Create a Fake Profile (or Have Your Students Create One)

Fakebook - Hernan Cortes 

Tired of the same old products from your students at the end of a project or lesson? If you are looking for a way to move past the written report or the poster board, consider using Fakebook.

It's a website where students can create a profile page for any character or person using a Facebook-style template. In its advertisement, Fakebook suggests using the site "to chart the plot of a book, the development of a character, a series of historical events, the debates and relationships between people."

Using a Facebook-like template is a fun way to engage even your most apathetic student. Just mention this idea to your class and see how quickly they start brainstorming ideas. Even if you don't have time for each student to create one individually, consider having the class create one together. It would be a unique way to review before a history test or discuss the class novel.

Thanks to Librarian_Tiff for the inspiration!

Using Student Doodles

Google Doodle from 3/31/11

Seeing Google's Doodle for today jogged my memory of an idea I had while brainstorming with a teacher a while back for new and creative ideas for book projects. With all of the creative ways graphic designers and artists have dressed up the Google logo over the years, why couldn't students do the same thing with a book title? Have the students start with the title of the book on the paper and use the letters to draw something to represent the book. This image could represent the main characters, the conflict, an important scene, the setting, a theme -- the ideas are endless. As part of the assignment, the students would present their "Book Doodle" to the class and explain why they chose what they did.

If you want to see some examples or show your students examples of Google's various Doodles over the years, Google has them all collected here.

This could easily be adapted for almost any subject. Instead of a book title, one could replace it with a concept, a vocabulary word, a country, a person's name, or an event. If the assignment was for a country, the letters of the country's name could be transformed to represent the main religion, the top industry, the government, the flag, and other facts for that country. For a concept, the students could transform the words "life cycle" into a doodle to show the teacher that they understood the concept. I'm sure you could think of some fabulous ways to adapt this to use with your students.

Diigo for Educators

Over the years, as the Internet expanded, I became a champion bookmarker. If I found a site that I thought had good information or that I just wanted to explore more later, I'd bookmark it. After a while, I learned how to export my bookmarks and import so I could share between home and school. When I learned about online bookmarking sites, I was thrilled. I'd only had to save it once and I can access my bookmarks no matter what computer I'm using.  I used Delicious until I learned a few months back that it was no longer going to be updated by Yahoo. I began searching for a replacement and what I discovered was actually so much better -- Diigo!

I use Diigo for more than just online bookmarking. I love being able to highlight information or add a sticky note on sites that I bookmark. When I go back to the site, I can see why I saved it. I'm slowly adding friends that share the same interests as me and joining educator groups through Diigo and I have access to the bookmarks they share.


Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

I would strongly recommend that you sign up for one of Diigo's educator accounts, where you will have access to some premium features for free and the Teacher Console. One feature that I haven't used yet, but hope to use soon, is the student accounts. Under your account, you can create a class and add your students where they can use and share info as a class. Diigo has limited access to the student accounts so they aren't out there in the wild. For more information about Diigo Educator accounts go here.