Embedded Files
Creativity allows students to interact with resources online to create digital stories, presentations, infographics, posters, or videos as a means to share their thinking and understanding. You may use these resources in place of more traditional methods of assessing students' understanding of a unit of study or lesson. Some examples are videos/trailers, PSAs, newscasts, multimedia presentations, info graphics, posters, digital books, e-portfolios, etc.
Have your students visit the Media Resources page to find copyright-free images, videos, music, and sounds.
Book Creators
Book Creators
Book Creator is a great program to design your own digital books. Their easy to use toolbar makes it super simple to add backgrounds, images, text, audio, and stickers. Books can be downloaded as PDFs if you prefer to print, or viewed online. Students/parents can purchase a hard cover copy of the book if interested.
Check out the example to the right entitled
"I Want to Be a Super Hero" that kindergarten students created from Birchlane Elementary School in Massapequa, NY.
Lesson Ideas:
Book Creator Resources for Teachers by Grade Level or Subject (from Book Creator)
58 Ideas for Book Creator from the Chromebook App Hub
Storyjumper - for a FREE site, Storyjumper is super for young inspiring authors. Once you login, it's a breeze to add text, images, props, scenes and your voice. Take a look at their Writing Lesson Plan or get inspired by checking out their Library. Totally free to use. There is only a cost if you want to order an actual copy or download (hardcover, paperback, eBook, audio file).
Teacher's Guide
Story Jumper and Google Classroom
Find Free Stories ...create stories for kids!
Lesson Ideas:
Global Story Jumper Writing (from Chromebook App Hub)
Find Great Writing Projects (from Story Jumper)
Writing Lesson Plans (from Story Jumper)
Comic Strip Generators
Comic Strip Generators
Check out this blog article done a while back but still applies to today's students:
Comic Strips Create Readers, Writers, and Thinkers
Makebeliefs Comix - it's not just a comic strip generator but a whole platform of tools to encourage and engage students in writing. Fun widgets like Talking Heads, Covid Diary, printouts, teacher & parent resources and more.
Storyboard That - Unlock your students' creativity through digital storytelling! Students will be engaged and excited to create plot diagrams, timelines, posters, and more. The FREE side limits users to two storyboards per week and 3 and 6 cell storyboards. Perfect for short and to-the-point comic strips.
Teacher Resources - K-12, CCSS aligned, example lesson plans, cross-curricular
infographics
infographics
"An infographic is a collection of imagery, data visualizations like pie charts and bar graphs, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic. "
Whats an Infographic? Learn more at: Inform with Infographics
Piktochart - Quickly get to a professionally-looking infographic, report, presentation, poster or social media graphic that will help you get the results you are looking for!
Piktochart YouTube Channel (How to Videos)
Canva - Canva has several different infographic templates to choose from. Canva's easy-to-use platform makes it super simple to design effective infographics.
Presentation Tools
Presentation Tools
Below is a list of free presentation tools. If the application has already been listed under a section above, please refer to that section for the description and tutorials when provided.
Adobe Express- (formerly known as Adobe Spark) is an online design app. You can make social posts and stories, ads, banners, logos, flyers, and more in minutes. It also integrates with Google Classroom.
Check out Adobe's Video Tutorials HERE
Canva is one of my go-to design tools. You can use it to design impressive presentations, posters, social media, videos and more. Super simple to use with lots of graphics and text designs to choose from. ESM is set up with Canva Edu (pro version) for all staff and students. Look for the Canva app in your waffle (Chrome Apps).
Smore is an easy to use digital newsletter creator. The basic/free plan allows you to make and store three newsletters. Start from scratch with a blank template or choose from one of the many design templates that customize with your own media and text. Check out the getting started tutorials from Smore Academy by clicking HERE.
eMaze makes it super simple to create stunning presentations. There motto is "just don't create slides -- tell stories". With Emaze’s out-of-the-box templates, building lessons that combine video, sound, and text is a breeze. And Emaze isn’t only for teachers! Homework can be fun when kids can express their creative ideas with animation and sound.
Google Slides is a presentation program included as part of the free, web-based Google Edu suite offered by Google.
Prezi
Prezi
Prezi is what you could call a virtual presentation application. What makes Prezi different from most presentation tools is that the finished presentation is not linear or flat but a live/moving presentation that allows you to zoom into its parts for a closer look. Here is an example Prezi used for ESMPG on QR Codes. Subscribe to Prezi's YouTube channel to learn all the ins and outs of this cool tool.
