creative writing – Page 3 – iLearn Technology

Waltee’s Quest: The Case of the Lost Art

February 2, 2011Kelly Tenkely5 Comments3034 views

What it is: The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland has one of the most incredible site for students I have seen. Waltee’s Quest is an interactive adventure where students help solve a mystery and discover a variety of art along the way. Students begin their adventure by watching an introduction animation of the Walters Art Museum where inside curator Waltee is getting ready for an exhibit and preparing the museum for visitors. While Waltee is preparing, lightning strikes, the elevator shakes, and a wild whirlwind takes all the museum treasures with it. Students ride a magical elevator to travel to different worlds in an effort to find the lost art. As students explore the different rooms, they discover treasures and learn about the real museum items. Students can click “Learn more” every time they discover a new item and the “Walteepedia” opens up with more information. This is truly one of the most engaging, interactive, sites I have seen. I love that the site drops students in the middle of a story mystery and enlists their help to right the museum. As students explore each room they learn more about history, see incredible artwork, and get an inside peek into being a museum curator. The graphics and attention to detail are really amazing!

How to integrate Waltee’s Quest into the classroom: Waltee’s Quest was created with attention to detail. When students begin their quest, they are asked to enter a name and passcode. This combination can be used at a later time to access a saved game. This makes it ideal for the classroom where students may not have time to complete the game in one sitting. Students can visit Waltee’s Quest as a center on classroom computers. Because students can track their progress, they don’t have to complete the game in one sitting but could work on it in bits and pieces throughout the school year. The quest allows students to get up-close and personal with a variety of art and history. Students can use what they learn in Waltee’s quest as a launching point for art history or as inspiration for a creative writing piece. Students can write a story about the art itself, about Waltee and his quest, or a mystery based on the game.

In the elementary classroom, Waltee’s Quest can be used to introduce students to the idea of mystery. If you have a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard, students can work together to explore the museum and find treasures. As students find clues, they can work together to solve the mystery.

Waltee’s Quest can also be used as a virtual trip to an art museum, if you can’t swing a trip to a local art museum as a class, this site will provide students with the next best option in a way that engages them in discovery.

Tips: Make sure that students know to write down the name and passcode they use to login, if they want to return to their game they will need this later!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Waltee’s Quest in your classroom.

Google Art Project: Virtual Art Museums

February 1, 2011Kelly Tenkely5 Comments4783 views

What it is: Google never stops amazing me, this time they are amazing me in the form of a partnership with art museums around the world. Art Project is an incredible collaborative project that is powered by Google to bring art museums into your classroom. Art Project lets students discover and view more than a thousand pieces of art online in incredible detail with Google street view technology. Students can virtually move around the museum’s galleries, zooming closer on works of art and navigating through interactive floor plans where they can learn more about the museum and explore. Artwork view lets students view the art at high-resolution, expanding the information panel lets students read more about the art, find more art by the same artist and watch related YouTube videos. Students can act as curator and create their own artwork collection by saving specific views of the art and build a personal collection. Comments can be added to each piece of art and share with families and friends.

How to integrate Google Art Project into the classroom: Google Art Project brings art museums from around the world into your classroom. Take a virtual field trip to the museums using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Let students take turns acting as a museum tour guide by clicking on the extra information and reading it out loud for students while they look at the artwork. After the class tour of the museum, students can use classroom computers or a lab to create their own collections. Students can comment on each piece of art and share the collection they curated with family and friends.

Use Google Art Project for a compare and contrast activity. Students can compare and contrast the type of artwork they see in the various art museums, compare and contrast styles of art, or compare and contrast the work of different artists or time periods.

Use the artwork as the base of a creative writing activity, students can choose a piece of art and write a story about the artist, or about what is happening in the work of art.

Need help demonstrating a technique? Art Project lets students view artwork in such detail that the techniques are easy to point out and describe.

Tips: Due to copyrights, some pieces of art will appear a bit blurry when students zoom in. The majority of the pieces can be seen in very high levels of detail.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Art Project in your classroom.

