Have you been looking for a new way to integrate technology into your classroom? I have some tried and true websites that have been successful in my classroom.
The two easiest are wordle and taxgedo. These turn words into word clouds. Students can take famous speeches, song lyrics, slogans, news articles, letters, or even papers and create word clouds. In word clouds, the words that appear more frequently are given more prominence. You can improve writing by having the students put their papers in a wordle to see which words they are overusing. A wordle makes a great topic starter or can be used for review.
Xtranormal, Animoto, Voki, and GoAnimate are sites that allow you to create short movies. Some change text into movies, and others allow you to take pictures and clips into professional looking video slideshows. How much more engaging is a writing project put to music by a talking animal? Book trailers are so much more engaging than a written book report! Another site that students love to use is My Avatar Editor. Students can create their own characters to move through stories in Keynote or iMovies.
A great source for current events, science or weather events, and in different languages is Newseum. It gives the frontages from all over the United States and the world. Checking for comprehension in a foreign language? Why not pull up a newspaper written in that language? Discovery News is also a good site for current events.
Any site can be used for different classes and in many different ways. Check back for apps that you can use in your classroom.