Video Creation Tools
Video Creation Tools
Don't have your students be just consumers of videos - make them become producers as well. Videos are great ways for students to share out their understanding of a topic/subject. Video production requires a higher level of understanding in order to document their knowledge, reflect on the learning process, and teach others how to do new things. Some videos ideas include Book Trailers, Learning Demonstrations, Response Videos, Refection Videos, and How-To Videos.
Easily create all sorts of videos in three easy steps using Animoto's templates. Pick a template that fits the type of video you want to make. Some examples are Explainer videos, Promotional Videos, Slideshow videos, Narratives and many more. Then, add your images and/or video clips, customize with text and effects, and lastly finalize and export!! That's it!!
WeVideo Tutorial.mp4ESM WeVideo Student Examples:
ESM WeVideo Student Examples:
WeVideo
WeVideo
Purchased for staff and students, WeVideo is a cloud-based collaborative video creation platform, WeVideo encourages student creativity, storytelling, engagement, and multimodal learning. Video projects construct deep knowledge about a topic by forming skills like collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.
NOTE: Staff and Students must log in from the icon located in the ESM Bookmarks folder in the upper left corner of the Chrome Browser.
WeVideo YouTube Channel (Everything you need to know is here)
Student examples from Karen Corsello, WeVideo Ambassador
Flip allows teachers to create a virtual message board where teachers can pose questions and their students can post video responses that appear in a tiled grid display. This is an easy way to create assignments and give students time to plan their responses and showcase their learning. Students can respond using the Flipgrid app or website with any camera-enabled device. Flip integrates with Google Classroom.
Flip makes it easy to incorporate into your lessons:
Discovery: Why start from scratch? Explore 45,267 topics created by the Flipgrid community that are ready-made for you to apply. Find a topic, add it to your group, and start your discussion!
Mixtapes: Create a mix of videos across your topics and groups. Mixtapes lets you compile videos from across topics and groups to easily share with others. It's an easy way for you to create portfolios of videos posted by your members.
Gridpals: Connect with fellow Flipgrid educators and classrooms around the world by activating your GridPals profile. Learn more about Gridpals HERE.
Screencastify: Use this Chrome Extension on a Chromebook, laptop or desktop to record your screen for creating flipped lessons, tutorials, and or student presentations.
Screen-Casto-Matic is very similar to Screencastify. You can launch their recorder from their website or Install their Chrome Extension. Either way provides an easy-to-use toolbar to create screencasts of your desktop or videos of yourself using your webcam.
Timeline Makers
Timeline Makers
Sutori
Sutori
Sutori is a FREE interactive timeline creator designed by teachers for teachers. However, Sutori can be used for lots of teaching and learning activities in your classroom. Take a peek at the 50 Ways to Use Sutori in Your Classroom for inspiration.
Website Design Tools
Website Design Tools
Google Sites
Google Sites
Click HERE to jump over to the Google Sites page for additional information and tutorials.
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
Big Huge Labs is an awesome site that has stood the test of time. It's a site for doing COOL stuff with digital images: Motivational Posters, Calendars, Trading Cards, foldable image cubes, photo FX, jigsaw puzzles, and more.
Final tading card.pdfReadWriteThink - is a site with lots of resources related to literacy. But this link will take you to their Trading Card Creator tool that students can use to easily design a trading card around a famous person, character in a book, etc.
Cool Text Generator - Easily create eye catching words or phrases for just the perfect look for your presentations, posters, websites, etc. Just download what you created as an image file to be inserted into different applications.
Easily remove the background of any pic with a snap of your figures. Just upload the pic, click Remove Background and like magic, the background disappears.
Visit Bingo Baker to find and customize one of the thousands of ready-made bingo cards, or use the simple bingo card generator to create your own. Then print as many cards as you need. You can even play virtual bingo using a computer, smartphone or tablet. It's fast and easy.
Text Giraffe is a free text and logo design tool. Easy to use to design eye-catching headings for presentations, or words that you want to stand out to students. Built-in name generator which would be a great get-to-know-you/welcome back-to-school activity. Copy and paste to use as is, or download if you want to edit size Check out the tutorial on the left to see how it works.
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