15 GREAT LITERACY TOOLS from the HPPS Tech Team

Story Starters http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/storystarters/storystarter1.htm

A simple device for generating story ideas!

readwritethink http://www.readwritethink.org

Fantastic tools for scaffolding literacy lessons.

What makes me http://www.whatmakesme.com.au/

Make your cube to show what you like. Whether it's painting, music or poetry, you can mix and match and create as many as you like.

Save the Words http://savethewords.org/

A website dedicated to discovering and using interesting vocabulary. You can adopt your own word.

Wordia http://www.wordia.com

Help contribute to an online visual dictionary. Bring words to life by creating your own videos.

Go! Animate http://goanimate.com/

Create your own simple cartoons and storyboards.

Important: Websites have their own terms and conditions. Please check them before proceeding. Many sites also share your work with their online community. Please make sure you don’t share personal student information.

Wordle http://www.wordle.net/

Generate “word clouds” from texts. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

Prezie http://prezi.com/

A great alternative to Powerpoint. Create though-provoking presentations that are not linear but represent your thoughts like a mind map.

ImageChef http://www.netvibes.com

Express yourself using a combination of text and images. Various tools for creating poetry slideshows and much more. Excellent visual literacy tool.

Tagxedo http://www.tagxedo.com/

A bit like Wordle but this tool creates the word cloud in the form of an image.

Tagul http://tagul.com/

Another tool like Wordle but these words are links. When clicked on, they perform a Google search.

Xtranormal http://xtranormal.com

Create a script, enter the text and generate your own animated movie! Easy to use.

Storybird http://www.storybird.com/

Use artwork as the stimulus to write great stories with your class. Drag images and type text on to the page.

Wordnik http://www.wordnik.com/

Wordnik is a place for all the words, and everything known about them. Find out about words and share your own opinions with others.

Animoto http://animoto.com/education

Animoto allows you to create videos that combine powerpoints, images, speech and music. A good tool to create an end-of-unit presentation.