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Quinn Rollins: Play Like a Pirate: Funko Pop! As Biography

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Quinn Rollins: Play Like a Pirate: Funko Pop! As Biography

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Over the last ten years, the Funko toy company has taken the pop culture toy world by storm. Their flagship line is Funko Pop! ...vinyl big-headed dolls about six inches tall, with big black eyes, a tiny nose, and no mouth. The first time I saw them, I thought they were weird-looking. Then the more I saw them, the more I thought they were cute. Then I bought one. I think WALL-E from Pixar was my first. Then Kermit the Frog. Then some Sesame Street characters. I thought "I don't need to collect these," and then a friend started giving me Star Wars Funko Pops. As of this writing, I have about twenty-five of these little dolls figures, from Star Wars and Peanuts and Pixar and Muppets and DC Comics.

Whatever you're into, there's probably a Funko Pop! series dedicated to it. Harry Potter, Star Trek, Doctor Who, NFL, Golden Girls, NBA, NHL, Ghostbusters, Adventure Time, Indiana Jones...look, just go here and see for yourself. It's astounding how many there are. And at $10.00 (or less) a piece, they're incredibly easy to indulge in. It's kind of a problem.

With as ubiquitous as Funko Pop! has become, for me it was an easy enough jump from the action figure strategy I explain in Play Like a PIRATE to having students design Funko Pop! figures as simple biographies of characters they're learning about in class. Historic figures, great inventors, characters in novels -- anything in your curriculum that has a human in it would work. Or sometimes not human... In any case. Not as much research is required for the Funko Pop! figures as the other action figure strategy, and the Funko Pop! style is stylized and simplified enough that even young students can design characters they're proud of.

Like my action figure template ( see sidebar), the Funko Pop! template has a front side and back side of the packaging. The front side has the main character in a large window. The back side has a space for a short biography of the character -- a summary of their life, their role in your curriculum, etc. There are also two smaller characters pictured on the back of the box, for two additional people who would play a role in that character's life, contemporaries of the character, people in a related field, etc.

Funko Pop! is one of the biggest toy lines around, and your students have seen them. Most of your kids probably have a few of them. You might have a few looking you with their creepy-cute dead eyes RIGHT NOW. Find a way to take that appealing toy and make it work with kids. They'll love it.

The template for the Funko Pop! assignment is free, under my Action Figure Templates in the sidebar.

Some examples of student work:

Just in case you thought I was kidding about the Golden Girls...

If you like this idea, check out a hundred more ways to use toys in the classroom in my book Play Like a Pirate: Engage Students with Toys, Games, and Comics -- available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. It's fun. It's funny. It will change your life. It will make me a few bucks. To go spend on more toys. It's the circle of life. And now that song is in your head.

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Over the last ten years, the Funko toy company has taken the pop culture toy world by storm. Their flagship line is Funko Pop! ...vinyl big-headed dolls about six inches tall, with big black eyes, a tiny nose, and no mouth. The first time I saw them, I thought they were weird-looking.

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SmithsonianTweenTribune | Articles for kids, middle school, teens from Smithsonian | tweentribune.com | Current events, lesson plans, quizzes, assessments

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SmithsonianTweenTribune | Articles for kids, middle school, teens from Smithsonian | tweentribune.com | Current events, lesson plans, quizzes, assessments

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As of Monday, October 24, content that was on TweenTribune.com will now be available here on our new educational resources page and on our learning pages. While much of the content that you enjoyed will still exist, educators will unfortunately no longer be able to assign content to students. Tween Tribune has been a valued educational brand of Smithsonian magazine, and we appreciate your continued support.

Though the Girl Scouts of the USA initially declared itself a space for all girls, the reality was different for girls of color

Erin Blakemore

Get Smithsonian Educational Resources

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As of Monday, October 24, content that was on TweenTribune.com will now be available here on our new educational resources page and on our learning pages. While much of the content that you enjoyed will still exist, educators will unfortunately no longer be able to assign content to students.

