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?