As educators, we are constantly seeking ways to make texts relevant to our students. What better way to establish that relevance than to have students use text generators to create conversations between characters, people in history, interviewer and interviewee? That is short-list of the options.
As many districts move towards a 1:1 classroom, we are granted a plethora of options to enhance instruction, one of them being the online text generator. My students were reading Romeo and Juliet, and rather than have them simply summarize the conversations by writing on a worksheet, I had them summarize the conversations between the characters using a text generator. In doing so, they had to first comprehend the complex text, and then paraphrase it in their own words.
I tried out two text generators: http://www.ios7text.com/ and http://www.iphonetextgenerator.com/. Ultimately, you'll know your students better and will decide which is best for your lesson:
1. http://www.ios7text.com/ - This site allows students to see the changes instantly on a mock iPhone. They can customize everything from the carrier to the battery percentage to the Wi-Fi connection in addition to creating messages. This site is definitely more interactive, but it also takes students more time to become acclimated with all of the features.
2. http://www.iphonetextgenerator.com/ - This is a much simpler version of the text generator. Students can pick a carrier and time and then get right into creating the messages. This generator is to the point, simple, and accessible. It does not offer all of the extra features that ios7text does, but for some students, it is less distracting.
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