Some solutions that might apply: instead of having kids create signing up in sites, the teacher could have one class account and invite students to be editors (generally kids have their parents’ or personal emails that could be used for the invitation), whenever this is possible. Also, in the case of Flickr, for example, the photo activity could still work if the teacher had an account, for the students could send their photos to the Flickr email connected to that specific account. Besides, I would adapt it and ask students to do the following:
- Draw their avatar and upload them to Flickr by taking a photo of each avatar, or just scanning the drawings.
- Take a photo of something in their class that called their attention on the first day of class.
- Students could create a comic strip with Go Animate (I checked the terms of use and didn’t find age restriction), or a film with fictional characters at Dvolver
- They could create an online scrapbook page with scrapblog or glogster. Yes, I know. You need to register, but maybe you could work on teams and the teacher could set up 3 or 4 accounts in advance for the class. I have some email options to create different accounts for my groups. The teacher could have different topics for the students and they could change one of them to create a scrapbook page.
- Students could send e-cards to their parents and friends. Only rule I have: I should check the card before they hit the submit button to make sure the language used is appropriate. Or you could ask them to send an e-card to you telling you about what they wish the schools were like. I’m sure you’d get many insights from the little ones.
- You could have groups make up stories and create images for an online book at Mixbook.
- With Picwing, photo tool that I mentioned before, the teacher only needs to create an album for the class, and the students could send drawings and photos to the email provided by picwing for each album you create. Here’s one example of mine I created for my hometown, Brasilia. Anybody can send a picture of Brasilia to my album using the email address brasilia@picwing.com . So, you could have something like classxxx@picwing.com as well.
- Students could record their introductions in Audacity and the teacher could upload students’ introductions to a podcast site like Podomatic or Odeo.
One thing that is interesting for the little ones is the fact that once they have their online production, it could be a bridge between home and school. In my school, whenever I have a project, I send an email to parents to tell them about their kids’ projects.
Just make sure you have parents’ authorization and that they understand your approach to online use.
Transparency leads to understanding and appreciation of our collective work.