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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Mike Rose's Blog: Teaching Remedial Writing

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Mike Rose's Blog: Teaching Remedial Writing

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The discussion of underprepared college students over the last few posts leads me to one more entry. This is on teaching remedial writing. I suggested last month that there were a lot of other ways Professor X in that Atlantic Monthly article could have achieved his educational goals. Here is one approach - and I'll begin it with a student profile different in kind from the ones Professor X presents.

Kevin had a story similar to a lot of young men from my old neighborhood in South-Central L.A. He was a good student in poor schools, schools with old textbooks, scarce resources for enrichment, high teacher turnover. And like more than a few young men from such neighborhoods, he was seduced by street life, got into trouble, and spent most of his 16th year in a juvenile camp.

Upon release, he went back to school, worked hard, graduated, did miserably on the SAT, and went to college through a special admissions program.

I had helped develop the writing component for that program, and I taught in it. Kevin's first piece of college writing - the placement exam - was peppered with grammatical errors, and the writing was disorganized and vague. This is the kind of writing we see in media accounts of remedial students, and it is the kind of writing that academics and politicians alike cite as an example of how higher education is being compromised. And such writing is troubling. If Kevin's writing remained like this, he would probably not make it through college.

The traditional remedial writing course would begin with simple writing assignments and include a fair amount of workbook exercises, mostly focused on grammar and usage. The readings used for such a course would also be fairly basic, both in style and content. Though they might not be articulated, there are powerful - and limiting - assumptions about language, learning, and cognition that drive such a curriculum: that students like Kevin need to go back to linguistic square one, building skill slowly through the elements of grammar; that simpler reading and writing assignments won't overly tax Kevin's limited ability and will allow a concentration on correcting linguistic error; that complex, demanding work and big ideas - college work - should be put on hold until Kevin displays mastery of the basics.

No wonder remediation gets such a bad rap.

The program we developed for students like Kevin held to a different set of assumptions, assumptions we had developed from reading current research on language and cognition and from our own experience in the classroom. We certainly acknowledged the trouble Kevin was in and wanted to help him improve his writing on all levels, grammar to organization to style. But we didn't believe we needed to carve up language into small workbook bits and slowly, slowly build his skill. And in Kevin's case, we were right. By the end of the twenty-week program, Kevin was writing competent papers explicating poems by Gary Soto and Jim Daniels, comparing the approaches to reading presented in The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Ben Franklin's Autobiography, and analyzing the decision making in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Let me explain a bit more about the remedial writing curriculum we fashioned, and then use it to make a broader point about the possibilities of remediation.

My co-workers and I began by surveying a range of lower-division courses to get a sense of the typical kinds of reading and writing assignments faced by students like Kevin in that critical first year. We then found readings from a variety of disciplines that were similar to those in our survey and created writing assignments that helped students develop the skills to write about them. Then we sequenced the assignments from less to more difficult and also so that they were cumulative: what a student learned to do in the first week fed into an assignment on the fifth. So, for example, several early assignments Kevin faced required him to read a passage on the history of Eugenics and write a definition of it and to read a passage with diagrams about income distribution in the U.S. and summarize it. This practice in defining and summarizing would later come into play when Kevin had to systematically compare the descriptions of becoming literate in the Autobiography of Malcolm X and Ben Franklin's Autobiography.

To assist students with assignments like these, we organized instruction so that there was lots of discussion of the readings and a good deal of in-class writing where students could try out ideas and get feedback on their work as it developed.

And because many of our students, like Kevin, did display in their writing all the grammatical, stylistic, and organizational problems that give rise to remedial writing courses in the first place, we did spend a good deal of time on error - in class, in conference, on comments on their papers - but in the context of their academic writing. This is a huge point and one that is tied to our core assumptions about cognition and language: that writing filled with grammatical error does not preclude engagement with sophisticated intellectual material, and that error can be addressed effectively as one is engaging such material.

Certainly not all students did as well as Kevin, but many did. Those who want to purge college of remedial courses would say that Kevin doesn't belong. He proved them wrong. And those holding to a traditional remedial model would be fearful that the tasks we assigned would be too difficult, would discourage Kevin. He proved them wrong as well.

