45 Websites For Students To Create Original Artwork Online

More and more websites are coming online to give students the ability to unleash their creativity in new and innovative ways.  From abstract art to pointillism, students now can click and draw their way into original works of art, and today’s freebie gives you a great list of places to begin. 

The sites are labeled by grade level to help guide you to those that best suit your students.  In addition, I’ve added ratings to give teachers and students an idea of how much interactivity is available at each site.  Some allow students to create from beginning to end, while others simply generate the final product with minimal effort.  What you will not find here are basic virtual coloring sheets.  I tried to find sites that would give students a chance to generate their own original works of art.  What could be better?

I will warn you that some of these sites will drag you in to create for long periods of time.  Don’t worry, you’ll just be channeling your inner artist.  Have fun!

3D Snowflake Creator (Grades 2-12) A basic kaleidoscope tool that generates an animated snowflake.  Unfortunately, the animation cannot be saved. «««

Architect Studio 3D, From the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust  (Grades 9-12) Open the world of architecture and design to your students as they can create their own home through this interactive. «««««

Art Kids Rule! (Grades 3-6) This basic online paint tool isn’t flashy, but does give students a chance to create original art easily. ««

Art.com art Pad (Grades 3-12) This virtual canvas allows the artist to change brushes and even frame the painting.  ««««

Artisancam  (Grades 4-12) Amazing site with multiple art interactives covering pop art, print making, comic creations, ceramic painting, and digital photo art projects.  It’s a great site to explore. «««««

Aviary (Grades 7-12) This site offers free software tools as a Photoshop alternative.  Here students can explore fun photo filters and cloning tools. «««««

Bomomo Interactive Art Creator (Grades 4-12) Talk about cool!  This site allows students to create abstract digital art easily and with great tools.  Completed images can be downloaded for student portfolios. «««««

Build Your Wild Self (Grades 2-6) This is a fun website where students can create a digital human and add animal characteristics.  The creativity factor is limiting, but students studying animal biomes could use this as a prewriting tool. ««««

Dreezle: Paint, Draw and Stamp Online! (Grades K-5) This is basically a free online alternative to KidPix.  Images can be printed. ««««

Interactive Art at the Chicago Institute of Art (Grades K-3) This interactive site allows primary students to create their own mask online. «««

Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas (Grades K-12) Now students can create their own Jackson Pollack painting by simply using their mouse.  Each click changes the color.  To save, students will need to do a print screen.  As an additional activity, I like the idea of students creating their abstract masterpiece and then writing a summary paragraph interpreting their work. «««««

Kari Traa (Grades 8-12) Be sure to click on the “Inspirational Side” to begin.  Here students use virtual brushes and color tools to create digital art inspired by the artist Kari Traa. It definitely has a coolness factor here.  ««««

Kerpoof Studio (Grades K-8) This is a great, educational site, that allows students to create animated stories.  They even have wonderful lesson plans to support the use of this cool art tool. «««««

Labuat (Grades 7-12) I’ve never seen a site like this one, and I have to say the coolness factor is truly high on this site.  A musical track plays, and students use a computer mouse to animate the song.  This would be a great site for an interactive white board. «««««

Make Beliefs Comix! (Grades 4-12) This is a fun and easy comic creation tool that allows students to change character emotions and reactions.  Lesson ideas are also available. «««««

Make-A-Flake - A Snowflake Maker (Grades K-4) An easy and fun tool that allows students to create their own snowflake online, add it to a gallery, or download as a jpeg.  «««

Mondrimat (Grades 4-12) This one took me a minute to figure out, but once I was rolling, I was completely sucked in for nearly an hour.  Here students create block art online and can click away to their hearts’ content.  This would be a great tool for indoor recess, too. «««««

MrPicasso Head (Grades 2-12) Take on the challenge of cubism and create a portrait in the style of Picasso.  ««««

