Night Zookeeper's International Writing Cup

Night Zookeeper is an excellent new site for students to help them w/ their Writing skills through fun interactive lessons/competition.  Also, it has an educational portal that allows educators to: assign lessons, track student progress, and assess their work in real-time.  This makes it easy for teachers to differentiate instruction and implement project based learning in their classroom.

Starting tomorrow on November 1st, Night Zookeeper is launching their latest International Writing Cup for 2018.  This Writing challenge/contest will have students writing in three different phases.

The Writing Triathlon

1. Stage 1: Instructions - The students will write a set of instructions how to write an excellent adventure story.
2. Stage 2: Report - The students will create a lead character for the adventure and write more words describing them w/ an abundance of adjectives.
3. Stage 3: Adventure Story - The students will then use their instructions and report to help them writing an amazing adventure story.

The competition will end Nov 30th and their will be one winner for each age/grade level 6-8, and over 9.  Finally, the prizes will range from team trophies, individual trophies, and badges and certificates.

For more information on Night Zookeeper's International Writing Cup 2018 click here!!!

Night Zookeeper June Challenge

Night Zookeeper is an excellent new site for students to help them w/ their Writing skills through fun interactive lessons/competition.  Also, it has an educational portal that allows educators to: assign lessons, track student progress, and assess their work in real-time.  This makes it easy for teachers to differentiate instruction and implement project based learning in their classroom.

Recently Night Zookeeper announced they are running a new writing competition for students to create a NEW location on the Night Zoo map.

The challenge
"Hello, young zookeepers! We have a new competition for you to enter. All you have to do is invent and describe a new location for the Night Zoo. You can also illustrate your location as well. The winning entry will be illustrated and added to the map that you can see above. Good luck to everyone taking part!"

How to enter
There are two ways to enter the competition:

1. Visit the star writing page to enter the competition with your students
2. If you would prefer, you can also print this activity sheet and ask your students to complete it. Then email all entries to paul@nightzookeeper.com or Tweet us on @nightzookeeper

The prizes
We are giving away a couple of prizes to the winning entry:
1. The location will be illustrated by our team and placed in the map above. 
2. The child will receive a poster of their location delivered to their school or house. 

Click here for more info about Star Writing!!!

For more information on Night Zookeeper's latest online challenge click here.

Night Zookeeper Star Writing May Challenge

Night Zookeeper is an excellent new site for students to help them w/ their Writing skills through fun interactive lessons/competition.  Also, it has an educational portal that allows educators to: assign lessons, track student progress, and assess their work in real-time.  This makes it easy for teachers to differentiate instruction and implement project based learning in their classroom.

Recently Night Zookeeper announced they are running two different Star Writing Challenges in April, where students will have the chance(s) to get their writing published in the third Night Zookeeper book, The Penguins of Igloo City!

The first challenge is: "Write a speech for your animal to deliver on the campaign trail."

As the maximum word allowance is 500 words, students of all ages can take part. These fun, short challenges with great prizes are a great way to excite students and motivate them to write!

More info...

• The second challenge starts on the 20th May to June 3rd.
• Students just have to visit the Star Writing page and click 'accept this mission' to start writing.
• All teachers have to do is publish and nominate their students' writing to their Night Zookeeper class blog by 4pm GMT 3rd June 2018.
• Maximum 500 words
• You can learn how to publish and nominate student writing by watching this 20 second tutorial video.

Click here for more info about Star Writing!!!

I highly recommend checking out Night Zookeeper by clicking here!!!

Night Zookeeper Star Writing Challenge 2

Night Zoopkeeper is an excellent new site for students to help them w/ their Writing skills through fun interactive lessons/competition.  Also, it has an educational portal that allows educators to: assign lessons, track student progress, and assess their work in real-time.  This makes it easy for teachers to differentiate instruction and implement project based learning in their classroom.

Recently Night Zookeeper announced they are running two different Star Writing Challenges in April, where students will have the chance(s) to get their writing published in the third Night Zookeeper book, The Penguins of Igloo City!

The first challenge is: "Write a story set in Igloo City"

As the maximum word allowance is 500 words, students of all ages can take part. These fun, short challenges with great prizes are a great way to excite students and motivate them to write!

More info...

• The second challenge starts on the 15th April to April 29th.
• Students just have to visit the Star Writing page and click 'accept this mission' to start writing.
• All teachers have to do is publish and nominate their students' writing to their Night Zookeeper class blog by 4pm GMT 29th April.
• Maximum 500 words
• You can learn how to publish and nominate student writing by watching this 20 second tutorial video.
• The winners will be revealed in an exciting live storytelling event on Facebook at the end of April!

Click here for more info about Star Writing!!!

I highly recommend checking out Night Zookeeper by clicking here!!!

Loose Leaves

Loose Leaves is a site I just found out about from Larry Ferlazzo's excellent blog.  This is a site that reminds me of Quiet Write for publishing on the web.  The way LL works is a user starts a new "leaf" and then starts adding text or an image.  Once the leaf is done a user gets two URL's one for publishing for others and one for keeping for oneself to edit.

I recommend checking out Loose Leaves by clicking here!!!

PenCamp

PenCamp is a site I just found out about from Free Technology 4 Teachers. This is a site dedicated to having people publish their writing online. It's simple to use and all a user has to do to get started is enter a name for their PenCamp page and choose a password.

I recommend checking out PenCamp by clicking here.

Tikatok

Tikatok is a place where students can create stories/books then either share them online or purchased them in hardcover for $20.00. When I first started browsing around on this site, I kept asking myself, other then the Web 2.0/collaboration tools what can you do here that you can't already do in iPhoto... then I stumbled upon the "Story Spark System".

The SSS actually helps students brainstorm ideas and create their own stories to get those creative juices flowing!!! Plus, w/ the collaboration aspect and publishing online students will take more pride and care in what they publish.

Finally, a nice little feature that Apple won't do is, if you have a picture and want to include it in your story but don't have a scanner, you can send it in to Tikatok and they will add/upload it for you. Plus, w/ the educational aspect you can register students w/out them having to have an email account. You just genereate a class, un & pw.

While this all sounds great I was concerned about sticking to CIPA/COPPA compliance so I sent them an email and found out what their policy is on filitering. There is no "built-in" filter, they want students to be able to express themselves. However, any time a comment or a story gets published a parent/teacher receives an email notification (similar to Wikipedia). A student can not sign up w/out parent approval. If anything is found inappropriate Tikatok will remove the content and suspend the user.

For more info click here.