Since we mounted those programs, some studies have emerged that confirm the approach we took. Successful remedial programs set high standards; are focused on inquiry and problem solving in a substantial curriculum; utilize a pedagogy that is supportive and interactive; draw on a variety of techniques and approaches; and are in-line with student goals and provide credit for coursework.

Educational researchers Michael Cole, Peg Griffin, Kris Gutierrez, and others have a nice way of talking about successful remediation. They refer to re-mediation - that is, changing the environment and the means through which students are taught the material they had not mastered before. A complaint often leveled at remediation by legislators is that they are "paying twice" for instruction in material that should have been learned earlier. Fair enough, but when remediation, re-mediation, is done well, the material in a sense is encountered anew, in a new context, with new curriculum and new pedagogy. For some students this makes all the difference in the world.

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The discussion of underprepared college students over the last few posts leads me to one more entry. This is on teaching remedial writing. I suggested last month that there were a lot of other ways Professor X in that Atlantic Monthly article could have achieved his educational goals.

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STAAR Writing Strategies - Trail of Breadcrumbs

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STAAR Writing Strategies - Trail of Breadcrumbs

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If you're a Texas teacher, you understand the frustrations that come with the STAAR test. Instead of letting it beat you, take it by the horns and get your students ready with confidence. Check out the packets and resources below.

Want to know how to really beat the test? Teach your students how to spot DEAD GIVEAWAYS with this powerpoint.

Need some released student-written pieces to work with? They are great to practice kernelizing, scoring, and using for a gallery walk (see the Wall of Fours sheet below). Click here for folder FULL of 2016 pieces for each grade level and here for 2015 pieces.

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STAAR Writing Strategies - Trail of Breadcrumbs

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If you're a Texas teacher, you understand the frustrations that come with the STAAR test. Instead of letting it beat you, take it by the horns and get your students ready with confidence. Check out the packets and resources below. Want to know how to really beat the test?

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Start studying Literary Terms. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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The easy-to-use getaway to historical maps in libraries around the world.

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An Authentic Writing Project for English Learners | Blog | Project Based Learning | BIE

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An Authentic Writing Project for English Learners | Blog | Project Based Learning | BIE

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March 20, 2017
An Authentic Writing Project for English Learners

After 11 years of teaching all the high school level English as a Second Language (ESL) courses I thought were available in the state of Texas, I was suddenly assigned the task of teaching "Practical Writing ESL"-the objectives for which, I was told, were straightforward and easy to follow. Once I looked at them myself, I came to realize that this was probably instituted as a remedial course to help get English Language Learners (ELLs) to pass the writing portion of our state assessment. The expectation, it would seem, would be to dole out practice writing prompts all year to better "prepare" the students taking the course.

The problem is, I don't do that.

Instead, I decided I would implement my first true attempt at PBL and provide my students writing tasks that were related, important, and most of all real. Due to various experiences I've had working outside the classroom, I've come to understand that test-prep is not life-prep and when we focus only on getting the test score we want, we often leave students crippled in their ability to be truly effective writers. I wanted to make sure that my ELLs left "Practical Writing" with genuine literacy skills that could authentically be put into, well, practice.

Writing on Social Justice Issues for a Public Audience
The course was designed as a year-long study of a social justice issue chosen by each student. Writing would then be crafted and housed in a website with the unifying purpose to raise awareness for their cause, thus providing an authentic platform and audience (the world). This was done in keeping with the BIE "Gold Standard" Project Design Elements to ensure that this became a valid experience that fostered "key success skills" that stayed with the learner long after their time in my class. To accomplish this, students would engage in writing tasks ranging from research-based expository text to crafting infographics that visually represented the problems they are focusing on. Above all, I wanted to make sure that all assignments in this project both improved my students' writing skills and contributed to the larger goal of being globally minded citizens working to do their part in a connected world.

