If you are ever done early on Fridays with the assignments from Ms. Hull or Mr. Ferlazzo, you can do any of these activities for additional extra credit and paste the link in the comments section of this post:

MAKE A BOOK, FLYER OR BROCHURE: Simple Booklet is a great tool that lets you create online books and reports that can be embedded or linked to by its url address. It’s free, you can grab images and videos off the web, and extremely simple to use. No registration is required.

ANNOTATE A WEBPAGE: WebKlipper lets you easily, without requiring registration, annotate any webpage with virtual post-it notes or a highlighter. You’re then given the url address of the annotated webpage. It’s quite easy to use. Students can use it to demonstrate reading strategies (visualizing, asking questions, making a connection, etc.).

MAKE A SLIDESHOW: Bookr is about as easy of a slideshow maker as they get. You can search through images with a tag word, drag them into a flip-like book, and add text.

CREATE A TEST: Testmoz is an app that lets you create an online, self-correcting quiz without having to register.

MAKE A LIST: Thinkmeter lets you makes lists. If you pick an item from Amazon, it will show an image of the item and, at least if you list a book, it will also show a description of it. In addition, if you insert the url address of an image from the Web, it will show it. You can post the link to your survey wherever you please. You can’t write descriptions of the items as you are making the list. However, once it’s made, you are given the ability to make a comment on each item. I think it’s the best thing out there (that doesn’t require registration) for students to make a list of their favorite books and explain why they picked each one, or, if we’re studying a unit like “Jamaica,” listing the things they like best about the country and explaining why for each one.

MAKE A MAP: Zee Maps, without registration, lets you create a map and add media by pasting the url address of any photo you grab off the Web.

MAKE A GAME OTHERS CAN PLAY: Jeopardy Labs lets you easily create an online Jeopardy game without having to register. Maybe I’m the only teacher who feels this way, but I’ve always found that playing Jeopardy the way they do on TV — giving players the answer and then they have to come-up with the question — is confusing.  Please ignore the site’s instructions and just write the questions first and the answers second so that the board displays the question.

CREATE A WALLWISHER TO SUMMARIZE DATA SETS: Wallwisher lets you make a virtual wall of “sticky notes” where you can include images, text, and/or videos. You can summarize the categories from any data set and use them to create a Wallwisher. (Corkboard might be an easier tool to use)

CREATE AN INTERNET SCAVENGER HUNT:  You have been completing Internet Scavenger Hunts or Webquests. Now it’s time to create your own for your classmates to complete.  Design a scavenger hunt with at least fifteen questions, using the older ones you’ve completed as models. Write the questions and paste the url addresses where their answers can be found on Copytaste.  You just have to make the list of questions and websites and the page is automatically converted into a website whose url address can be pasted on our class blog.

CREATE A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION: Like the online book and slideshow tools mentioned at the top of this list, converting something you’ve written in class (or writing a short piece in the computer lab about a topic we’re learning) into a PowerPoint presentation and uploading it to Slideshare is another project you can do.

SEND AN E-CARD: In several of our units, students write “postcards” to people they know from the places we are studying, sometimes including some of the local dialect or slang. Nations Illustrated has thousands of world images. Imagine that you are in the place we are studying, choose an image, and write a postcard. Email it to yourself and then post the link on the comments section of this post.