Tikatok

**Overview**
[|Tikatok] is a free online community enabling children to write, illustrate, share, and publish their own picture books.
 * Provides the ability for collaboration between members, including one child illustrating and the other writing.
 * Includes a separate [|teacher registration] process and Teacher Dashboard for management of class projects.
 * Features a library of story prompts called "StorySparks" that provide minimal brainstorming help and inline writing hints. The book editor itself is web-based.

**Uses of Tikatok in Education**
Bookmaking is a popular activity in many primary school classrooms, usually as a handmade or kit-based process. Tikatok allows a digital alternative, with students creating a book online that can be shared at the teacher's discretion, or even allowing kids in different classrooms to collaborate on books asynchronously. Teacher accounts provide the ability to monitor student activity, and a private class forum or "book club" for discussions.

Examples of books created by teachers and their students:
 * [|The World of Spiders]
 * [|Get to Know Your Wild Neighbors]

**What Tikatok Does for Students**
Online publication opens up new facets to the creative writing and bookmaking process. Issues of privacy, ownership, and responsibility to an audience come to the fore. Providing a venue where a child's work is valued may also provide greater student self-motivation and self-confidence. This effect is further encouraged by publishing the online stories into "real" books with the site's Print on Demand services.

**Lesson Plans & Ideas**

 * PUT IDEAS AND LINKS HERE
 * PUT IDEAS AND LINKS HERE
 * PUT IDEAS AND LINKS HERE

**Blog Resources**

 * [|TeachersFirst Review]
 * [|Henry Jenkins Interviews the Site Creators]
 * [|Larry Ferlazzo's Review]

**Article Links**

 * [|School Library Journal on Tikatok]

**Books**

 * [|A Tikatok Book about "How Tikatok Works"]