To illustrate, I want to take a look at the process used to lead my students through their most recent unit on infographics. After having written more formal research on their social justice issues, I wanted my students to see that there are more modern and dynamic ways to represent data than just adding a chart or graph to a website. We spent a good week just learning what an infographic is and how to create one well, using an article published by Canva on composition and design. Starting here, you can see the process I used to help my ELLs work through this assignment as well as the other writing tasks we have accomplished so far.

1. Establish author's purpose-Provide time for students to explore the reason why someone would make an infographic and how to do it well. This was accomplished by taking advantage of online publications to help students see that they can learn from the world of information readily available to them (i.e the Canva article mentioned above).

2. Study mentors-This is an invaluable practice that I learned from Allison Marchetti and Rebeka O'Dell in their book Writing with Mentors. Instead of providing students with a graphic organizer or pre-made template for writing or, in this case, project completion, I turn to the professionals. Students see what real infographics produced by real business people look like and explore what they are doing right that can be emulated.

3. Develop a research question-Once the idea of an infographic is concrete for the learners, it was time to develop their own purpose for creating one. The challenge at this point was to isolate the specific concepts from their social justice issues that could be effectively represented in this format and turn them into something cohesive that could be learned from.

4. Plan-With a purpose to guide them and mentors to reference, I was able to turn students loose to plan their infographics. As they planned, they had to justify their decisions for composition, data, color pallette and images. This demonstrated that they were not just making something "cute," but were actually employing the concepts they learned towards creating quality, useful pieces.

5. Reflect-Throughout the process (and in all writing tasks), my students kept a blog to reflect upon their work and explain the thought process behind it. I have found this to be one of the most crucial components of the course as this is the place where I can see the learning really materialize. With these posts, my ELLs also get practice seeing the difference between using casual and formal registers and when it's appropriate to use either. They also have the opportunity to practice being good digital citizens as they comment on each other's posts to offer respectful criticism and honest affirmation of their work.

6. Publish-After all this, my students were finally able to create infographics using Piktochart and publish them to their websites. This stage was probably the least rigorous as the majority of their effort was applied to the stages leading up to it. This ensured that the end result was something of quality that could legitimately be used to support the larger purpose of spreading awareness for their cause. I am enormously proud of their work and you can see a sampling of what they've done by clicking here.

When working through projects such as this, do I worry that because I didn't spend the year suffering through test-aligned prompts that my students will not pass the state assessment? That having my students create websites and infographics is somehow a waste of time when considering all that they are accountable for? Good writers are good writers. If you have real skills in the art of persuasion and providing valid and credible information, they will show when you have to demonstrate them on a less-than rigorous state assessment.

Because of the fact that my students are ELLs, they have been expected to achieve nothing less than excellence and were respectfully provided a meaningful platform to do it in. Their infographics are a part to the whole portfolio of great writing they have accomplished throughout this year, made possible by the fact that they were writing about real things. I want my students to know that their writing has power and that with their skills, they are forces to be reckoned with.

As a first year PBL-er, I can say that this has far exceeded my greatest expectations for this course and has set my career on a new and exciting path that I'm sure my current and future students will benefit from.

Follow Bret on Twitter @BretMistergesl

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An Authentic Writing Project for English Learners | Blog | Project Based Learning | BIE

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After 11 years of teaching all the high school level English as a Second Language (ESL) courses I thought were available in the state of Texas, I was suddenly assigned the task of teaching "Practical Writing ESL"-the objectives for which, I was told, were straightforward and easy to follow.

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RawScripts.com - Free Online Screenplay Software

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RawScripts.com - Free Online Screenplay Software

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RawScripts.com - Free Online Screenplay Software

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RawScripts is free online screenplay writing software. Write and collaborate on scripts from anywhere and any time. Easily organize Notes to make the best screenplay possible.

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For Visual Vocabulary, Character Analysis, Reading Comprehension....and more!

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1. My images are not uploaded successfully.

Please resize your images to smaller dimensions and upload them again. If your images are uploaded successfully, you'll see the image thumbnails under the "Upload Images" button.

