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=**Madeira Park teachers** have an interest in incorporating some Web2.0 websites into their lessons teaching the writing process. These sites will be used by teachers and students to provide some motivational tools to extend their writing. The purpose of this wiki page is to give links to some resources that can be used to achieve this goal. =

=Scholastic has created an interactive activity to help generate Story Starters. One immediate note ... the site has loud sounds, but it also has a button to mute the sound on the front page. At this site, a student enters their age and their grade range and is taken to a page where they can pull a spinner to generate an idea. Each element of the starter can be individually changed as the randomness of the spinner can make some silly ideas. =

=**Kidspiration and Inspiration** are on some of the computers in the school and they are wonderful outlining tools. Kidspiration is on the laptops for your students, though not on your teacher laptop, and is in the Applications Folder, not in the dock. These two computer based programs will allow for brainstorming in a graphical sense and also generate a textual outline for students to use when expanding their thinking into a writing project. There is a good online tool called Webspiration. It is currently in Beta form (meaning trial, not fully finalized release) and free to use with registration. The advantage of this tool is that the data is stored online and students can create outlines and then access them from home without a computer based application and regardless of the operating system of their computer. I took the opportunity to create a generic account for you to use to play around and you can log in with the Username: cgeteacher and the Password: cgesd46. Fun to play with. It does seem that the email address entered on the registration page does not need to be a valid one in order to start using the page, but that may change. = =**Six word stories** can be a great deal of fun, and also a challenge, to think about and then write. The objective of the six word story is simple. Take a look at an image, photo, graphic, etc. and create a story that tells about the image. You are limited to six words. Here is a link to some examples done by adults. A project like this can simply be done with students. Pic*Lits is an interesting site to use for this kind of project. Again, though registration is required and it is free, I have been able to create a generic account, seemingly without having to use a personal email address. To access the account use the **Email address: cge.sd46.bc.ca and the Password: cgesd46.**Here is a 6-word story I created at this site. = =As you will see when you visit this site, there is a fair amount of room for typing here and so the assignment could go beyond 6 words into poetry or paragraphing. Though the site does allow a user to save work, it is does so in a proprietary fashion, so learning how to capture the screen to the clipboard or a file will be covered off when we visit this site at the workshop. **ComicLife** is a disk based application on your laptops, both teacher and student laptops. This application is great for creating comics, title pages, and could be used for 6-word stories and other writing activities. One online application that offers many different activities for students is Kerpoof. Kerpoof does have a writing option to choose from and here you can select backgrounds, characters, drawing tools, text, speech balloons and other fun tools. = =One very nice thing about Kerpoof is that registration is free and students can have their own accounts. Accounts for children can either be approved by their parents (using parent email) or by the teacher. Teachers can register a class account and add their students. **Collaborative writing** is something being done using web based applications such as EtherPad and Google Docs. One site that would be fun for intermediate students is Primary Pad ... Primary not in the sense of grade level. No registration required for the basic use of this web based tool, and it is useful for having students and teachers collaborate on a document. Users can be colour-coded to see who's writing is in place and the final results can be saved, downloaded, printed, etc. = = = =**Some homes and classrooms have word magnets** that can be moved around to create phrases or sentences on the wall or on the fridge. Scramble Word Magnetsis a site I would probably use as a warm-up site, or a "free time", site to do a similar task, but do it online. It is also editable, so students can modify the words there, or create their own words. Of course the words they modify or create at not saved on the list - they are only there for the student's session. Once again, learning how to capture the image and then use it in another document is something we will cover during the workshop. = =**I have played around** with the site Wallwisher. I've visited a few wallwisher sites and can see the potential for writing, and also for collaborative classroom projects. I did a class with some grade 4 and 5 students and they had a great time with the project. For this session, I have created a site for you to play with. Enjoy. = =Here are some other sites you might like to explore: A site where you can create and publish your own newspaper. Voicethread where you can have a teacher/class account. =