I made this truly inspiring panel with Comic Strip Generator.
This site makes mock "For Dummies" book covers.
Redkid.net has a wide array of message generator templates, from cartoon characters to words spelled out on a hot dog with mustard.
Finally, Wordle makes word clouds out of any text or blog. This is what Perdu Dans La Toile looks like as a cloud:
No surprises there.
So how do these tools pertain to the classroom? At the kindergarten level, I can see using them as hooks, basically. Kids that age love to see their names in print and to be a part of a story --- well, basically they crave any kind of recognition. So something along the lines of the "For Kinders" mock-up I made, above, would be used to help fan the flames of attention. The image generators with personalized content are all great attention getters; I can also see them inspiring kids to copy the ideas, for example drawing a sign or a hot dog with their own message. And anything that gets them writing is good.