If you encountered the "upload error 500" message on GIFMaker.me, it means that your files are not uploaded successfully, or can't be processed by the server, there are several occasions that this error will occur: the file size is too large, the image dimensions are too large, the file is invalid( you may need to save your images with an image editor like Photoshop ), or the server is busy.

2. The GIF image does not animate or does not loop.

Please download your gif to your computer, then drag and drop it into your Web browser( FireFox, Chrome, Safari, IE ) to play it. Alternatively, you can download xnview to play your gifs, this image viewer supports the animated gif format well.

Please notice that some image hosting sites will modify the images you uploaded( you can compare the file size of the original gif created by GIFMaker.me, and the one you've uploaded to the cloud ), making it possible that the gif does not animate / loop anymore.

Some platforms like iPhone will display the animated GIFs you downloaded as static images, you can either view these GIFs with a third-party app, or insert them in a webpage or email to animate them.

Some websites do not support the animated GIFs, you can't add a gif on its webpage.

To publish GIFs to your own server, please upload the original or optimized GIF files to the server directly, don't instert them into the HTML editor and publish the webpage along with GIFs using the HTML editor, since some HTML editors with modify the GIF files.

3. How to download the high quality version gifs?

The high quality version is not in GIF format, they're multiple static images. You can only include 256 colors in each frame of a GIF image, which is defined by the GIF format itself.

To make a gif in better image quality, you can:

3.1, Save your images in .jpg format and upload them;

3.2, Reduce the color number in each image with your image editor;

3.3, Create your gif in a larger size( e.g. 512 x 512 px ), and display it in a smaller size( e.g. 256 x 256 px ).

4. I want to crop, resize and compress my GIFs.

You can access Resizeimage.net to crop, resize and optimize GIF, JPEG and PNG images, it's handy if you want to resize your gifs to a smaller size and use it as your avatar icons on other sites, or crop your images to a specific size( e.g. 1366x768 px ) and use them as your desktop wallpapers, Facebook cover photos, PInterest profile pictures, iPhone wallpapers, etc.

5. The gif creation speed is very slow.

It's recommended that you resize your images to smaller size before uploading, this will boost the speed significantly.

6. How to delete my images from GIFMaker.me?

You can click the "Delete your images" link to remove images from the site. Alternatively, you can send me an email to let me delete it for you.

If you didn't click "View the GIF/Frame/Video Animation" on the homepage of GIFMaker.me, then all of your images will be removed after a few hours by the scheduled task, you don't need to remove your images manually.

Any files uploaded on other pages( gif resizer, video maker, etc. ) will be removed automatically.

7. Do you publish my images to other sites?

We don't publish your images to any sites, the copyright of your images belongs to you.

8. Do you host my images forever?

We don't host your images, however, some users like to share the links to their friends on Facebook or other sites, we'll keep these images for some days. There're multiple scheduled jobs that delete images from the hard drive automatically. We don't guarantee that your images will be stored forever.

If you want to keep an animation you created live forever on GIFMaker.me, please send me an email.

9. Can you recover a gif I deleted?

There are tens thousands of images uploaded to GIFMaker.me every day, most of them will be deleted automatically, then the new images will overwrite them, therefore it's impossible to recover a deleted image, however, if the gif was created by yourself, you can create a new one in a few seconds.

10. Can you recommend some useful sites to me?

Besides GIFMaker.me, I created a few other websites you may like:

10.1, ResizeImage.net - Crop, resize your images to the exact pixels or proportion you specified, then use them as your desktop wallpapers, Facebook cover photos, Twitter profile photos, etc;

10.2, www.PDFtoJPG.me - Convert PDF files to JPEG images online for FREE;

10.3, www.Password.to - create random passwords that are difficult to crack, and learn how to protect your passwords;

10.4, ICOConvert.com - create icons in circle or heart shape from images and vice versa;

11. Why do your domain name has a .ME extension?

Domain names with .ME( or .TO ) extension are easy to remember and type, many of them are awesome, such as

amzn.to - amazon

password.to

gifcreator.me

join.me

blog.me

vk.me

line.me

about.me

pdftojpg.me

unroll.me

mom.me

vid.me

telegram.me

passwordgenerator.me

12. I can not insert a GIF into Outlook or GMail.

Since hotlinking is disabled, you'll need to download the gif to your computer, and upload it from your computer to Outlook or GMail.

