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Mad Libs

Wacky Web Tales


I found a goofy activity for digital writing.  It doesn't teach students a new style of writing, it just allows them to do a very traditional type of writing online.  It's a version of Mad Libs called "Wacky Web Tales."  


My students love it.  They choose from about 50 possible stories, provide the required words, read what the computer comes up,  and then share with friends.  Students have called others over to their computers and cut and pasted onto their blogs to share. 


Some students are even redoing ones they've done once with more appropriate or funnier word choices. 

PowerPoint Writing

Winter PowerPoint

This lesson isn't real fancy.  It just involves PowerPoint.  I asked my students to create an informational PowerPoint about Winter using their own schema.  They needed 8 total slides, a title page and 7 informational slides.  

They could only use Clip Art for their images.  They could not go on

line and search for images.  I did this for two reasons. 

Number 1, I wanted to save time.  When they go online to look for pictures they can spend 30 minutes looking for the perfect image.  Using Clip Art limits how many images they can look at before finding the perfect image saving a whole lot of time. 

Number 2, I did not want to worry about copyright.  Only allowing Clip Art guaranteed that the students had permission to use the pictures and I didn't need to ask where they came from because I already knew.  

And for a bonus reason, the students had to come up with all their information on their own.  Without access to the internet students couldn't just cut and paste their information.  I've also noticed that students will copy images from the web that have a picture with text.  They then try to count the image's text as their text for the slide.

Finally, I don't like transition and sound effects so I don't require them.  If students want to include them they can.  I do like adding "Table of Contents" that use hyperlinks so I teach though but don't require them because they are not necessary for an effective PowerPoint. 

All students completed their "Winter" PowerPoint presentations after a 1 hour lab and a 35 minute lab.   That's the power of Clip Art.

The week after the "Winter" PowerPoint, I had my students create a "School" PowerPoint using the exact same guidelines.

The Directions I passed out to my students are below. 

______________________________________________________

Winter PowerPoint

Directions:

Create a PowerPoint that discusses what people traditionally do during the winter.

·        Include a Title Page

o   Title

o   Your name

o   1 picture

 

·        7 Information Slides

o   1 picture and at least one sentence explaining what the picture shows

 

o   All pictures must come from Clip Art.  You will not be using the internet for this project.

o   When you have finished, e-mail your PowerPoint to me

The Moodle Wiki

I set up a "Class Memories" Wiki on my Moodle site. I wanted to start out slow and see how it worked before I showed it to the whole class.  So today while most of my students were working on "Type to Learn,"  I asked one student to edit the Wiki.  While she was editing I asked two other students to log in and start editing.  They were both logged in and hit the edit button.  Instead of be allowed to edit at the same time as the first student, they were met with a message that stated they couldn't edit at this time because another student was editing.  

Once I established that only student could edit at a time, I did a quick mini-lesson and showed the students how they could edit the Wiki.  I also included a quick demonstration of how the history feature worked so everyone knew it wasn't anonymous.  After my mini-lesson I encouraged my students to add to the Wiki as they saw fit.  

No one took advantage of the invitation.  The only student to edit the Wiki was the initial student.  One other student did view the page, but she made no edit. 

I guess the "Class Memories" Wiki didn't capture their attention.  I now how to decide what to do with it.  Should I advertise and add to each day as a mini-lesson?  Should I require students to edit it one time?

Should I move to a more high tech Wiki, like WikiSpaces?  Or should I just forget about using a Wiki and be happy that they are blogging?  To be honest, I have no idea what I'm going to do..

Today's Computer Lab

I had a great computer lab today.  My students accomplished a ton in 60 minutes. 

Students did three major things:

1. Using Wordle, they created a description of Justin Case from Justin Case: School Drool and Other Daily Diasters.  Students used: descriptive words such as: worrywart, brave, kind; they included character names, human, animal and stuffed; talked about his dislikes; etc.  Students printed them out for sharing.
2. Students then wrote a blog about their favorite part of school using kidblog.org.  Most had a main idea statement and then gave supporting details.  The number of details varied by student. 
3. Finally students went to http://www.eduplace.com/tales/ to create a "Wacky Web Tales."  They filled in the blanks for word types and then the program created their story for them.  Students then copied and pasted their "Wacky Web Tales" into their blog.  They were also asked to copy a link to "Wacky Web Tales"

Students then had time to share their blog posts and "Wacky Web Tales" either online or by calling kids ove to their computers.  I shared Wordle highlights after.

I was amazed at how much they did today.  I was really proud of what they created and how eager they were to share with one another.

kidblog.org

I recently attended a professional development session and learned about kidblog.org.  It sounded really interesting and after thinking about it for a month I decided to give it a try.

I was concerned that it would take a lot of time to set up but I had my class of 21 students ready to go in a half hour. I'm enrolled as an administrator, my students are enrolled as students, and one of my teacher friends is enrolled as a guest.

As administrator I control the site.  I can post my own blogs and comments. I can read and respond to all student blogs. I can delete and edit student blogs and comments.  I am also able to add new members.

Students are able to log in, write blogs, write comments, and read blogs and comments.

Guests are able to log in, and read blogs and comments.  They are not allowed to post their own content.


My students used it for the the first time this past Thursday.  Each child was asked to write a blog about a movie they liked and post one comment in response to another blog. Everyone was able to do that in class and I wasn't sure if students would do anymore writing, but they have.    Students have written about other movies, books, vacations, getting pets, sports, and ideas on life.  Students have posted multiple comments on what others have written.  I'm really excited to see what my students do with their blogs over the course of the year.

I've included two blogs.

Wordle

I really like Wordle. It makes cool word posters. If you want a word to be bigger, you write it more time. I've had my students use it to make name posters where they had to pick terms that best described themselves. My students enjoyed it.

The only trouble they had was making important words bigger, connecting phrases, and revising.  I showed them how to make words bigger, type the word a lot, and how to connect words, add a ~ between words.  Most students were able to make the more important words larger but only a few were able to connect phrase.  I was unable to show them how to revise their poster and told them they needed to reenter their words.

I could also see using Wordle to make theme posters for books, character posters, Social Studies content posters and Science concept posters.  Here's a link I created for gravity. I'm not sure how that link works.  It doesn't appear you can search for terms. I can't paste a copy of the image either.