Melissa's Blog

In deciding what to pursue for my final project, I tried to think about something that I wanted to find out more about in addition to something that I could use in my classroom to benefit my students.  I am always looking for ways to improve my students’ literacy.  I love to find new ways to engage students in reading and writing as well as motivate my struggling readers and writers.  I find that technology is one inviting way to motivate my students to write.  Therefore, I decided to explore some Web 2.0 tools with the hopes of finding practical uses for these programs for my students.  With the literacy topic in mind and specifically writing, I decided to pursue digital storytelling.  I chose three different tools and decided to see how I could apply them to my second grade students as well as how they could be applied to different subject areas, disciplines, and/or grade levels.

I have been trying to convince my sister that my nephew would really enjoy a puppy!  Therefore  I cut and pasted a photograph of a golden retriever puppy and inserted it into her backyard.  Unfortunately the puppies’ paws were covered in grass so they got a little chopped off and then I tried to insert the beach ball to cover them up.  I also inserted a raft because my original idea was to insert the puppy into the raft but that wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

I also inserted the rubber duck into the raft because it is Grant’s favorite toy so I thought it would be appropriate for him to have by him in the pool.  As you can see I definitely need to work on my skills of cutting out the pictures around the edges as well as formating colors to be more realistic.  I’m hoping that the more I work with this program the better I get!

For my RSS Feed I found “Science News for Kids”.  In my classroom this year, the students seem particularly interested in science and I wanted a website that would be second grade friendly.  This way students have access to any headline that may catch their interest.

** I also found that the New York Times has a kids section of the newspaper and I was unable to find an RSS feed to that particular section but I am going to continue trying.

Watch the video to see how Story Bird is used.  Maybe you can find a way to use it in your classroom too.