Okay, I admit...I'm not the biggest fan of online story writing. I'm trying very hard to discover ways to use these amazing programs with my class productively! But, then I start thinking about potential pitfalls. Maybe one of you could convince me I'm just being pessimistic. Here are a few of my thoughts:
I loved the options for creating a book at Big Universe. I had a great time looking through the options, creating the background, adding the clip art and story...however...
*The clip art is distracting. I could easily spend six hours designing the pictures for each page of a book. There are so many menus and options to choose from, it's overwhelming. I could see many of my children getting distracted by those options...and never finish their stories.
*I realize now that it would be best if the story was already written, edited, and broken into assigned pages before students ventured to this site. I was trying to create the story while I was simultaneously creating the artwork and just couldn't write that well. My mind was not focused and therefore the quality of my writing suffered greatly. I'm positive that would happen with my third graders as well.
*The limitations of the available clip art was challenging. I couldn't find clip art of children that fit the story line and spent a lot of time searching. I found one piece of clip art I liked, but then that "boy" I wanted to continue using in my story was not featured in many other clip art designs.
*I did like that pictures could be uploaded and the text would be so much easier to manipulate than Tikatok. I used Tikatok on a class project last year and found the formatting to be a huge challenge. Long story short, I spent a great deal of time on each page with formatting issues alone.
*Okay, now I've spent a good 45 minutes trying to create two measly pages of a book I can't share in this blog. I can only share it online...at a cost. Phooey. So how am I to prove to Sandy I actually created something? :(
I also took a tour of the Comic Creators. I particularly liked the one available at Read, Write, Think because of its simplicity. I have observed that too many choices can wire kids like a liter of Dr. Pepper, so I appreciated the limitations of this site. However, the question then becomes: How can children create a comic to fit their creative stories with such limited clip art? Or, if I allow them to create the art first, how will that limit their creative writing (as it did me)?
Pixton was like comics on steroids! I couldn't believe all the options available here. If I were to create a comic, this is the site I personally would use. You can design the art to fit exactly the storyline you have written, eliminating the need to create a story on the spot to fit the limited available clip art. So, for all intents and purposes, it was my favorite...but with options being so vast, I'm afraid my students would never be able to hunker down and make the best use of their "design time".
I suppose a good compromise is Make Belief Comics. It has lots of options, but not too many and is very user friendly.
I could get a link to my very boring, self made comic through that site...so here goes.
However, I'm still not sold on this type of writing for third graders. They are just becoming proficient with technology, so when the goal is to improve their writing, the method through which they write shouldn't detract them from achieving that goal. I have a hard enough time getting them used to the bells and whistles on power point so that they might concentrate on the end product. I would anticipate that the thrill of these programs would prove to inhibit their progress, rather than develop it...at first, perhaps.
Okay, enough grumbling. I did really enjoy this site Sandy sent us: Fairy Tales. In fact, Rhonda and I plan to use it with the SOE kids during the writing week. I like that it is interactive, but somewhat limited in options. Okay, I realize how that sounds. I'm not THAT controlling. Maybe. I guess if I had to sum it up in one sentence: I want the technology to engage, enrich, and develop my students' knowledge...not send them on a wild, incessant clicking parade.
The Scrapbook interfaces were fantastic to me personally. I could definitely see using these programs for my own use (Holiday cards, invitations, photo albums). I am pondering how I can revamp our study of the Timucua to be less intense and time consuming. Perhaps the scrapbook is the way to go. With the somewhat limited text options on each page, however, I don't know if it would be a good fit for that particular unit. It might be more advantageous to use Scrapblog or Mixbook for science experiments.
Okay...enough of my rambling! :)
Another Ted Talk
14 years ago
