I’ve been reading lately about the novelty effect for increased attention spans in education. I believe “iFake Text” is a great example of a simple tool that can allow your students to show what they know in a unique or novel way by emulating a text message conversation on an iPhone.
iFake Text
How to use it:
- Go to : http://ifaketext.com/
- Enter your name.
- Choose a carrier.
- Enter the conversation.
Be sure to use the format as shown below:
1: Hello
2: Hello
1: How are you?
2: I’m fine. How are you? - Click the “Create Your Screenshot” button.
Note – If you don’t like the way it looks, you can use the browser’s back button to go back and edit it.
- Use the provided options at the left to share the screenshot with others.
- To print:
a. Copy the “Direct Link” url.
b. Paste the url into a new tab or window.
c. Print. - To embed the screenshot into a blog, wiki, or website, use the “HTML Image” option.
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Classroom Ideas:
Here are some ideas to get you started. Please add your own ideas in the comments area at the bottom of this post.
Vocabulary
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Jokes and Riddles
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Practicing Voice
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Poetry
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Other ideas:
Students could write dialog between:
- Two book characters from a scene in a story
- Two animals (including some facts about them)
- Two historic figures
- Two friends discussing a book, movie, or event.
- Please add your ideas in the comments area below.
This is a great tool for foreign language teachers! I used it when my 8th grade French students learned greetings. See an example here: http://tinypic.com/r/ms0io8/8
Similar to this is simitator.com, where you can make fake twitter and facebook posts. We used the tweet generator when we learned daily routine phrases. See an example here: http://tinypic.com/r/55qc01/8. My webquest directions are here: http://bit.ly/1cHU6rn
Students could use this to write about Authors Purpose – to inform, persuade and entertain.
Students can use this to go through the basic steps of trouble shooting a tech problem. Like my mouse won’t work. to which they reply with the first step to fix the problem. Nope that did not work what should I do next. etc. etc