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Animated GIF Maker - Make GIFs from Images or Videos

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Create high quality animated gifs & videos of yourself or advertisement banners online with GIFMaker.me, easy to use, no sign up needed.

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Hundreds of fiction and nonfiction reading passages for grades 5-12. Can sort by genre, literary terms, reading level, and cc standards.

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For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.

World-class content

Access thousands of reading lessons and our comprehensive ELA curriculum, CommonLit 360.

Accessible for all learners

Tailor instruction to students' needs with text-to-speech, translation, and digital note-taking.

Actionable data

Track students' reading performance, set goals, and plan instructional next steps.

CommonLit
Digital Library

Discover thousands of free, supplemental lessons and quizzes in English and Spanish - all featuring great authors.

CommonLit
Assessment Series

Measure growth in reading comprehension with three benchmark assessments when you unlock our premium packages.

CommonLit 360 &
Professional Development

Support a successful rollout of our research-backed ELA curriculum with personalized webinars and on-demand trainings.

"

CommonLit has made a tremendously positive impact on my teaching practice. I'm very proud to teach CommonLit!

Jennifer Lane ELA Teacher

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CommonLit definitely keeps me organized. It's easy for me to grade and it's easy for me to see students' reading growth increase throughout the year.

"

The CommonLit assessment questions are aligned to our ELA standards, which is extremely helpful when prepping for the state exam.

Teachers trust CommonLit to foster students' reading comprehension

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CommonLit | Free Online Reading Passages and Literacy Resources

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CommonLit is a comprehensive literacy program with thousands of reading lessons, full-year ELA curriculum, benchmark assessments, and standards-based data for teachers.

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EdTechTeacher Active Reading with DocHub

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EdTechTeacher Active Reading with DocHub

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This post first appeared on Free Technology for Teachers.

Active reading strategies are just as critical with digital reading as with their paper-based counterpart. However, until recently, it has been a bit cumbersome to highlight, add notes, and draw on documents - particularly in a BYOD environment with Macbooks, Windows laptops, and Chromebooks. However, by using the DocHub Chrome app, this capability is now possible on any device.

Students and teachers can login to the DocHub app (or DocHub.com) using their Google account. From there, it is possible to upload any PDF, text document, or Microsoft Office file from Drive, the web, or even your computer/Chromebook download folder. Once a document had been uploaded, students can highlight, draw, insert text boxes, and even incorporate sticky notes. These annotated PDFs can then be sent to Drive or even shared with a link. Unlike some other web-based annotation tools, all of the annotations remain with the PDF after it has been sent to Drive though the sticky notes only appear when shared with a link.

DocHub also allows multiple people to read and annotate the same document at the same time. It's important to keep in mind that unlike Google Docs, the changes are not instantaneous and do not appear on the other person's screen until after the page is refreshed. In many ways, this makes for an improved reading experience as individuals are not as easily distracted by changes appearing on the screen while attempting to read. From the perspective of providing feedback, this is also beneficial as students would not necessarily see your annotations until after you ask them to reload their document.

Beyond having students use DocHub for active reading, it could also be useful for assessments. With DocHub, students can fill in PDF forms and teachers can even create templates that would allow multiple people to fill in copies of a single document. Much like many of the PDF annotation apps for iOS and Android, DocHub is an excellent option for the Chrome browser and Chrome OS.

Come Learn More Strategies This Month in Boston!

July 9-10: Digital Portfolios

July 13-15: Enhancing STEM Curriculum with Technology OR Teaching English with Technology

July 16-17: Reading, Writing & Research

July 20-22: Technology in the Elementary Classroom OR The Chromebook Classroom

July 23-24: Differentiating with Technology OR Teaching History with Technology

View the Full Course Catalog at ettsummer.org

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This post first appeared on Free Technology for Teachers. Active reading strategies are just as critical with digital reading as with their paper-based counterpart. However, until recently, it has been a bit cumbersome to highlight, add notes, and draw on documents - particularly in a BYOD environment with Macbooks, Windows laptops, and Chromebooks.