Mutapic (Grades 8-12) Not the easiest tool, but definitely interesting.  This site takes a bit to figure out, but with a few clicks, students will be creating graphic art designs. «««

National Gallery of Art Ngakids Art Zone (Grades K-12) Many opportunities to create and interact with art here.  From abstracts to collages, students will definitely find ways to unleash their creativity. ««««

Neave Imagination (Grades 6-12) Neave offers cool interactive art tools that not only utilize the computer mouse, but your voice, too.  With the use of a microphone, students can interact with the site just by speaking.  ««««

Online Kaleidoscope animated Generator (Grades 2-12) A great tool if you are teaching symmetry is found here.  Simply draw on the virtual radar and see your animated kaleidoscope come to life. ««

Paint - Wiiplayable (Grades K-12) This virtual sketch pad can actually be used with the Wii remote if you have an internet connection with a Wii console or you can use a computer mouse.  Simply draw and click the play button to see your drawing replayed back to you. «««

Paper Critters (Grades 3-12) Be sure to click on the Toy Creator to get started.  Here you can create your own paper critter that can be printed and folded into a 3-D origami like papercraft.  This could be a good resource for claymation projects, as students could create several paper critters with different emotions for an animated short. ««««

Photo Op Interactive (Grades 5-12) This is an interesting site that not only lets students practice digital photography online, but gives them filters to customize their virtual photos.  After a photo is taken, double click on it to open the filters. Images can be printed. ««««

Pointillism Practice Page (Grades 5-12) This interactive tool allows you to experiment with pointillism.  It’s not a flashy tool, but it could be a good experimentation of what pointillism is before students create their own tangible artwork. ««

Psykopaint (Grades 6-12) Now your students can take on the role of an Impressionist through the use of the digital photography painting tool.  Simply choose your brush and paint right over the image to see the colors blend and become more artistic.  It’s a little tricky to figure out, but great once you get going. «««««

Repper - create your own patterns (Grades 4-12) Here is an interesting site for demonstrating symmetry.  Simply use one of the preloaded images or upload one of your own to create a symmetrical pattern.  The final pattern can be downloaded as a tile and then used in PowerPoint as a new background template or the CSS code can be used in any webpage authoring software. «««

S C R I B B L E R (Grades 5-12) This is one of my favorite art tools on the web and takes doodling to an entirely new level.  Simply scribble on the page, choose done drawing, and then start scribbling.  You can add to the drawing as the scribbling process continues making this a lot of fun for interactive white boards. «««««

Sheffield’s Portraits  (Grades K-5) This is a basic portrait maker where students choose eyes, nose, hair, etc.  What I like about it is the ability to print the final portrait which comes with a place for students to write about the character they created.  «««

Splashup  (Grades 7-12) This is another free PhotoShop alternative that is simplistic in design, but some knowledge of how to use PhotoShop would be beneficial. ««««

SUMO Paint Online Image Editor  (Grades 7-12) SumoPaint is the most advanced PhotoShop and Corel alternative on the web.  This online paint tool gives students and open door to creativity. «««««

Tate Kids Games  (Grades 2-12) Two great interactives are available here for student creativity.  The Street Art graffiti creator allows students to paint right on the virtual wall while the Tate Paint is a virtual easel.  ««««

Tessellation Tool   (Grades 3-7) Students can create their own tessellation artwork.  Though the site isn’t everything it could be, it does allow the freedom to customize the shape before generating the final tessellated image.  ««

The Graffiti Creator (Grades 9-12) This is a graffiti text paint tool where students can type in a name or phrase and create unique logos and images.  Unfortunately, ads are a small problem, but the tool offers many choices for student creativity. ««««

This Is Sand (Grades 4-12) This site is another one that can draw you in for several minutes.  Here you can change the color of the falling sand in order to create interesting sand art.  ««««

Tuxpi  (Grades 5-12) Great photo effects and projects can be created here with just a quick photo upload.  Students can create wanted posters, filtered images, and more.  It is a nice alternative to Big Huge Labs. «««

