Ice breakers with technology

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21st Century Icebreakers: 11 Ways To Get To Know Your Students with Technology 

Here is an excellent article I came across involving icebreakers and the utilization of technology. As summer winds down, planning for the start up of next year ramps up.  Keeping this in my mind, I'm always open to finding fresh and easy-to-implement ideas for my teachers.  From the author:

1. Have students create a Pinterest board with 10 pins that summarizes them.
2. Ask students to create a 30 second podcast that introduces themselves. Then allow students to present them or play them on separate devices as an audio gallery.
3. Create a classroom blog and ask each student to write a blog post introducing themselves to the rest of the classroom.
4. Have students create a quick comic strip to describe themselves or to recreate a recent funny moment in their lives.
5. Use PollEverywhere to ask students interesting questions and get to know them as a class, like their favorite subjects, bands or TV shows.
6. Use GoogleForms or SurveyMonkey to survey students about their interests, academic inclinations, and background info – a 21st century alternative to the “Getting to Know You” info sheet!
7. Have students create word clouds to describe themselves and share with the rest of the class.
8. Have students go on a QR code scavenger hunt in teams to get to know each other and learn about your classroom rules in a fun, engaging way.
9. Ask students to create their own Voki avatars that introduce themselves to the class. Encourage them to be creative with the backgrounds, characters and details of the avatar to reflect their own personalities and preferences.
10. Have students create graffiti online that speaks to their interests and personalities and share with the class.
11. Have students create mashup videos of themselves with Weavly to introduce their interests to the class.

My favorites that I would add to this extensive list of ideas would be:

1. Create a Glogster photo blog of the things they enjoy (account needed)
2. Skitch - annotation and markup tool
3. Animoto - great little videos for free/cheap!
4. Prezi - great direct substitute for PowerPoint, it's like PP but in 2013!
5. Blabberize - seriously, make photos talk.  I mean, awesomeness?