatically grabs the source link, too, so that it’s easy to get back to the original content and easy to give proper citation.
Teachers and students can share these clipboards so that their classmates and colleagues can collaborate on assignments or in-class activities, create groups to share these resources with and align the content that’s clipped and shared to Common Core Standards. That’s the big advantage of eduClipper over Pinterest, that content can easily be organized and annotated for each class or subject by way of these learning collections. It also has the benefit of being created by a teacher who has spent the last five years searching for and curating the web’s best educational content..."
Read full review article by TechCrunch here:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/02/educlipper-launches-its-pinterest-for-education-to-bring-better-crowdsourced-curation-sharing-to-the-classroom/
Try out eduClipper: https://www.educlipper.net
Via Giuseppe Mauriello
The following is a guest post by Catlin Tucker, one of SimpleK12's presenters. Click here to watch Catlin's Webinars inside the Teacher Lear
Via Deb Gardner, Susan Golab
By Jason Sellers
"After analyzing several essays containing descriptive imagery and composing a short piece of writing about a favorite location in San Francisco, students honed their descriptive writing skills by creating text-based interactive fiction games using PlayFic.com and the Inform 7 programming language. Without the benefit of modern graphics, students had to rely on vivid sensory imagery in order to create engaging game-play environments."
Via KevinHodgson
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Journal Writing Prompts: These high-interest prompts will encourage kids to describe, explain, persuade, and narrate every day of the school year.
Via Kath Lok
Websites & mobile apps for digital storytelling, such as Toontastic, VoiceThread, StoryKit, Xtranormal, Puppet Pals, Pixton, Storybird, Comic Master, etc.
Via Stacey Py Flynn
Why teachers should ask students to explain their answers Teachers can help students learn by asking them to explain their work -- rather than memorize and repeat answers -- researchers...
Via Dennis T OConnor, Jim Lerman
Collections of all the lesson plans published via the NY Times Learning Network, grouped by curriculum area: 1. Language Arts, Journalism, and the Arts 2. Science, Health, Technology and Math 3. Social Studies, History, Georgraphy, and Civics 4. A collection of 182 Student Opinion questions, from this school year, all still open to comment on our blog. Each asks students to read a short, high-interest nonfiction piece from The Times, then write in a response.
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from the website "Do your students struggle to write with detail? Are their descriptions limited, lacking in specifics or uninformative? If so, you can help your students write more engaging and elaborate pieces by teaching the following strategies for elaboration. Elaboration: 7 Writing Strategies"
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By Lisa Nielsen "If you're an innovative educator, by now, you have probably tried Google Hangouts which let you conduct a video conference with up to ten people / locations FOR FREE! This by itself has terrific potential for teaching and learning tool. I explained here ways the following ideas could be put to use in the classroom:1) Take a class without having to be in the same place. 2) Invite an audience to a performance. 3) Invite others to perform/discuss with you. What you may yet to have tried is livestreaming your Hangout and capturing it via YouTube. This is known as Google Hangouts On Air which takes something that was already awesome, and makes it even better. You can see what it is here:"
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by alanthefreisen "Next year, we’re planning on implementing a new SIS and gradebook at our school. Groundbreaking news, eh? The kicker is that our new gradebook supports individual assignments for individual students. "Think about that for a second. "For the first time, I can build assignments that are specific to an individual student, and not have to worry about the hassle of reporting said assignments in a gradebook designed for assignments given out to the entire class. "This makes me excited. Thrilled, even! I’ve been differentiating for a few years now, as best as I can, but my efforts have been hampered by the need to create the same assignments for each student. Sure, Tracey’s got an essay and Mark’s working on a short story, but they both need to be out of 35 and according the gradebook they’re both due on the same day, even though that’s not true and the short story shouldn’t really be out of 35, anyway. No more! It also means that I can lessen the impact of competition in my class. I handed back a set of essays today, and instead of the students listening to me about how they can make their next essay better, they spent most of the time quietly asking each other who got the highest mark, and slipping a calculator from one hand to the other to figure out what the score at the bottom of their detailed rubric meant. Yes, real learning was happening today in my class, folks. "So, here’s the question, and one of the reasons I’m posting today: how do I make individualised instruction, true individualised instruction, work? I teach English Language Arts and I’d like to pilot this process with a single group of senior high English students. I’d also like students to be exploring texts which interest them instead of assigning a single book for an entire group of learners, for instance, as well as allowing them the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge in forms they choose. "This is my first draft:"
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Description by TeachThought "Rhetorical simulations (Rhet Sims) are interactive texts designed to teach students how to think critically about their own habits of mind when writing. Participants are given a writing prompt and then are asked to create a short text by selecting among a series of paragraph options. A short document is created and then students are asked to explain why the document they created best addresses the need of the assignment. Rhet Sims help students develop a critical awareness of how their choices shape their writing."
Excerpt from review article by VentureBeat:
"Upload your script, choose some backgrounds, and magically created a professional-looking storyboard of your movie. Or the graphic novel version of your text-based anything.
Amazon Studios released Storyteller today to allow writers and filmmakers to quickly, easily — and cheaply — storyboard their scripts.
Roy Price, Amazon’s director of Studios said: “Storyteller provides a digital backlot, acting troupe, prop department, and assistant editor — everything you need to bring your story to life.”
You start by uploading a script to Amazon Studios — or by playing with one that’s already there. Then simply page through the script paragraph by paragraph. Storyteller will try to match up characters, props, and background with the words in each chunk of text, and it does a surprisingly good job.
But if you don’t like what Storyteller gives, you can choose from its library, or even upload your own custom background or characters. Currently, the software has a library of thousands of props, characters, and backgrounds..."
Read full review article: http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/07/amazon-launches-storyteller-to-turn-scripts-into-storyboards-automagically/
Learn more and try out Storyteller: http://studios.amazon.com/storyteller
Via Giuseppe Mauriello, Jim Lerman
There are stories where you start in the middle of things and keep going. In the case of thrillers and books that are part of a series the reader doesn’t really need an explanation of what’s going on, they’ll work it out on the fly. In most cases, though, readers prefer to get an idea of characters and setting before things really take off. The inciting incident that propels the main character into adventure may not occur for several chapters. When you’re trying to establish the world so the reader has an idea of who they’re going to be following for the next few hundred pages the approach is often to show ordinary life, important relationships, interests and activities. And this can be quite dull.
Via mooderino
By Jeff Vance "Multimedia Fusion 2 is a highly powerful and visual (and free!) tool that can give students very quick results. Within minutes of picking up the tool and a minimal amount of instruction, students are well on their way to seeing results of their efforts. The programming logic for a game in a visual tool like Multimedia Fusion is done with the mouse by creating events and directing what actions happen when the event is true. Multimedia Fusion is a true object oriented programming system. "Educators that have introduced video game design and development into the classroom have noticed some very interesting benefits to the students. Students who were not interested in computer programming before have suddenly become interested in using computers to create video games. Since video game design incorporate math, logic, creative writing, and computer programming among other skills, thus the student ends up learning a lot of diverse subject matter."
Via KevinHodgson
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