Literacy Resources

Lend Me Your Literacy – collaborative projects

Posted on Feb 13, 2012 in Literacy Resources | 0 comments

Lendmeyourliteracy.org is a very interesting online resource base for teachers and students of Literacy. It’s billed as a one stop website for examples of good pieces of literacy work written by children and not just models written in a text book.

Teachers can use these pieces of work for moderation purposes and an aid to good teaching, inspiring children to believe…

Teachers can pick the very best examples of literacy work in their class and upload them to the lendmeyourliteracy website. This work can then be seen by schools nationwide as part of the lendmeyourliteracy network. Teachers can also upload examples of everyday literacy such as application forms, personal statements and letters to support Skills for Employment for Adults.

It’s a really interesting idea, and if you’re looking for some new ideas for teaching literacy (or want to share some of your own)it’s well worth taking some time to look at their resources.

Take a look at : http://lendmeyourliteracy.org/

Thanks to Lara Savory (@reallara) for the link via twitter.

QuadBlogging and Blogging the Leap Year projects

Posted on Jan 20, 2012 in Activity Ideas, Digital Media, Literacy Resources | 0 comments

A quick post to make my readers aware of an excellent project set up by Deputy Headteacher David Mitchell. He’s developed an excellent model for school collaboration called Quadblogging which sets up groups of schools to talk, share ideas, information and comment on each others’ work. At present there are more than 1000 classes in 27 countries working together creating some incredible moments of learning as well as fellowship. It’s an excellent idea, and the project is open to any school around the world, so get in touch with David if you want your class to get involved.

An exciting extension of this is the Feb29th.net project. Feb29th.net is a global blogging project that will cross all age groups and continents. As soon as Feb 29th 2012 begins in Tonga, the Feb29th.net website will open up to collect posts for a single day.

The Feb29th blog will capture posts from all over the world on this rare day until midnight in the Western Pacific. The result will not only be a celebration of technology, but a celebration of audience and purpose, who will be the youngest author? Who will be the oldest? Which country will top the most posts?

The aim is to allow any visitor on 29th Feb to post; these will be moderated on the day, as this will also be open to pupils in educational establishments across the globe.

To find out how your school can take part in the Feb 29 project visit : http://feb29th.net/

For more information about QuadBlogging, visit: http://quadblogging.net/

Video – Inanimate Alice BETT 2012 Presentation

Posted on Jan 18, 2012 in Conferences, Digital Media, Games and interactives, Literacy Resources, Other Subjects, Subject Resources, Useful Links | 0 comments

Here’s the video of my Inanimate Alice presentation from Friday. This formed part of the TeachMeet Takeover event at the BETT Show 2012. For a copy of the presentation itself, check here.

Links from the Video:

• Inanimate Alice Trailer
• Inanimate Alice Flipchart and other files on Promethean Planet
• http://www.inanimatealice.com/education
• http://aliceandfriends.wikispaces.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/InanimateAlice
• http://bit.ly/alicetips
• Presentation as a downloadable slideshare file

Thanks to Emily at Promethean for filming the presentation, and thanks to Selda for letting me use the Promethean stand to give the presentation.

Inanimate Alice Presentation from BETT

Posted on Jan 15, 2012 in Interactive Whiteboards, Literacy Resources, Other Subjects, Presentations, Promethean, Useful Links | 2 comments

Here’s a copy of my Inanimate Alice presentation from the BETT show on Friday as part of TeachMeet Takeover. Thanks to all those who came to watch, and thanks to Promethean for letting me have some time on their stand.

English and MFL teachers should definitely check out the Inanimate Alice resource – it’s free so go take a look!

The presentation was videoed too, you can see it on YouTube here.

Visuwords – interactive visual thesaurus

Posted on Dec 7, 2011 in Games and interactives, Literacy Resources, Web Tools | 0 comments

Visuwords is an interesting interactive visual thesaurus tool. Users can look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. It produces an interactive node diagram which shows how the words are associated with other words.

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

Take a look for yourself at : http://www.visuwords.com/

Inanimate Alice – a digital novel

Posted on Dec 2, 2011 in Activity Ideas, Interactive Whiteboards, Literacy Resources | 0 comments

I can’t believe I’ve not written about Inanimate Alice before. Set in the early years of the 21st century and told through text, sound, images, music and games, Inanimate Alice is the story of Alice and her imaginary digital friend Brad.

This “transmedia” story is told over 10 increasingly interactive and complex episodes. Created around a high-quality text, the story is suitable for the deep-reading and re-reading necessary for academic investigation. The production is unique in that the complexity of the story as well as the interactivity increases with each episode, directly correlating with Alice’s age and developing technological proficiency as the game designer she is to become.

Through embedded puzzles and games, together with the creative inspiration, Inanimate Alice makes the reader a direct participant in telling the story. The story is available in French, German, Italian and Spanish too.

Several episodes are available now, with more to come in the future. I’ve been really impressed with the quality of the content so far.

The Inanimate Alice website has downloadable resources for teachers and parents. On the Promethean Planet website you will find a teachers guide to using Inanimate Alice as well as  teaching resources for using it in the classroom, including flipcharts, a mindmap and user generated content.

Also look at Alice’s School Report : Whiteboards.

Find out more at http://inanimatealice.com

Phonics Play – free interactive phonics games

Posted on Nov 30, 2011 in Interactive Whiteboards, Literacy Resources | 0 comments

Go take a look at : http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

Bembo’s Zoo – fun with fonts

Posted on Nov 6, 2011 in Activity Ideas, Art Resources, Interactive Whiteboards, Literacy Resources | 0 comments

Just a quick link to a website that might be of interest to primary/elementary teachers. Bembo’s Zoo is based on the book by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich. The idea behind the site is to use a font called Bembo to create 26 different animals, one for each letter of the alphabet.

So for the letter “A,” the letters that make up the word “antelope” are manipulated to form the creature’s outline. Similar things are done for “bison” and “crab,” and so on all the way through to “yak” and “zebra.”

On the IWB you could use with the screen capture tool and  see if the students can work out the word from the animal. Or use it to inspire their own creations.

Check it out at : http://www.bemboszoo.com/

Interesting Writing Prompts and Story Starters

Posted on Oct 18, 2011 in Digital Media, Literacy Resources | 0 comments

Here’s an interesting website which contains a series of different images which can be used as writing prompts or story starters. The site is produced by Luke Neff who uses these images with his own class.

Each one involves a thought-provoking image and a question/scenario. Take a look here: http://writingprompts.tumblr.com/

If you want to make your own, then you could use sites such as The Big Picture to find powerful images and combine them with a question of your own.Use the screen capture tool to grab the image and bring it into your IWB software, or copy/paste into PowerPoint.

You could also use a Flickr search engine or look at Flickr Groups such as FlickrSoup for the Soul or Tell a Story in Five Frames.

If you know of other great story starter sites, let me know in the comments.