CubertsCube

CubertsCube is a excellent site for creative writing for kids aged 7-12 yrs old.  This is all done online in a user friendly environment where kids can write/draw a rough draft, get feedback, revise, and then publish and share a finished product.

I highly recommend checking out CubertsCube by clicking here!!!

Myths and Legends

Myths & Legends or ML as I call them is such a great resource for teachers/students. It is ideal for English/history. Basically, ML is a place where students can create their own myth or Legend and then post it online. Creating the Myth is very easy and not only can you upload your own pictures (or choose from their stock footage), you can record your own voice to narrate your story.

What makes ML so great is the "submissions" of stories before they get posted online. All stories have to be approved by a moderator/teacher before they can be posted. This totally eliminates anything inappropriate from occurring on their site. Actually, if you are doing this in Windows you can download your story and share it that way.

The only "gray" area I have is about their comment feature. I'm not sure if there is a built in filter or if comments have to be approved before they get posted. I have an email into them regarding this aspect.

For more info click here.

Below is an example of a Myth & Legend I created...

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.