Today I'm sharing an idea that I saw at Mrs. Lodge's Library...Toon Reader!
I knew that this site would make a great library center for its electronic versions of graphic novels, but it turns out to be wayyyy more than I thought!
Here's a graphic overview of all the features of the site:
Recognize that nutty professor in the middle of the page? Oh, yes, it's that lasagna-loving cat...Garfield! It turns out that Garfield's creator, Jim Davis, had to overcome asthma and a stutter as a child. This site is a collaboration between his comic studio and Ball State University.
The Toon Book activity is actually designed for students with dyslexia or other learning disabilities. I had no idea. You can have a narrator read the Toon Books to you (with the speech bubbles highlighted as they are read) in English, Spanish, Chinese, French, or Russian. Of course you could also display these on your interactive white board.
But, wait! There's more!
In Reading Ring, you compete in a WWE-type ring to put Garfield comic strips in order and answer questions about them to become the World Champion Word Wrestler. The questions include inferencing and vocabulary development, but instead of those dry test passages we're used to in school, the questions are based on Garfield comics. I really like this feature! The realism (?) of ringing the bell to start the round, the noise of the crowd, plus the comics will make this a student favorite.
Art-Bot provides video drawing lessons by the Garfield cartoonists. Do your students love drawing books as much as mine do?
I'm not too excited about Music-bot, which has a choice of 3 educational music videos. Myeh.
And it looks like you have to login to use the Comic Creators. I think there are better comic creators out there in the world.
The site has teacher resources, like a Garfield printable alphabet, and word wall sight words to print. And there are also lesson plans to go with the books, even printable Garfield emergent readers.
This free website has been around for a while. Like since 2008. How did I miss it?
And that brings me to my next idea of the summer...
I think there are probably lots of great tech tools out there that you, campers, are using and loving, but I don't even know about. So, what do you say? Are you up for some summer camp show and tell?
If you do have a tech tool that you love, leave me a comment, telling me what it is and where your blog is. I'll contact you, and we'll set up a day for the happy graham cracker to send people over to YOUR place, to learn from you.
In the meantime, I'll be adding the Toon Reader and the Reading Ring to our Library Resources page and my S'More Tech Summer Camp scrapbook.
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