TypoGenerator (Grades 5-12) Words become art here, but with less control than Wordle.  It seems to work best with just a short word or phrase, but with a few clicks of a generate button, a cool image can be created. ««

Ultimate Flash Face  (Grades 5-12) This is a portrait creation tool that does allow students to control the width and height of each facial feature.  I’m not sure I would encourage students to save the image on the website, but it could be printed easily.  Consider using this as a tool as a Language Arts tool for character analysis.  Students could create a portrait of what they believe a character would look like, print it, and then write the analysis. ««««

Virtual Lite-Brite (Grades K-12) Bring back those days of yesteryear and create your own virtual Lite-Brite mosaic.  A print screen will be required to save the image. «««

Viscosity  (Grades 5-12) Here is another cool abstract art tool.  Time seems to slip away as students delve deeper into this tool and create amazing works of art.  Completed pieces can be downloaded easily or consider having it virtually framed with Picnik. «««««

Wordle  (Grades 3-12)  Word art at its finest is created here.  I really prefer the flexibility of this program over other word art tools, but it desperately needs an option to download the completed products rather than doing a screen shot.  ««««

Yourstudio  (Grades K-12) This is another virtual canvas, but it does offer some unique features.  Here you can paint on wood or stone and use an ice cream cone as your brush.  How fun is that?  «««

Zoopz  (Grades K-5) There are a couple of art tools available here including one that creates mosaics.  They are fairly basic, but would be good for younger students. «««

Action! Get the Cameras Rolling with Digital Storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story?  I love the kind of story that leaves you hanging on every word or the one that brings back feelings of nostalgia.  What makes us remember these stories?  Is it how we personally relate to them or the moment where we know the comic punch line is about to be said?  In any case, stories are how we capture the moment or reflect on how things once were, and with today’s resources students have a wealth of tools available to make them present day archivists.

Today’s post shares resources to help you get started In exploring what digital storytelling is, what web 2.0 tools are available to use, blogs from other Ed-tech folks who are brilliant in digital storytelling, and few ideas to spark your imagination.  Be certain to check out some of the student samples such as SFETT and Oklahoma voices as these are true indications of what can be done with a great story.

What is Digital Storytelling?

Wesley Fryer’s Storychaser Handouts – Wesley Fryer’s expertise in digital storytelling is priceless.  With his resources and project examples, you will be instantly fired up about it.  I admire his passion for capturing and archiving history through digital storytelling.  We all have the ability to be primary resources for future generations.

Storytelling is a Gift – This Thinkfinity article is a short piece explaining why storytelling can be the best gift.  Consider why students should tell their stories.  Are they capturing an historical moment?  Creating something new? Or providing a new perspective on an issue?

PhotoBus – a truly remarkable website over digital storytelling with examples created by the author.  I love the story on his homepage about poly fotos. 

SFETT Student Film Festival – Take a look at some phenomenal student video and flash animation projects.  I usually share several of these with students as ideas of what is possible with video production and what makes a good video. 

Tips to Get Started

10 Things a Digital Storyteller Needs – Ready to get the cameras rolling?  Take a look at this list first to see what equipment you will need.

Keys to Success with Digital Storytelling – Take it from an expert who has been there before.  This tips and lessons help all of us learn how to be better digital storytellers.

Digital Storytelling in Education

Story Ideas

Digital Storytelling Contest – I simply love this telecollaborative project!  Students from around the world where asked to make digital stories describing what life is like in their countries.  The videos were uploaded to this wiki for all project partners to share and learn from one another. 

Storytelling in the Social Studies Classroom – Grade 3-5 Thinkfinity Lesson Plan on storytelling.  Not technically a digital storytelling lesson, but it can easily be intertwined.

Adobe’s Digital School Collection Teacher Resources – The Adobe folks are masters at creating visual software and this list of lesson plans will give you a few ideas for digital storytelling in your classroom along with other wonderful art ideas.

Tell a Story Web 2.0 Tools

50 Ways to Tell a Story – This wonderful resource gives you 50 different software/web 2.0 tools to tell the same story.  It’s an excellent way to explore what is available and which tools are costly vs. free. 

Animoto – I’ve spoken of Animoto many times, and still do find it a great tool for digital storytelling.  There isn’t an easier tool to use for creating a great animated slideshow.  Consider pulling public domain images to create a unit plan introduction or design an activity where students create 30 second shorts. 

Anythings – I recently found this and think it has a lot of possibilities.  Basically, it allows students to create animated comic book shorts.  Sound doesn’t appear to be available, but typing in word bubbles is.  With any hope, this product will take on new features and increase being a great freebie for teachers.

Glogster – Throw that poster board idea out the window and embrace the world of Glogster!  These posters are interactive, colorful, exiting, and completely digital.  Not only is that a green thing to do, but it now offers students the ability to embed photos, audio, video, and hyperlinks into the poster.  Under the education side, teachers can create anonymous student accounts that are secure and teacher moderated. 

Mixbook – Talk about easy and beautiful!  Mixbook will allow students to simply drag and drop digital images into a digital scrapbook.  With their beautiful digital papers and fool proof templates, creating a class book is no problem.  Text can be added to any page and there is no requirement to purchase the hard copy book.  Simply embed the digital book on your class wiki or blog.  Mixbook does offer education accounts.

Pixton  - Comic creators should all be this easy to use.  With Pixton, students can design comic book characters that are virtual marionettes.  Pull the invisible strings at wrists, feet, knees, hips, arms, and head to customize the character’s movement.  No need to make drawing after drawing.  Teachers can create moderated accounts here, as well. 

Voicethread – The multimedia slideshow just became non-linear and personal for every student.  Voicethread allows an entire classroom of students to record their thoughts, voice, and even annotations around images and video.  The possibilities become endless with students writing their own stories, sharing ideas around an historical photo, or reciting a poem.  You name it!  Teachers can create teacher-moderated student accounts under their educational side, but you will need to apply.

Storyboards

What is storyboarding? – This resource is more teacher driven to explain the benefits of storyboarding why it’s crucial to take this step before filming anything.

Free Storyboard Downloads – A free resource of storyboards, but you will need to register in order to download them.

Webspiration – As of this blog post, Webspiration Is a free, web-based version of the award winning Inspiration Software.  The greatest feature of this tool is the ability to collaborate in live time.  Now an entire digital storytelling team and the teacher can work on a storyboard simultaneously.  Students can storyboard in either an outline or diagram format.

Bubbl.us – This is another free mind-mapping software that is easy to use and no registration is required unless you need to save your work.  It’s not as flashy as Webspiration, but you can’t beat the price.

Storyboard example

Celtx – This is open source (aka free) storyboarding software that will need to be downloaded.  Though meant for high end video production, it does have several features that will keep your digital storytelling teams on task.  It is rather complex software, so I’m going to recommend it for grades 8-12 and for Video Production classrooms.

StoryBoard Pro from Atomic Learning – Atomic Learning has provided open-source storyboarding software that is geared for classroom use along with video tutorials to help your students get started.

KidVid – This is a great interactive storyboarding tool for classrooms.  Created by ALTec, those great folks at Kansas University, this software is one of the best storyboarding tools, especially for grades 4-8.

Storyboard Paper PDF Generator – This is an interesting tool that allows the user to customize a storyboard that works best for his team.  Simply choose the paper size and size of squares you wish to use and print.

Digital Storytelling Blogs You Should Investigate

Flickschool – One of the best keynotes I have ever heard was Marco Antonio Torres and how he has developed an outstanding video production classroom. His blog provides tutorials and tips over iMovie, storyboarding, great camera angles, and more.  Be sure to add it to your blogroll.

Speed of Creativity – One of the leading educational tech leaders in digital storytelling, Wesley Fryer’s blog is one to bookmark.  He regularly posts student samples that I know you will instantly look forward to experiencing.

Aberth Digital Storytelling

Enrichment – Other Tools and Ideas

CuePrompter – No more cue card problems!  Cue Prompter is a free tool that allows students to paste in their type written scripts into the site and instantly turn the computer screen into a teleprompter.  I do recommend that one person is dedicated in managing the cue prompter during filming or podcasting as the actors read from the script.

Design Comics – This site features tips on how to draw comic book characters to show expressions of excited, sad, etc.  Students may want to reference this information when using Pixton.

Storytelling and the Arts – This article from Thinkfinity explains what makes a good story and why they are worth sharing.

Tips to Improve Your Storytelling Skills – This information is great for podcasting or video production to help students learn to be more animated while storytelling.

School Tube Lesson Plans on Video Production – SchoolTube has provided a list of lesson ideas to help you and your students get into video production.

Free Collaborative and Private Photo/Video Sites for Teachers and Parents

Those special events where everyone seems to have a camera flashing such as field day, classroom performances, and field trips offer a special opportunity for teachers and parents.  It gives everyone a chance to grab those candid shots and capture great moments on film, but often there is difficulty sharing all those photos and videos in one place.  Email works to a point, but often this is cumbersome and has limitations with file sizes.  Worry no more.  Today’s post will make video and photo sharing easy while keeping those treasures private and safe.

Drop.io is another great site for parents to upload photos quickly for teachers to access.  Like Troovi, the teacher would create the drop.io site, set a password, and send the link to parents.  Parents simply upload their photos, video, and files to the site and the teacher can download them instantly.  Again, images can be uploaded to the site in high resolution, large files, but video might need some condensing.  Another bonus is if parents have a smart phone, they can simply send their camera images to the drop.io site during the event.  Online Tech Tips has a great tutorial on Drop.io.

 

DropShots is another great site that allows for private photo and video sharing, but the limit is 500 photos and 2 minutes of video.  One bonus over many other sites is the images are 1500x1500 pixels when viewed online, but the negative is everyone must register to use. 

Flickr will also allow you to create a group shared photo space, but it is blocked from many school filters, so you’ll need to check your restrictions.  The teacher will need to create the shared space, lock it as private, and set a password before inviting parents into the group.  One benefit is the unlimited file space and the ease of incorporating the many Flickr supported products such as BigHugeLabs, Bookr, and MixBook with the images.  You could assemble an end of the year digital scrapbook quickly by using the images everyone uploads to the Flickr private group.

Shwup is another great site that is probably the best bet yet, as it allows for free photo and video sharing without a registration or limit.  With Shwup, teachers create the account and send invites to parents via email.  Parents have the option of either uploading on the site or simply hitting reply to the email with attaching files.  Talk about easy.  An added bonus is their “muvee” feature.  When all photos and videos are uploaded, Shwup allows the teacher to make slideshow movies at the site.

 

StashSpace is a video hosting site that will allow you to privately share videos for free up to 60 days with parents. It’s a fairly easy interface and will allow users to connect camcorders directly to their website for uploading.  I can guarantee this will be an internet bandwith killer during upload, so I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a robust connection.

Tonido is a different spin on photo sharing and I really think this is a better tool for teachers who team-teach either in middle school teams or in elementaries where students may rotate among classrooms.  Tonido (Toe-Knee-doe) is an open source (aka free) software that basically creates a small web server on your computer.  It allows you to share files between computers without having to upload any files to a website.  Once one teacher drops a group of photos, videos, music, etc in the Tornido program, files are instantly viewable by the other teachers.  This would also work to link your home computer with your school computer.

 

Troovi is by far my favorite photo sharing site, mostly because of it's ease of use and it's generally not blocked.  It does require some file management on the teacher’s side, but it’s very easy to handle.  With Troovi, parents can upload any file size image without a login.  With no file size limit, images are high quality and high resolution.  The teacher simply emails the sharing link to parents, and everyone is good to go.  Troovi’s free limit is 100 images but there are no ads or searchable features to find questionable material.

Best Sites to Find Public Domain Images and Sounds for Student Projects

Now that more and more classrooms are publishing student work for digital storytelling, podcasting, or through wikis and blogs it is becoming increasingly critical students follow the copyright and fair use guidelines.   To help you and your students, I’ve created another freebie post – free images and sounds for student projects.  Yes, there are multiple websites out there for public domain images and sounds, but I tried to pull those that are safe for student searching.  You will find glorious photo landscapes, character illustrations of fairy tale characters, tornado sound effects, and more. 

In addition, the links do have suggested curriculum units that could be supported through the use of the websites.  Hopefully, that will guide your search.

I encourage you to place your favorite resource links on your own classroom website for students to access easily.

Public Domain Images

4FreePhotos is another site that offers quite a few artistic high quality images.  Many of these would be great for backgrounds.  Supporting Units: transportation, food, landforms, geography, art, aircraft, plants, penguins, Spring,

Florida’s Educational Technology Clipart Clearinghouse is a true clipart and line drawing gold mine.  You definitely want to tag this site as over 46,000 images are in the database.  Supporting units: mythology, math diagrams, money, fairy tales, alphabets, animals, historical figures

Karen Whimsey Public Domain Images is a phenomenal public domain gem of clipart, diagrams, sketches, and more for the classroom.  Supporting units: ancient civilizations, world religions, musical instruments, art, silhouettes, vintage fashion, fairy tales, folk tales, Native Americans, explorers, Civil War, geography, food, alphabet, Spanish, art, architecture, Shakespeare, plants, holidays.

Library of Congress Photo Archives is a site every teacher should bookmark.  With over 1.2 millions images in this database, your students can certainly gather a wide variety of images for their history projects.  Each image has different licensing, so look closely.  Supporting units: famous Americans, presidents, civil rights, wars, inventors, authors, and just about any historical American event

NOAA Public Image Library is a wonderful resource for science themed drawings, maps, graphics, diagrams, and photos.  The database is extensive.  Supporting units: animals, volcanoes, weather, biomes, landforms, oceans

PD Photo is another great image site and does offer a wide variety of images. Supporting units: geography, landforms, food, space, plants, ocean, grammar, animals

Photos8 is one of my favorite public domain image sites.  The images are high quality, high resolution, and offer an artistic approach.  I use many of these for backgrounds in Glogsters and PowerPoints.  Supporting units: geography, landforms, world religions, art, food, insects, plants, grammar (using images to represent parts of speech)

Pics4Learning is a great website full of photographs donated by amateur photographers and teachers to help all of us improve our curriculum.  Supporting units: biomes, animals, art, food, world religions, fractals, holidays, space, landforms, geography, Native Americans, colonial America, Civil War, ancient civilizations, mythology, presidents, World War I, World War II

Public Domain Photos offers a vast collection of clipart images and high resolution photos.  Supporting units: geography, landforms, US regions, flags from around the world, animals, space, ocean, plants, insects, food, vehicles, desert, 

Public Domain Sounds

MusOpen offers free mp3 files of classical instrumental and vocal music.  Definitely bookmark this one. Supporting units: music, composers, history, and background sounds for multimedia projects

PublicDomain4U is full of vintage recordings.  Supporting units: jazz, blues, country, folk songs, World War I

Sound Jay has become very popular in our district this spring for our video and podcast projects.  With a well designed layout and excellent choices of sound and music, you can’t go wrong. Supporting Units: weather, business, FACS, and backgrounds for podcast projects

Soungle has an amazing amount of sound effects for student projects.  These save as .wav files, which work great in most audio and video softwares such as Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, Audacity, and Garage Band.  Supporting units: weather, emotions, dance, animals, water, and special effect sounds for podcasts.

Some would suggest www.freeplaymusic.com but their licensing does not allow the use of their music used in podcasts or on blogs without a prior agreement. 

Ode to Poetry – Websites to Generate Student Poetry Online

One of my favorite units to teach is poetry.  The playing with words, the cleverness of students, and the discovering of new ways to describe a simple object always gives me a thrill.  I mean really.  How often does one get to use words like hanker after to replace want or quick on the uptake for clever?  I love it, but yes, that’s the English teacher in me along with a dozen word games on my iPod Touch.

Today’s post is another freebie to help you with your own poetry units.  I’ve pulled a list of poetry generators online along with a few ideas that might help spark a little creativity in you. 

Poetry Forms (Fill in the Blank Poetry)

Giggle Poetry’s Fill in the Blank Poems is a simple tool that allows students write the last line to a poem.  Probably best for grades 3-5.

Instant Poetry Forms – All language arts teachers should have this site tagged, as it is one of the best resources on the web.  Scroll down on the left to preview the poem templates.  Students fill in the blanks with their own content and click “Create”.  I recommend using this site throughout the year, not just during poetry units.  As you read literature, study history, describe nature, or create a holiday gift, students can utilize this site for multiple curriculum units.

Poetry Splatter is a fun interactive fill in the blank poem tool.  Choose the type of poem you wish to write, click splatter, and the tool will toss suggested words.

Read Write Think Acrostic Poem is great for younger students.

Read Write Think Diamante Poem gives students a chance to explore diamante poems with this easy fill in the blank tool.

Read Write Think Shape Poems Tool allows the student to choose a theme for the poem (sports, nature, school, or celebrations) to fill in his content.

Write a Song-Poem from PBS is meant for older students.  Simply type in lyrics and the interactive will create a melody for the song.

Magnetic Poetry Online Options

Haiku Magnetic Poetry Tool is an easy tool that allows students to drag the magnets into a Haiku format.

iSnoop offers a rather large magnetic poetry area to play.

Magnetic Poetry and Magnetic Poetry for Kids provide you with their virtual kits online. 

NetVerse Falling Words Magnetic Poetry never gives you writer’s block as the magnets literally fall from the top of the page.  This is also collaborative in real time so multiple students can access it simultaneously and edit the page.

Read Write Think’s Word Mover is a basic magnetic poetry tool except you can add your own words and print.  Great for a quick activity with students.

Shadow Poetry offers the ability for students to email their completed poem to the teacher making it easy to grade (students will have to retype the words in the form, however).

Shakespeare Magnetic Poetry – Tis true! Your students can imitate the Bard, himself, with magnetic poetry.

Shocked Poetry is unique as it allows you to choose a theme (love, dogs, coffee, mad scientist) before beginning. Once you begin, you can add in nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. to help spark your imagination.  It’s a great site to use an interactive whiteboard.

Online Poetry Generators

You must know that I do not promote poetry being made for students to turn in for an assignment, but I do like how some of these can get a student’s wheels turning.  Goodness, I like to play with them just to see if they can give me a giggle.

Metaphor Poetry Generator is a site to enhance your figurative language unit.  It offers three poem generators along with other teacher resources.

Poem Generator is actually a great site to help teach grammar and does take a bit of student effort to use.  Choose the sentence structure and the parts of speech to generate the poem.

RoboPoem is simply fun.  Students write a few sentences or a paragraph in the text box.  Choose the number of syllables you want per line, and the RoboPoem generator does the rest.  It even inserts rhymes where needed, but don’t count on the poem making much sense.

Tech Poetry Ideas

PimPamPum’s Phrasr is really a fun tool that pulls images from Flickr to visualize your students’ poems.  Simply type in a phrase or short poem and press start.

Self Portrait Poems is a lesson that I did a few years back where students described themselves and then took digital photos representing the poem.  It’s an easy project that utilizes digital photography, poetry, and PowerPoint.

Also I found this video on TED that features a poet telling his story using emoticons.  What a wonderful video to share with High School Poets.