I have been writing a ‘writing digitally‘ series of posts and during my research I came upon the Tar Heel Reader. This site goes along with my post on ‘Digital Story tools’, since students create storybooks directly on the site using their own pictures or importing directly from flickr.
This site deserves its own post because there are two purposes to look at. As a teacher our purpose is to immerse students into writing with the goal of improving their reading and writing. This site has even loftier goals. The goals identified by the makers of the site are to help educators:
- identify, create and modify text for beginning readers
- meet literacy goals of students with significant disabilities in their earliest stages
of literacy
To read more about them and their framework read ‘The Beginning Literacy Framework‘.
For detailed steps on how to write a book on this site go here.
In order to have access to this website email Gary Bishop at gb@cs.unc.edu. He will send you a registration code that you can then use and register. The best way to use the site in a classroom setting is to log on with the one account and have all your students use it. (Multiple students can use the same id at the same time.)
When I contacted Gary he was very helpful and I was able to access the site right away.
Go forth and write…enjoy.