A few months ago I published The Best Ways For Advanced ELL’s & Non-ELL’s To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — REVISED, and, based on various District content filter-related issues, am making some changes to it.
Even though I had concluded that Check This was the easiest tool for my students to use for creating/writing reports (they could be creative and no registration was required), we couldn’t get it through our filter.
Loose Leaves became my second choice, though it wasn’t nearly as attractive or engaging to students.
For now, though, I’ve decided on Glogster Edu. You have to pay a few bucks if you want more than ten student accounts, but I think it’s worth it. I have some concerns that it provides so many creative opportunities that students can focus more on looks than content, but, considering the limitations of our content filter, for now it’s the best choice.
Glogster Edu is pretty good. I’ve been using it for several years with around 70 students. I never really considered it as a writing tool per se. The Glogster interface needs some work though. For instance, the graphic elements are difficult to search. I also wish that the format of a glog were more screen-friendly. I’ve found Glogster more stable this year. In the past there would always be a student or two each block who would lose work due to a Glogster crash of some sort.
Larry, more and more teachers are also using BoomWriter.com to engage and help their students with writing.
BoomWriter.com is an easy to use literacy website that is free for teachers and allows their students to collaborate with classmates to create and publish stories in a competitive environment.
Teachers can apply BoomWriter across many areas of the curriculum and in a variety of educational settings (whole class, small group and after school). BoomWriter aligns directly with the Common Core State Standards, but most importantly BoomWriter delivers a challenging and engaging learning experience that has students creating and assessing written content in ways they’ve never done before.
Check out this link to find out how it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgOxsKClQZA