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.

Mother's Day Photo Gift Project Ideas

Yes, Mother’s Day is right around the corner, so it’s time to decide what project or craft idea your students will create this year to commemorate this annual event.  First, let’s think of the criteria.  It should be cute, sentimental, and perhaps even a little touching.  In any case, it should include student writing and creativity.  Actually, my favorite gifts are those that bring just a sweet tear to a Mommy’s eye when she opens it.  Can you tell I’m a mommy, too?

Today’s post will feature some technology infused Mother’s Day projects and links to help you come up with the best gift idea possible.  Most of these can be done in Photo Shop if you are familiar with the program, but I’m sharing how to many of these with Picasa, Picnik, and Microsoft Office.

Student Created Quilt Square

This can be as easy or as complicated as you want, depending on the amount of money you wish to invest.  Using PowerPoint, students create nine slides with each slide becoming one part of a 9 block quilt square.  I recommend the center square to have a digital photo of the student.  Just remember to take this photo in landscape so it can fill the entire slide.  The remaining slides you can fill with images of textiles (Insert – Clipart – search for “material”), WordArt, student photos, etc.  I would recommend choosing images that compliment in color. 

Cheapest Option 1 (Free) - Print the slides in house, choosing to print two slides per page on cardstock.  Cut out the slides and assemble to make the square. 

Cheapest Option 2 (Free) –First convert the PowerPoint slides to JPEG images (File – Save As – Locate “Save as type” – click the drop down and choose JPEG).  Using Picasa 3, create a photo collage out of the slides.  The trouble with this one is you have no control over where pictures are placed.  You’ll need to continually press “Shuffle Pictures” until you find the layout you wish to use and print.  It’s a little tedious, but hey, it’s easy and free! 

Moderate Option ($24.95 flat fee) – Using www.picnik.com register to join the premium status.  They have a collage feature that is a 9 square grid.  Simply upload the photos and drop them into the appropriate squares and print.  It does basically the same thing as Picasa, but having some control over the picture layout does free up some time for you.

Amazing Yet Costly Option (around $3-$5 per student) - Another option is to create your quilt square as listed above, but have the grid printed onto muslin.  I usually stop at the cloth store and pick up scrap material in the $1 bin and take that to a local printing house with all the student image grids saved on a jump drive.  The printing house will transfer the images onto the muslin for a reasonable fee.  Then I enlist someone who is a better seamstress than I to sew a backing on the grid.  You can opt to attach a dowel rod and string to make the quilt square ready to hang.  You can also purchase Inkjet Transfer Paper, but I think you’ll probably spend more time, money, and frustration doing this.

Wordle Reflections

Free Option - Wordles are so easy to create and do offer a way for students to capture how they would describe their moms.  Have the students generate a list of ten to fifteen adjectives that describe mom.  Is she funny? Witty? Smart?  What color reminds you of her?  How would you describe her laugh?  Depending on the age of the students, they can either dictate the list to you or type in the Wordle workspace.  Simply generate, customize if you wish, and print.  Team this with a nice digital photo and you have a wonderful gift.

 

Pop Art Poetry

Free Option -We all remember Andy Warhol’s Soup Cans, but now you can create pop art easily with many of the photo tools online or with Picasa.  Take one or four digital images of each student.  I like to capture different facial expressions such as silly faces, laughing, etc.  Open up the images in Picasa and use the “Effects” tab to find “Tint”.  Here you can choose any color under the rainbow to tint the image.  Once you find a color, click “Apply” and then click “File” – “Save a Copy”.  This will automatically generate a new image on your computer.  Repeat the process until you have four different colored images.  Go back to the Library.  Select all four images and choose “Collage”.  Picasa will create the four image grid and save the collage as a new solid image.

The second part of the project is having the students write poems about their mothers.  I like to use the Instant Poetry Forms website as these are so easy to use.  Students simply fill in the blank, press create, and the poem is ready to copy and paste onto any document.  There are many forms to choose, but I recommend the Bio-Poem, Holiday Poem, or the Yes, But Poem for this project.

The last step is to assemble these two items together.  I use Publisher to insert the image at the top and then paste the poem below, but any word processing software would work.

What I Love About My Mom Photo Project

This activity really pulls at the heart strings and creates a wonderful treasure.  Take a profile image of the each student.  I usually line up the entire class, walk them outside, set a chair under a tree, and take individual photos of them looking to the left.  The whole process takes about four minutes. 

Once inside, import the images into Picasa and turn each one black and white and save.  Switch to PowerPoint, turn the slide orientation to Portrait and format the Slide Design to all black.  Insert Photo Album putting one image on each slide.  Now invite the students to individually come and dictate and finish the following sentences at the computer recording their answers directly on the slide below their image.

“I love my mom because…”
“I love it when she…”
“She gives me…”
“She is the best mom because…”

Free Option - You can print the document on card stock or Moderate Option save the PowerPoint as JPEG images and have 8x10 images printed at Sam’s or Wal-Mart for just a couple of dollars per student.  They are beautiful when completed.

Update - Another wonderful idea comes from another great Kansas teacher, Kristi Bruce. 

"Something quick and easy for 1st grade. . . . They have 40 minutes in the computer lab, so I had a Word template with the poem already typed (we read it as a class).  They added the Love, and their name, then inserted the picture they had saved from BeFunky  (thanks Jill Beam for sharing the site) and chose a frame (Word 2007).  After they printed, they went in and experimented with the other options in BeFunky.  The poem came from http://poemsforfree.com/mothersdaypoems.html."

This is the result.

Other Mother’s Day Photo Project Idea Links

Kitchen Photo Recipe Cards – these would be cute for primary students to write their own recipe on “How to Make a Great Mommy”.  Be sure to print on cardstock or you could use the Avery Inkjet Magnet Sheets and create a fun refrigerator magnet.

Mamarama Photo Card and Bookmark

Mother’s Day Photo Frame

Mother’s Day Photo Gift Bags

Mother’s Day Photo Mattes

Best Embeds for Educational Wikis and Blogs

Now that you and/or your students are using wikis and blogs, are you curious what could be added to them?  From animated slideshows to collaborative documents to interactive review games, many great (and free) tools are available.  As a follow up to my previous post “What Teachers Should and Should Not Be Posting on their Classroom Webpages”, I’ve pulled a master list of embedding options that will hopefully spark your imagination. 

As you browse the list consider how you will use these embeds.  While some of these work perfectly for classroom blog posts, others tend to be more effective wiki tools.  Do you want students to view a video clip and then leave comments below?  That’s a perfect blog scenario.  Or do you want students to collect data in a form?  Yep, that’s a wiki tool.  I know your wheels will be turning to come up with great new ways to use the tools. 

One note of warning, however.  If any of these sites are blocked at your school, the embeds will also be blocked.

Good luck and again if you have any other suggestions please post them in the comments section.  The more tools available, the nerdier we all can be.

Collaborative Project Tools

• aMap is an excellent tool for social studies projects.  This tool provides a visual tool over debatable issues.  When it is embedded on your site, students can take positions and fill out the map online. The embed code is located under share your aMap.
• Glogster is quickly becoming one of my favorite Web 2.0 tools, and now that there is an educational side, I’m really excited.  With Glogster teachers or students can create interactive posters or digital scrapbook pages that provide links out to other sites.  It’s a great visual to kick off a unit or wiki.  For an example, check out Civil War Sallie, which is an awesome Travel Buddy wiki created by a 6^th grade student or Lit Circles, a site I created with links to support several novels.  The embed code is provided when you save the glogster.
• Google Forms – You will need to have a Google Account to use these as the forms are part of the Google Docs area.  What I really like about the use of Google Forms for projects is they can be used for many purposes.  Gather data from project partners, create a parent survey, assess your students’ prior knowledge on a topic, or even design a test.  The forms are easy to create and easy to embed.  Start with one of the Google Form Templates or generate your own from scratch.  To find the embed code click More Actions – Embed.
• VoiceThread – This is a wonderful tool that simply takes student collaboration to the next level.  Here students can share in discussions over images or video in an amazing way.  If a person is already logged into Voicethread website, he can comment on a voicethread directly from your class website.  The embed code is found under embed.

Communication Tools to Parents and Students

• Google Calendar – I’ve become a big fan of Google calendar this spring.  The best part of this is parents can either view the calendar on your page or they can subscribe to it if it’s public.  It’s an excellent tool to mark class events, field trips, major deadlines, etc.  To find the embed code follow these directions.
• Google Maps – Do parents need directions to a field trip destination or to a track meet?  Go into Google maps and look up the destination’s address.  Once the map is generated, click Link to this page, copy the web address from the Paste HTML to embed in website field in your browser and paste it into the HTML code of your wiki.
• Interactive Graphic Organizers – ClassTools is truly a gem for any teacher whether you embed or not, but since you can, I highly recommend checking out this site.  You can create venn diagrams, timelines, and more to be embedded on your site.  Click on the gear icon to get the embed code.
• Mixbook  - It allows you to create online digital scrapbooks to share with parents.  This can be used for digital storytelling projects, as well, but students will need a login verified by an email.  The embed code is found under share.
• Polls – Interested in polling students as a discussion starter?  Poll Vault is an easy tool to use.  Simply create a poll and click share to find the embed code.  Poll Everywhere is another tool where students can either vote online or SMS text their responses in.  The embed code is on the right under Publish.
• PowerPoints – There are several tools that will allow you to convert your PowerPoints into the embeddable slideshows.  Google Docs, Slideshare, MyPlick, and Slideshow will allow you to upload your PowerPoint and provide you an embed code to put on your website.
• Review Game – MyStudiyo allows you to create review quizzes and embed them on your site.  The code is found when you click spread the word.
• Screenshots with comments – Skitch is an easy tool that allows you to screen capture, make annotations, and embed them on your blog.  To find the embed code click webpost.
• Visitor Map – Curious to know who is visiting your class blog?  Consider using Whos.Amung.Us.  You would need to add this as a widget on a blog or simply add to the HTML of a wiki.
• Webpage Links – Wallwisher is a virtual bulletin board to cover with virtual post-its, but I really like to use this as a way to share websites with students or parents.  It can also be used collaboratively so parents could leave encouraging notes to students.  The embed code is located under Do More.
• Word Documents – Scribd, Issuu, Calemeo allow you to upload your Word (including 2007 documents) and PDF documents while providing you an embed code.  Now parents and students can view handouts and such without having to have Microsoft Office on their home computers, plus Calemeo will allow you will to create digital books.

Photos

• Animoto –Animoto is a wonderful tool to make photo music videos that can be easily embedded on a wiki or blog.  Be sure to sign up for the “Educator” version to take advantage of all the features.  This is an example Animoto created by an Andover High School Social Studies teacher as an introduction to the 1950s. The embed code is found with the Thumbtack Icon.
• BubbleShare – is another slideshow creator except this tool uses fun frames like television sets or a theater stage.  The embed code is listed above the slideshow.
• Photopeach – This is a fun slideshow creator that comes with audio and the easy ability to add text over your images.  The embed code is found underneath the slideshow.
• Picasa Web Album Slideshows – If you aren’t familiar with Picasa 3 from Google, you’re missing out.  This free tool not only is one of the easiest photo editors around, it allows you to save and share your photos on the web.  When you have an album created online, look for the Link Button on the right.  You’ll see an option for Embed a Slideshow. 
• Slide.com – is a fun and creative slideshow tool that will allow you to put clipart and glitter around the images.  The embed code is underneath the slideshow.

Student Products

• Bookr form PimPamPum – Pulls in photos from FlickR, but allows students to create digital books online.  It’s an easy and amazing digital storytelling tool.  To find the embed code click Blog This.
• Bubbl.us – With this tool you can create a brainstorming mind map and embed it on your wiki.  To keep from having students needing accounts to login, this would be a perfect tool to have one teacher account and use the interactive white board to create as a whole class then embed on the class wiki.  The embed code is located under the Menu button in the bottom right corner.
• Wordle – The use of Wordle has become very popular in the past year and with the ability to easily embed them, why not use them on your class webpage?  The embed code is found directly beneath the generated Wordle.

Videos

• BBC Video News and CNN News – Running a current events class?  If so, you might be interested in embedding news videos on your site.  The embed code for BBC is found when you click “share” and CNN’s code is just below the video.
• Live Video Feed from Your Classroom – Having a guest speaker or are students doing a reader’s theater performance?  Consider turning on a webcam and broadcast from your website.  Ustream allows you to set up your show and provides you with the embed code just below the video window.
• SchoolTube – If you haven’t checked out SchoolTube, you are missing out.  Many of these student films are very good films.  You’ll find math tutorials, student performances, and more.  Simply check out the Video of the Day to see what’s been uploaded lately.  Also consider uploading your own class films here and embedding them on your website.  It’s a great way to archive class activities to share with parents.  The embed code on the right.
• TeacherTube – TeacherTube is currently going through some big changes like allowing you to upload documents to share and creating a community piece.  The videos do have embed codes on the right.
• YouTube – With the wealth of options at YouTube, you can usually find some great conversations starters for classroom discussions or tutorial videos on just about anything.  I definitely want to direct you to this blog post about embedding tricks for YouTube.  For example, you can embed just a portion of a YouTube clip or set it up to autoplay on your site.  The embed code on the right.  I recommend checking out YouTube Edu, as well.