Storybird is a free Web 2.0 technology that be used within your classroom and easily embed into a space within the Ultranet.  Storybird consists of literally thousands of pieces of imaginative art work created by artists.  The artwork can be used to create a digital story by the students in your class. Storybird could be used by students on their own, or for collaborative group work, where students feed ideas off each other, creating and learning together.  

Multiliteracy is the literacy of the digital age.  It is more than just reading and writing.  Multi literacy is using technology in all its media forms, animation and audio, video combined with traditional text, reading and writing.  Multiliteracy uses the internet and ICT to search for information and create new electronic messages that can be shared amongst peers, family, school community, even globally.  

ToonDoo is a creative way to introduce multiliteracies into your classroom.  ToonDoo is a specific genre of cartooning, a web comic, a comic book designed to be viewed online.  Through using ToonDoo, students are able to create multimedia-rich digital stories in a Web comic format. Such a combination of interactivity and multimedia provides a new impulse in digital storytelling to students by making them more active members of learning process (Vassilikopoulou, Retalis, Nezi, & Boloudakis, 2011 pp 121).

ToonDoo allows users to use premade graphics, images and backgrounds using a drag and drop application.  No special artistic or illustrative skill is necessary to use ToonDoo, although there is an option to upload your own cartoon images and characters.  Users can choose the number of frames as well as the design of the cartoon.  There is a variety of speech bubbles and titles to use also. 

Cartoons are motivating for students.  They are timeless and have appealed to generations of children.  Using cartoons in an educational setting is not unique, however the ability to design, create and share cartoons online is. For reluctant readers, cartoons offer an alternative to wordier and longer texts, and cartoons rely on both visual and textual cues for struggling readers.

Vassilikopoulou, M., Retalis, S., Nezi, M., & Boloudakis, M. (2011). Pilot use of digital educational comics in language teaching. Educational Media International, 48 (2), 115-126.

Glogster is a glog, which is a cross between graphics and a blog.  Glogster uses interactive media such as audio, video, animation and graphics to create an online poster that expresses ideas and conveys feelings.  Glogster is creative, engaging and enjoyable.  Glogster encourages students to express ideas in different ways and is interesting as they can select various media elements and work interactively with those elements (Kent, 2010 pp 153).  

Glogster has an easy drag and drop interface. There are pre made graphics and animation as well as text, or users are able to upload their own images, audio, create their own video, ‘grab’ a photo of themselves using a web camera if installed on the computer.  The possibilities are endless of using Glogster in education, book / movie reviews, travel posters, school projects, introduce themselves and their family are just a few ideas. 

When used in collaborative group work, (Kent, 2010) found that students were able to assist one another based on their strengths, one student may have a better knowledge of uploading graphics and images, whilst another group member may have a better knowledge of audio.  As an educator, we should be mindful in creating groups in order to match up student’s strengths and weaknesses. Glogster can promote the strengths of individual students while encouraging such students to embrace their skills and knowledge in a leadership fashion when working collaboratively with peers, and in this manner the development of learner autonomy can be fostered (Kent, 2010 pp 155).

Kent, D. B. (2010). Exploring the Perspectives and Potential of Incorporating Glogster in the University EFL Curriculum. Arab World English Journal , 1 (1), 130-170.