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A "3D Experience that takes students into the novel they are reading

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"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain

To access a live preview of a typical Google Lit Trip on your computer, click the image above

What are Google Lit Trips?

Google Lit Trips are award winning virtual Literary field Trips where students become virtual traveling companions traveling right alongside characters in stories commonly taught in grades K-12. As students move through the story, Google Lit Trips supplement the learning experience as story locations are mapped on Google Earth, "just in time" resources "3-Dimensionalize" geographical, historical, and cultural influences the characters' experience, with relevant media, thought-provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about "real world" references in that portion of the story. We like to refer to them as "Virtual Reader Ride-alongs."

Google Lit Trips is an internationally-acclaimed educational technology project, recognized by prestigious organizations such as: The Tech Museum of Innovation Laureate Awards; The Goldman Sachs Foundation Prizes for Excellence in International Education; Public Radio International; American Library Association; School Library Journal; International Society for Technology and Education; National Council of Teachers of English; Teacher Librarian, the Journal for School Library Professionals and many others. Google Lit Trips have cited Google Lit Trips in more than 130 scholarly publications.

Recent Google Lit Trips Updates

The Crucible is a study in the mass hysteria which led to the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials, concentrating on the fate of some of the key figures caught up in the persecution. It powerfully depicts people and principles under pressure and the issues and motivations involved.

It powerfully depicts people and principles under pressure and the issues and motivations involved. At the same time, it is also a parable for the events of the McCarthy era in the USA of the 1950s when anyone suspected of left-wing views was arraigned for 'Un-American Activities.'

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Google Lit Trips, educational nonprofit, award winning, educational technology, place based storytelling, reading about reading

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Character Analysis Tool

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Fakebook - create a fictional social medial profile

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Create a spoof social media profile for a person, theme, place or object being studied

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Grammar games, SAT Practice, Word games

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Sheppard Software's Language Arts page features a variety of games for different grade levels.

Elementary students (and anyone who needs a refresher) can play the animated grammar and punctuation games, which review basic punctuation and grammar concepts. This section is continually being refined and expanded, so check back often!

Middle school, high school, and adult learners can review their SAT and advanced vocabulary through the SAT Words and Vocabulary in Context games. Memorizing a wide variety of important vocabulary words will really help you succeed in the verbal sections of the SATs and GREs. In addition, reading challenging books, using the vocabulary you learn in daily life, and writing will help cement the words in your mind. Practicing vocabulary will not only boost your scores on standardized tests, it will help you communicate precisely what you mean in daily life!

High schoolers and adults can learn medical and computer terminology through the Medical Jargon and Talking Tech games.

If you love games involving letters and words, please enjoy our word games section, which is great for a range of ages. These games and puzzles will exercise your mind as you have fun!

Playing these games repeatedly will strengthen your grasp of grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary in general life, and help you communicate your ideas with greater impact. Please enjoy these games, and let us know if you have any suggestions or ideas for additional interactives!

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Language Arts Games - Grammar, Punctuation, Capitalization, Vocabulary

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Improve your vocabulary, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation with these fun English games!

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Create Your Own Comic Strips Online with MakeBeliefsComix

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We Offer Support and Resources.

From Richard Byrne, editor of Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week -- ''Creating Comics for Comfort'' -- Living in Maine and father of two school-age children, Richard wrote the following item for teachers and students dealing with the terrible tragedy of the recent mass shootings in that state. He thought this an appropriate time to review and use Social and Emotional Learning resources, such as those offered by MakeBeliefsComix.com.

Make Beliefs Comix offers a library of fantastic, free ebooks for SEL. The library hosted by Make Beliefs Comix contains fillable PDFs that you can download for free. The latest addition to that library is 50+ Ways to Talk to Yourself and Find Healing. And for something a bit lighter, take a look at Pet Words: Conversations With Your Animal Friends.

