World Book Day is fast approaching!
Classrooms across the country are being adorned with literary decorations, parents are scrambling for fancy dress costumes and teachers are meticulously planning activities to engage the nation’s young readers. Having had experience of planning World Book Day festivities in their own classrooms, our Customer Success Managers, educational technologists (and former teachers) Angela Baker and Ben Latham share five top tips on how technology can be used to ensure an unforgettable literary event:
- Google Earth: Students can use the projects feature in Google Earth to create their own literary journeys or follow the characters journeys and storylines. This tool enables students to mark specific locations, measure the distance between them, add their own text and media to create the perfect presentation which combines literacy, numeracy and geographical knowledge bases.
- Microsoft Sway: Teams users can use this app to collaborate in one space by adding their own verbal, typed or recorded reviews of recent reads. This combined with the ability to add designs and various media types ensures the perfect reading list which can be shared with students and stakeholders alike.
- Google Arts and Culture – Remove the stress of organising school visits (and completing those pesky Evolve forms) by touring students around famous global landmarks, museums and places of interests. For World Book Day, why not use this tool to task your students to tour the Globe Theatre and then test their wits against the numerous Shakespeare quizzes which are readily available?
- Microsoft Flipgrid – This fun tool allows students to respond to topics via edited videos. Students would have heaps of fun recreating key moments from their favourite novels using the numerous video editing tools available.
- Microsoft and Google Forms – By creating a Google/Microsoft Form with linked, multiple choice questions; students are able to step in the shoes of their characters and make decisions in various scenarios to form the structure of an engaging narrative which can be created on a live doc.
So whether you choose to wear your World Book Day finery or not, embrace the technological challenge on the 2nd March to broaden your child’s literary horizons and even engage the most reluctant of readers!
Published: March 2