Color in Motion- Exploring Color

January 31, 2011Kelly Tenkely9 Comments3347 views

What it is: Amazing really doesn’t do this site justice. No really, this might be my favorite site of the month…that is saying something! Regardless of if you teach about color or art, Color in Motion is a must see just for the creativity and brilliance of the site. Color in motion is a wonderfully animated and interactive experience of color communication and color symbolism. Have you ever looked at an art website and thought, “really, this is the best they could do? It is a site about art for crying out loud!” No? Just me? 🙂 Color in Motion is not one of those sites. The minute you begin exploring you know that this isn’t just a site about color, it is a work of art. There are three activities on Color in Motion. The Stars introduces students to the color stars (primary and secondary colors personified). When students click on a color stars profile they learn about their blood (the color(s) that make them up), what the star is hired to represent (the feelings the color gives), the positive and negative traits, and what the color represents around the world. In the movies, students can sit back and enjoy the show as they learn about the symbolism of each color in a fun animation. In the Lab, students have the opportunity to interact with the different stars. Students can direct a scene acting as a movie director based on a word that represents the color choice. In project 2, students are a color star manager. It is up to them to decide which production their star is going to participate in based on what they learned about color symbolism. Project 3 is a kaleidoscope where students can just have fun and “play” with color in a virtual kaleidoscope.

How to integrate Color in Motion into the classroom: Color in Motion is a fantastic place for students to learn more about color in a highly interactive, engaging, and fun way. Students learn about color through story. They meet each of the colors as a different character being cast for a production. The site is great for any art or design class but could be equally wonderful for a creative writing project. After your students have had some time to explore the site and interact with the different characters, ask them to choose a character to write a story about. Students should write the story based on the character traits they know about the color.

As a getting-to-know-you activity, students could choose a color that they feel best represents them personally. Students can list all of the color attributes that they feel describe them. Are they a mix of colors? Have students write down what the mix is and why.

Looking for a way to spice up spelling/vocabulary practice? Have students assign each word a color based on the word meaning and the color character traits that match. Students can compare and contrast the colors they chose for the words with the colors other students chose for a light persuasive argument.

As students study historical and literary figures, they can assign each a color based on the matching character traits. It would make a really neat bulletin board to have a color wheel with pictures of historical/literary characters on each color based on the similar character traits. These types of activities help students draw parallels and think about history and literature in new ways.

Younger students can think about what color an animal would be if it was the color of its color character traits. The creative possibilities with Color in Motion are endless.

Oh yeah, in addition to all of those “spin-off” ideas, there are great creative activities right on the site many of which would be great for whole class with a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard, for small groups in a center activity, or individually in a one to one computer situation.

Tips: Color in Motion can be viewed in both English and Spanish. If you have students learning English or Spanish as a second language, the colors and adjectives on this site are wonderful!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Color in Motion in your classroom.

Extreme Planet Makeover: make a planet

January 28, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments2137 views

What it is: NASA has some really fantastic resources and activities for use in the classroom. This week I am creating a customized integrated technology plan for a local elementary/middle school. One of the subjects we are integrating tech into is astronomy. NASA was, of course, my first stop for finding some resources we could use. While I was there I came across Extreme Planet Makeover where students can try their hand at making their very own planet. In this fun interactive, students can control the look and habitability of their own world. Students use the controls available to adjust the planetary attributes. They can change things like size, distance from star, star type, planet age, and even start their planet based on different presets. As students are adjusting their extreme planet, they will start to understand the differences between earth and the other planets in our solar system. When students are finished, they can download a picture of their custom world.

How to integrate Extreme Planet Makeover into the classroom: Extreme Planet Makeover is a neat simulation where students can design a custom planet. As they create their own custom planet, they will begin to notice what makes a planet habitable or not, and the unique features that must be in place for life. Extreme Planet Makeover can be used with the whole class using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Invite each student to make an adjustment to the planet. With each adjustment, students can describe the ways that the planet has changed. The finished class planet can be used as the base for a creative writing prompt.

Set up Extreme Planet Makeover as a center activity where students can create a planet and download to save. The finished planets can be shared on a class photo stream, website, or blog where students can compare and contrast the features of each planet.

In a one to one or computer lab setting, students can each create a planet that they use for a compare/contrast to an actual planet in the solar system and as a creative writing prompt. Who lives on this planet? What galaxy is their planet in? How do you get there?

Tips: One of the features I really appreciate about the Extreme Planet Makeover is the explanations that pop up over each planet attribute. Students learn about how atmosphere, size, different stars, the distance from the star, and the age effect a planet.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Extreme Planet Makeover in your classroom.

Tag Galaxy: Visual Word Relationships

January 4, 2011Kelly Tenkely9 Comments5068 views

What it is: Tag Galaxy is a neat little tool that helps students to explore relationships between words and ideas as well as view pictures related to that word. Type in a word to search and immediately you are transferred to a galaxy with the original word at the center and the associated ideas orbiting around it. When you click on the word in the center, a globe populates with pictures from Flickr that are tagged with that word. Click on one of the orbiting words and tags related to that word start to orbit. Tag Galaxy is a very neat way to view information!

