Digitizing part of book For Interactivity-Camera

I have been taking some pictures of the class textbook so that I can project the image and then mark it up. I copy a speech and then we go through and identify how the speaker has introduced, given evidence, and concluded. Yesterday we went through an information speech and the students focused on every mention of an expert (person, book, or professional organization) to show that the speech has been built on facts. It took me about three minutes to take the pictures, move them over to my computer, do a simply crop, and save as a .gif file to put into the PowerPoint. It is a simple technique if you do not have a document camera, if you do not have a scanner, and if you are too lazy to retype the whole three page entry.

Making learning about writing interactive

A colleague gave me access to a writing site. I was impressed that the site had a student’s written example for each paragraph pattern. Different sentences were in different colors  for topic sentence, example, and detail.  More importantly, when I moused over each sentence, the computer  identified each as topic sentence, example, and detail.  The website visually presents the information in an exciting way both with color and the interactive nature of the mousing. I felt that my students could easily learn how to the critical parts of each pattern through this website.

What website do you use to make your subject area learning interactive? Does it focus exclusively on the students’ learning