Technology-Enhanced Literature Circles

I use Literature Circles in my 3rd grade classroom every year.  They are a great way to provide students with opportunities to discuss texts while cooperative learning skills.  In past years, I incorporated the technology aspect into my literature circles by allowing the students to use Glogster.  They each created a "glog" (poster) of a character in the book and described the character's traits.  Each student's glog was unique and personalized.  We then shared the glogs as a class.  They thoroughly enjoyed using this technology as part of their literature circle experience.  Unfortunately, Glogster now requires you to pay to have more than one user on an account, so I've been unable to use this website this year.


Another idea for a technology-enhanced literature circle that I could use with my students is to have the "Word Wizard" (Vocabulary Elaborator) create a word cloud (on wordle.net) to highlight some of the text's vocabulary.  At the same time, the group's "Discussion Director" (Discussion Coordinator) could use the computer to type up questions to discuss with his/her classmates.  The "Artful Artist" (Graphic Illustrator) could use the Paint program on the computer to illustrate a scene in the book, while the "Passage Picker" (Background Researcher) uses the internet to research information about the background of the story.


These are just some of the ways that I would incorporate a technology-enhanced literature circle into my classroom.