How to integrate Tag Galaxy into the classroom: Tag Galaxy is a brilliant way to visually explore word relationships. Students can use it to type in spelling or vocabulary words and discuss the relationship the related tags have to the original word. Students can click on the original idea to get a visual understanding of the word in the form of a picture globe. The connection with Flickr helps students to visualize words, ideas, and concepts by providing a variety of pictures that match the tag. Tag Galaxy would make for a fun story starter. Students can type in a word tag to get them started, view related words, and then click on the globe of pictures to spark creative writing ideas. Tag Galaxy can be set up on classroom computers as a creative writing centers, or used for whole class inspiration with a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard.

Check out science, math, art, or geography vocabulary on Tag Galaxy, the resulting collection of images will help your students attach meaning to those tricky science concepts like my photosynthesis example above.

As a side note, Tag Galaxy also offers a pretty good visual aid for learning about orbit 🙂

Tips: ***Very important*** Whenever you are using tools that pull from other sites to populate, it is important to test out the words prior to using with students. You never know how people will tag an image and the image might not be appropriate for all age groups. When using Tag Galaxy with elementary students, have them suggest words that you test before using with the class. In my classroom, whenever students wanted to do an image search, I had them fill out an “image wish list” first. On the wish list students write down words they would like to search. I would do a quick test of the words and sign off on them. This worked well as there were a lot of similar requests (i.e. animals!) 🙂

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Tag Galaxy in your classroom.

The Pre-Raph Pack

October 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4994 views

What it is: The Pre-Raph Pack (don’t you love that name?) is a brilliant site about artists, the techniques they used, a timeline that spans 100 years, and a collection of images from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. First students discover the Pre-Raphites (that is artists who were before Raphael). Students will learn about the influences, the different styles that emerged, the early and late style and the lasting influence that these artists have. Students can learn more about the individual artists which are easily categorized and searched by last name. Next, students can learn about the different painting techniques that were used from the wet-white technique to the use of bright and vivid colors. The timeline lets students explore each time period of the almost 100 year Pre-Raphaelite movement. Finally, students can see the collection of paintings themselves. The collection is easily searchable by category.

How to integrate The Pre-Raph Pack into your curriculum: The Pre-Raph Pack is a comprehensive look at the Pre-Raphael art movement and the collection at Birmingham. Students not only get a peek at the artists themselves, they learn the history, technique, and what the movement meant to art.

This is a well put together site for use in any art class, but the in-depth look at the artists and the history makes it a great site for any classroom. Art is a medium that can absolutely hook a child on history. They begin to see that art has gone through evolutions and that it is deeply reflective of the times. If you have a student who is struggling with history, introduce them to a little art history and see if you can’t help them make different connections with the stories. I have said this many times before, but history was a hard subject for me. I saw it only as a collection of dates, facts, places, and names that I couldn’t get to relate to each other. It wasn’t until I met my husband and he started talking history, that I realized that history is all about story. The Pre-Raph Pack is a site that can help your students begin to connect the pieces in history.

Use the paintings on this site as writing prompts, ask students to write about the story they think is happening in the painting. The collection includes everything from history and medieval, to religion and myth, to portraits, literature, and landscapes. Each of your students will be able to find a painting that speaks to them.

Tips: The Pre-Raph Pack was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Pre-Raph Pack in your classroom!

Life Is from BBC Earth

September 9, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4011 views

What it is: Life is is an incredible site from BBC Earth. The beautifully interactive site is full of images, video, and stories from BBC Earth’s most captivating documentaries. Each month features a different theme with September’s theme, Life is…Colorful. The astonishing images and video capture life’s most colorful displays in nature. The search page is equally stunning, offering an on-screen widget that lets students adjust the pictures in the grid by filtering by hot/cold, slow/fast, sea/sky, or color.

How to integrate Life Is from BBC Earth into your curriculum: Life is would make for an incredible discussion starter or creative writing prompt. This month’s theme is Life is Colorful. Ask students to come up with descriptive words for the pictures and images they are seeing. Students can use the descriptive words they came up with to write a Life is… poem. The poem could start with the line Life is… include descriptions of what they observed in the video and end with …Colorful.

Students can make their own Life is… type videos with a theme of their choosing using a tool like the National Geographic Wildlife Filmmaker.

This site can be used on classroom computers or in a lab setting, but I think it would be absolutely stunning on an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer!

Tips: The left and right arrows on the site let you view each picture in the theme series separately. Each picture has an overlay with additional information about the image.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Life Is in your classroom!

