Quality Resources I Discovered this Year
These three resources will make any teachers' job a little easier. Read how I was able to incoporate them into my classroom.
Comic Creator
This website gives students the ability to create digital comic books. They can choose the background, captions and insert people and other objects into their comic. Once they have completed all steps, they can print and color it. This is a great alternative to free writes.
I tried this a couple of times this year and my students loved it! We tried it in pairs and in groups of four and it worked well both ways.
It also has a Comic Strip Planning Sheet so students can brain storm before they get a computer. This comes in handy if you don't have enough computers for all of your students.
Screen Recording
This website is great for recording your computer screen. You can also record using a web cam, or a combination of both. You are limited to a maximum of 15 minutes per video.
My class is a hybrid of homeschool and an in-class setting, so this is great for creating tutorials for my students and their parents. It's as easy as making a short video and uploading it to youtube.com where my students can access it.
Instructional Videos
This website lets you take existing videos and add your voice over them. You can insert questions students have to anwser before moving on. It keeps track of how many times a student has watched the video and how many questions they got right. You can also create videos from scratch and enable self-paced learning with interactive lessons.
I found this website late in the year and haven't really had a chance to use it, but I know other teachers who have had great success with this site. I am definitely incorporating it into my classroom next year because I think this would work great for homeschool days.