"Here's a video overview of the Make Beliefs Comix ebooks and here's one about how to create comic strips on the Make Beliefs Comix website."

For many LGBTQ+ kids, especially when they're figuring things out, finding accepting spaces online can sometimes feel safer. Seek out creative opportunities and modes of self-expression, with this section in Make Beliefs Comix.

READ ABOUT US IN THE NEW YORK TIMES!

ARTICLE #1: (click on the link below)
MakeBeliefsComix encourages students to create their own visual pandemic diary.

ARTICLE #2: (click on the link below)
One easy way to start playing with ideas is through the free, online tool at MakeBeliefsComix.com.

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Create Comics Online, it's Fun & Free at MakeBeliefsComix!

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Create comics online at MakeBeliefsComix. A fun way educators & parents can empower students to express ideas and stories in comix!

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60second Recap® - Classic literature, books for teens, and more.

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60second Recap® - Classic literature, books for teens, and more.

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"ap english help" "books for teens" "study guide" literature

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Jenny Sawyer and 60sR bring you fast, focused insights on the classic literature you read in school.

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Nobelprize.org, The Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize

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10 Ideas For Using Technology To Teach Writing

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10 Ideas For Using Technology To Teach Writing

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Both high-tech innovations for learning and the inability of many American schoolchildren to write well have been major talking points in educational circles for quite some time, but oddly enough, one may offer a solution to helping remedy the other. There are a variety of tech tools and methods out there for teaching writing that can make the process easier and more fun for both teachers and students. While not every high-tech way of teaching writing will work for every class or every student, there's enough variety that there's bound to be something for everyone. Here, we offer just a few tech-focused ways to help students learn grammar, essay-writing, and, most importantly, why good writing is so important to their futures.

1. With many teachers trying to grade the work of a hundred or more students, giving the kind of comments and insights that students need to succeed can be difficult, if not impossible. While budgets can't allow for teachers to take on a lighter class load, there are some high-tech solutions to the problem that can ensure that students get the help they need and that teachers aren't overburdened with grading. Increasingly complex and comprehensive programs are available to help students fix errors in their writing, and can offer feedback during the writing process, when it matters most. Students can use the feedback to make changes before handing in a paper and can get it in more manageable chunks so that it won't feel overwhelming. While programs like these are still evolving, they will undoubtedly become a go-to tool to help teachers teach students writing in the coming decades.

2. New technology makes it easier than ever for students to collaborate on just about anything, including writing projects. Even free products like Google Drive allow students to work together on a project or to give each other feedback that can be useful in the writing process. Teachers can also chime in so long as documents are shared. While there are numerous platforms that allow for collaboration, Google has actually created a tutorial and some useful materials in partnership with Writing for Teens for teachers and students to use that can make collaborative writing with the web-based service easy and productive.

3. When students are proud of the work they've done, they love seeing it in published. Additionally, knowing something will be published for others to see can motivate students to produce better work from the get-go. There are a wide range of publication options online that teachers can use to promote student work. Students can be featured on a school website or blog, but other sites offer different options. Google Drive and Zoho Writer make it possible to turn a writing assignment into a webpage and Yudu and Issuu help make them into a newsletter or e-book. Those are just a few of the many options out there that can help to get students excited about writing.
This is a cross-post from bestcollegesonline.com; 10 Ideas For Using Technology To Teach Writing; Image attribution flickr user edyourdon

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10 Ideas For Using Technology To Teach Writing

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Both high-tech innovations for learning and the inability of many American schoolchildren to write well have been major talking points in educational circles for quite some time, but oddly enough, one may offer a solution to helping remedy the other.

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Enhance your written communication everywhere you type!

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We are a globally renowned resource that provides assistance with English to students, teachers, professionals, and organizations across the world. Our goal is to assist clients in their development as writers - no matter their skill level.

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Purdue OWL® - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University

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We are a globally renowned resource that provides assistance with English to students, teachers, professionals, and organizations across the world. Our goal is to assist clients in their development as writers - no matter their skill level.