Lightning Bug

April 26, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments10681 views

What it is: Lightning Bug is a fantastic resource for the writing classroom. The tag-line of Lightning Bug is, “Your writing partner, helping you write a story from beginning to THE END”. That is exactly what it does. For each stage of the writing process, students have access to excellent guides and resources to aid the process. Students can get help finding a story idea, developing the idea, and finishing the story. Students can even have a look at what kind of writer they might be based on their personalities. Lightning Bug has a great collection of writing resources. Students can explore author blogs, search for character names, get some exercises in creativity, get help with grammar and spelling, and even get help for publishing their written work. The teacher resources are equally helpful for teaching writing.

How to integrate Lightening Bug into the classroom: Lightning Bug is a great resource to have going on your classroom computers as a writing/publishing center. Students can visit the site to get help with every stage of writing. This is an excellent site to send home and alert parents to, it would be enormously helpful for at-home writing projects. If you have access to a computer lab or 1 to 1 setting, allow your students to walk through this website as they work on any piece of writing. The site is organized really well and easy to navigate independently. Be sure to take a look at the teacher resources.

A few of the recommendations for the writing process include worksheets such as mind maps. Instead of using a worksheet for students to map their ideas, consider using online tools that will let students organize their thoughts and collaborate with others as they write. Try using online mind mapping tools such as Creza’s Mindomo or Comapping. Students can use tools such as Zoho, Google Docs, or Kerpoof to collaborate as they write.

Tips: Many of the ideas and resources found on Lightning Bug are useful for digital storytelling.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Lightning Bug in your classroom.

Google Search Stories Video Creator

April 12, 2010Kelly Tenkely11 Comments9776 views

What it is: Do you remember Google’s advertisement at the 2010 Superbowl? It was called Google Search Stories and showed a story of Parsian Love through a series of Google searches. Brilliant. Now you and your students can create your very own Google Search story with Google Search Stories Video Creator. There are three steps to creating your own Google Story: 1. Write the story, 2. Add Music, 3. Preview and Upload. As you write your story, you can choose to search by web, blog, images, maps, news, product search, and books.

How to integrate Google Search Stories Video Creator into the classroom: Google Search story is an innovative way for students to display understanding or tell a story. This tool teaches students to get to the heart of the story and tell it in a new, creative way. Students can demonstrate their understanding of history, current events, a book that they have read, or a math sequence.

First, students come up with 7 events to search, paying close attention to story structure. They should consider mixing web, images, maps, and blogs. This will make the story more interesting. Next, students choose music to fit the theme of their story. It can be comedic, dramatic, romantic, country, horror, family, or sci-fi. Finally, students can preview their story and share it with the world.

Think about sharing the life of a historical figure, or the story of Romeo and Juliet, or the scientific method in an experiment, or the story of their digital footprint, or a fictional story that the student created. Instead of writing out a traditional outline for a story, why not turn it into a Google Story? The possibilities of this tool are nearly endless! If you are introducing new information or learning to your class, consider doing it through a Google Story. Watch the story as a class and find out what your students already know, what they need to learn, and what they want to know. You could also create a Google Story as a class after new learning. As you teach, ask students to jot down thoughts about what they could add to their search story to sum up the learning. This will keep students engaged and thinking critically about the new material. After the video has been completed, students can access it from home as an outline of what they learned in class.

Tips: Check out the Tips offered for starting a story, these tips will give you, and your students, a great jumping off point.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Search Stories in your classroom.

Scholastic Story Starters

April 8, 2009Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3129 views

What it is: Story Starters is a fun site for students in kindergarten through sixth grade to use each day as a quick writing activity. Students type in their name and select a grade to begin. Students are taken to a special Story Starter machine that generates writing ideas for newspaper articles, letters, notebooks, or postcards. They can get a new idea by keeping some elements of the idea and spinning again to change elements. The site also features Scholastic’s Word Wizard which always floats on the webpage. Students can type in a word or double click any word on the webpage and get a definition of the word.

How to integrate Scholastic Story Starters into the classroom: Scholastic Story Starters is a fun website to use with the whole class or as a writing learning center. This is a great site to use with an interactive whiteboard or projector to generate ideas for free creative writing time. Let students take turns being the ‘spinner’ that generates writing ideas. Encourage students to share their writing, it is neat to hear all the different ideas that kids come up with from the same story starter. This would be a great website to bookmark on classroom computers for students to visit as a writing center that they can visit when they are stumped for writing ideas.

Tips: You may have to spin a category a few times to get a story starter that makes sense. This is very quick and easy!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Scholastic Story Starters in your classroom.