Wednesday, June 6, 2012

S'More Tech Summer Camp, Day 2

Hi campers!

I heard a lot of good things about your wild selves yesterday. You've got your camp scrapbooks started, and you're ready for more tech fun, right?

OK, here we go with another web 2.0 activity that does not require setting up an account (and waiting for your account to be activated, remembering the username and password, being limited about the number of student accounts, etc.) Just click and go to this one!

Have you heard about Fakebook? Not Facebook, but its very similar cousin Fakebook. This tool was created by a teacher and it is simply amazing.

Here's where you can find it: www.classtools.net/fb/home/page

You can probably guess what you can do with this nifty tool: create a fake Facebook page for a fictional character (after reading the book) or historical figure (after researching his or her life). This will be more appropriate for your older elementary school students, who are somewhat familiar with the features of Facebook.

You enter the name at the top of the page, edit the profile, add friends, posts and comments. It's super easy to just click and type. Here's an example of a Fakebook page for Helen Keller.



You can see that they've added friends, uploaded a video, put a detailed timeline into the profile section, and further down on the screen are comments from friends, like Anne Sullivan.

This is wayyyy more fun than writing a report after your research, right? And it gives you a chance to talk about social media in the context of the assignment.

Here's a Fakebook page for Harry Potter. See the conversations with his new friends, Hermione and Ron?



There's a great (short) video right smack in the middle of the Fakebook landing page that does a super job of introducing this social media lookalike.

Fakebook does not allow interaction between pages. So you could not, for example, assign students to be different characters in a story and communicate with each other. Each page stands alone (like the cheese). Also, there are ads on the page, as there are with many free sites.

For your summer camp scrapbook page, you can "browse" through pages that are already made (use the menu on the right side), or take the time to create your own Fakebook page. Be sure you add a screenshot and the web address. There are several fake Facebook sites, but I like this one the best.

When you use this with your students, you can either print out the pages, or create a password and get a URL that you can link to from your teacher blog. Before teaching this lesson, students will need to know how to find images online and give credit for the image sources.

What else could you do with Fakebook?

-You could follow a news story, updating a Fakebook page for one of the newsmakers involved in the current event.

-After researching a scientific discovery, you could create a Fakebook page for the scientist, commenting on the progress of the research.

-Students could create a Fakebook page for their very own fictional characters, from writing they've created themselves.

-Create a profile for an abstract concept, like a geometric shape, a part of speech, or a character quality.

What else can you think of? What person or idea could your students use to make a Fakebook page?








9 comments:

  1. This would be fun to use to make a class book for the end of the year. If you do this in a computer lab, you could have students rotate to each computer and put comments on everyone's page.

    If you do an author study, it would be fun to make a Fakebook page for that author and post it on a bulletin board.

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    1. Great ideas! Have the students move around the room to comment on each other's page...simple and effective. Also, either you (the librarian) or your library helpers could make a Fakebook page for an author and display it. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. I love Fakebook, but it is blocked at my school. So I found a word template of a Facebook page and used that with my students. We researched famous African Americans to answer the question "What about the life was remarkable?" Then they had to took what they learned and create a page for their person. Some of the students came up with a wonderful status for their person. Then they had to read another article about a "friend" and come up with a response.

    Stacey (@libraryjo92)

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    1. I like the idea of having students comment on each other's creations. Collaboration!

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  3. Love this! I found the Pigeon (http://www.classtools.net/fb/19/7J4jPB), Fancy Nancy (http://www.classtools.net/fb/52/KNUWjC), and Clifford (http://www.classtools.net/fb/62/Se3cgh). My mind is racing with ideas!

    Glad Miss Hazuda commented about blocked sites. I'm no longer in school, but it will be something to keep in mind. I feel like this could also turn into a really great teacher appreciation project. I would also love to go the obscure route and create Fakebook pages of items in our library and post status updates on what they experienced throughout the day.

    Rocking Chair's status update might read that "5 excited kinders all lined up with their reading buddies to take turns sitting on me today. I feel loved."

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    Replies
    1. ooh! Great ideas, Matthew! I hadn't even thought about teachers and inanimate objects! I think kids would really like that!

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