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.