Create a choose your own adventure story in PowerPoint

I got sent this PowerPoint which is from the Victorian Department of Education and it contains a great little activity using PowerPoint to create a choose your own adventure story based around Halloween. 

The idea is simple and can be altered to suit any style of narrative.  Simply create a story with multiple endings or directions depending on how complex you want to get and then simply add hyperlink within the PowerPoint in which the reader clicks to choose their own adventure.

The Halloween template can be accessed here and it would be great to see what others come up with.



Teach your students about stereotypes

Here is this weeks digital literacy activity.  This 2 hour lesson focuses on stereotypes.  What are they?  How do we use them to engage our audience?  And what happens when we challenge the stereotypes of characters? there is an interactive activity for students to create an advertising campaign and a task to identify famous characters that challenge and support our stereotypes.  The original presentation is available hereor you can simply view it as a slideshare below.  Hope you enjoy and look forward to your feedback.

Digital literacies activity 4 stereotypes

View more presentations from Kevin Cummins.

Teach your Students Aboriginal Dreamtime

Dust Echoes is one of the most polished digital literacy sites I have seen for a while.  It contains a large selection of Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime Stories as animated cartoons with a range of interactive activities and lesson ideas to ensure these beautiful stories continue to be told to the world for the next fifty thousand years.

DustEchoes is a series of twelve beautifully animated dreamtime stories from Central Arnhem Land, telling stories of love, loyalty, duty to country and aboriginal custom and law.

It looks amazing containing loads of stylized Aboriginal Artwork.  The animation and dreamtime stories are beautifully narrated in simple language that caters for learners of all ages.  The stories are almost biblical in nature as the simple yet highly relevant messages being told through characters still relate to us all.

Jenny Eather's Writing Fun - The best place to teach students about writing on the web

I have been using this site for a number of years now regularly to teach my students about different text types and share examples with them and just realised that I do not have it up on Edgalaxy. 

Jenny Eather's Writing Fun is a brilliant tool for any English teacher.  It contains step by step instructions on how to construct all major text types such as persuasive, explanatory, narrative and so on and has loads of examples from students to share on your interactive white board.

It also contains a range of planning tools and aids to help your students get the most from their writing sessions.  Quite simply this is my number one pick for writing resources and I strongly recommend you check it out here.

Excellent Interactive Myths & Legends Site for Creative Writers

Myths and Legends is a great site for pupils, teachers and all those who enjoy stories and storytelling. The British Isles is rich in myths, folktales and legends. Almost every town, city and village in Britain has its own special story, be it a Celtic legend, Dark Age mystery, strange happening or fable.

This flash based website has to be one of the best literacy offerings I have ever come accross so far for its depth of content media and its excellent sory creator tool that allows students to create their own animated storyboards of their own myths and legends.

The variety of stories in Myths and Legends aims to give inspiration to young people at school and at home to create and publish their own work. The site provides a multitude of tools and opportunities that enable pupils to submit their stories for the enjoyment of a world wide audience, with the prospect of receiving peer review and evaluation.

Most of the site is for the enjoyment and instruction of young people; just the story origins and teachers' area use language which may be more difficult for some pupils.

Differentiation is achieved by the range and flexibility of the tools offered. Children can, and do, respond creatively at their own level in a variety of media.

All the stories that we receive are moderated, but what you see is the pupils' own work. If work is not suitable to be published, the authors are given feedback and suggestions to help them revise their story or to think about when they create a new story.  Check it out here.