Create online Stories using StoryJumper.

StoryJumper is a great site for those teachers who want to find, read, and write online stories that can be shared with others.  There are many stories that are already written and ready to be read, or you can just create your own.  Better yet, have an assignment for your students in which they write their own online story.  How cool would that be?!?!  If you are looking for having students express themselve through writing then StoryJumper might be the site for you.

Tutorial for creating your own story.

1.  Go to the following web address:  www.storyjumper.com

2.  If you don't already have an account go ahead and create one.

3.  Click the "create" option from the different colored circles.

4.  Click the "Build a book from scratch option."

5.  Off to the left hand side you see a bunch of options that allow you to give "flavor" to your story.  Lets start off with the "props" section.  Find a prop that you are interested in and then just drag it over onto your story book page.

 

6.  To manipulate the image just click on it.  Use the "handles", the little squares around the image, to resize it.  Use the "Rotate" handle for rotating the image.  The "up" and "down" arrows help with layering your images.  Play with the other buttons to do things like "clone" or "delete" the image.

7.  Off to the left again, click the "scenes" button and choose what scene or background would be best for your story book.  Once you have decided just drag it over to your page.

8.  You can see that the "scene" is placed behind your "props."

9.  To add your own images to your book, just click the "Photos" option off to the left and then click the "get photos" button.  This will then let you search for pictures from your computer.

10.  On the left again, click the "Text" option which will allow you to add "text boxes" to your story.

11.  Just drag the style of box you want onto your page, click on it to begin typing for to get your options that you can play with, such as changing the font style.

12.  At the bottom of your story you will see your "save," "undo," and "exit" buttons as well as buttons that will advance you to other pages in your book.

13.  Toward the top you get an idea of what pages you are working on.  Play with the different options across this tool bar to familiarize yourself with them as they will save you some time, knowing what they all do.

That is pretty much all there is to creating a story book using "StoryJumper."  Don't forget to hit save before  exiting the browser.  If you want to see what other people have written, just click the "Explore" green circle.  Enjoy using StoryJumper.

Create bibliographies for your next research paper using BibMe.

BibMe is another great resource for those seeking easy to use methods of citing your sources while doing your research papers or presentations.

What are the advantages of using BibMe?

• Will create bibliographies just by typing in the title of the book or article.
• Citations for books, magazines, web pages, journals, film, and newspapers.
• APA and MLA styles as well as some others.

Tutorial

1.  Go to www.bibme.org

2.  Once you are at the site, decide what type of citation you are going to need.  Click on the appropriate tag.  For this tutorial I will just use the "Book" tab.

3.  When I use Bibme, I just use the "Auto-fill mode."  If you want to try the "Manual entry mode" just click the link.

4.  The nice thing about Bibme is that you can just type in the title of a book and click the "Find Book" button.  It will then produce search results based upon the title.

5.  You can now scroll through the list of books with similar titles.  Click the "Select" button when you find the right book.

6.  This will then fill in the following form.  Make any changes you deem necesary.  I have to admit that I haven't found very many errors in the Auto mode.

7. Once you have verified the info click the "Add to My Bibliography" button.

8.  Your citation will now be created on the right hand side of your screen.  You can delete an uneeded citation by clicking the red "x" or you can edit it by clicking the "pencil" icon.

9.  To change the Bibliography style just click the drop down menu.

10.  Once you are ready you can click the "Download" button, or if you created your own "BibMe" account you can save the bibliography online.

11.  If you prefer you can just highlight the bibliography, right click on the highlight and then click the "Copy" option and then go to your document that contains your "Works cited" page and paste it into your document.

Bibme.org is really a simple solution and an easy site that will make your research life much more tolerable.

Finding and creating webquests using Zunal

• Zunal.com is a site for searching for and creating webquests. There are hundreds of webquests for all levels and subject areas on the site. 
• In this entry we will go through how to find a webquest. 
• First you would click the desired subject on the left side:

• The next screen will show a matrix of different subjects and grade levels. Mine happens to be set on high school science.

• If you want to do a specific keyword search, click the "search" link on the bottom right of the table.
• You will then be prompted to type in a search term and choose the curriculum area and grade level

• You may find that your search term doesn't yield many results. When I used "human anatomy" I got only two results

• You can try different terms. I changed the term to "respiration" and got a few more results:

• Here is what shows up when one of the webquests is clicked:

• If you like the webquest, you can "add to favorites" if you are a registered user:

• Registration is free -- you can do it from the opening screen

• There are several things you can do with this site such as writing quizzes, creating webquests, and making games. We will go through those in future posts. Happy webquesting!

Search 27 sites for flashcards using Flashcard Flash

This is a good site for teachers who would like to quickly find test review materials. Flashcard Flash searches 27 different flash card sites for whatever subject the user types in. Here is how it works:

• Type in a search term. In this case, I typed in gas laws.

• You will get a Google-like search result. In this case, there were about 407,000,000 results. 

• You can narrow the results by clicking the "flashcards" link on the top.

• The "flashcards" link narrowed the results down to 64,500 results.

• Now you can click any of the results and access the flashcards. After screening the flashcards, you can provide the students with the link and they can use the flashcards.
• Sometimes you will need to register for the site.
• Thanks to Educational Technology and Mobile Learning for the original post about this site.
• Happy searching!

Create research papers using Google Doc's research pane.

I have been recently accused by coworkers as being on Google's payroll because of how much I bring it up when helping teachers with solutions to their educational technology issues.  I am not, but I think that Google should pay me!!!  Just kidding.  (Sort of.)  Let me shout out though the "I Love Google APPS!"  Google has done a great job keeping educators and their students in mind when developing ideas and products.  Today they are beginning to release the Google Doc's "Research" pane.

What can I do with this web 2.0 tool?

• Site sources directly from the research pane.
• Drag and drop pictures while using the pane.
• Browse websites from within the research pane.

This tool is awesome!!

Tutorial

 1.  Log into your Google docs.  If it hasn't changed yet, it will soon be called "Drive."

2.  In the "Tools" menu click the "Research" option.  This will then open the "Research" pane on the right hand side of your document.

3.  Type in your research key words.  This will then automatically start searching.

4.  In my example using dogs, you will notice that images will be displayed from Google images.  The search sometimes will give you some neat things such as "Also know as", "Other names," and "Classifications."

5.  If you left click on an image it will grow in size to give you a larger image. 

6.  If you left click and hold on the image you can then just drag the image over to your document.

7.  The really cool thing with this is that you will see a little number by your picture which then give it a cited source.  Now you wont be able to see the citation until you get ready to print.

8.  Here is what it would look like when getting ready to print your pages.

9.  Now if you hover your mouse over some of the research sources you will get three buttons that will appear.  The "Cite" button will create another citation for the website that you use.

10.  The "Insert link" button will insert a reader friendly link into your document.

11.  The "Preview" button will give you a snapshot of what the webpage you might visit would look like.

The is really all there is to using the Google Research Pane.  Please share this with your students or if you are a student, let your teachers know.  This will truly help those using Google Docs/Drive complete their research in much less time and frustration.