Brian Weir's Blog (22)

New Smartboard tip and trick worth giving a shot this coming school year in your classroom. The Extreme Collaboration add-on has the potential of revolutionizing the way we use the Smartboard with our students and in classes that have mobile devices. Take a look at this tutorial to get an…

For educators who teach statistics or anything that deals with geography check out TargetMaps. This is a great web 2.0 tool that will allow you and your students tocreate visually appealing presentations about data that they have researched.

fur.ly is a great place/idea for educators who are struggling with students finding the right websites or who are having their students copy long URLs off of the board.  This tool will let you have one URL that will open multiple websites at one time.

Supers simple method of creating bibliographies and works cited citations.  Create MLA and APA style citations.

Spaaze is a website that allows for thesimple creation of a virtual cork board.  It is extremely dynamic and easy to use.  You can add video, images, files, titles, and notes all in one spot so your students can have easy access to unit material.  The canvass size of Spaaze is huge so you can add quite a few units to one canvass.  

This educational web 2.0 tutorial demonstrates a great online method of taking collected data with your classroom and inputing the information into a chart in just a couple of easy steps.  Create cutomized data charts simply.

Zamzar is an awesome tool for educators who are going the extra mile trying to use technology in the classroom. Too many times educators receive files from other schools or colleagues that just don't work on their computer because of different operating systems and software platforms. With Zamzar you can take files of many different file types and have them be converted to another file type. There isn't any software that needs to be downloaded; just internet access. Click here the link to…

Smartboard:  Tips and tricks using the Magic Pen tool.  You might not know, but the Notebook's magic pen tool does three awesome things that can enhance any lesson using the Smartboard.

Hohli charts is a simple method of creating dynamic data sets that then display as charts and graphs.  This web 2.0 tool would be great and simple for students to use in a k-12 educational setting.

This is a Smartboard Notebook tutorial on how to create an interactive study game board in which students can move game pieces along the board if they answer the questions correctly. This gameboard use tiles that on one side has the answer and on the other side has the question.

Edistorm is an excellent site for creating and using educational virtual sticky notes. Students can collaborate with the teacher on project ideas.  They can vote on those ideas and make comments to eacher other.  Use Edistorm as a means of brainstorming ideas.

Create interactive and informative educational timelinesin an extremely easy manner.  Students will love being given the option of creating a timeline.  Use Timerime for history, art, science, social studies or just about any subject in which they are required to understand the time frame at which events occurred.

Socrative is an awesome tool used in Education to gain a better understanding of what our students have learned or are learning during a lesson by getting.  In this post about socrative we see how it can be used assess writing in the classroom.

My favorite URL shorteners.  These are used to take those long annoying URLs and shrink them down to a managable size.  This tutorial will demonstrate the difference between Google URL shortener, CiteBite, and TinyURl.  These all have their unique uses for the educator.  Click the link to learn more.

PBS Learning Resources is an excellent site for teachers and students to find educational films as well as other media types such as sound, images, and lesson plans.  This site has a couple thousand videos for you to see.  These videos are all free.  Click the link to learn more.

Chartle is an awesome site that allows students and teachers the ability to create dynamic and graphic charts based upon data collected in the classroom.  This site is extremely easy to use and can be easily used across most grade levels.  Click the link to view a short tutorial and example of what Chartle is.

Brainflips is an excellent place to create multimedia flashcards that your students can use while studying your vocabulary words.  Click the link to see how it is used.

This Google Chrome extension, Checker Plus for Gmail, allows you to receive Gmail notifications such as sound and a popup dialogue box that allows you to read, reply to, and archive messages without having to go back into your inbox to view the message first.  You can change the sounds and the extension is very user friendly.  Click the Gmail Notifications link to read a…

Aviary is a powerful suite of graphics and audio tools that can be used for educational purposes and assignments.  It is a very dynamic piece of software that is hosted in the cloud and is an excellent web 2.0 tool.  Click here to read more about using Aviary in the Classroom.

Cacoo is a concept mapping/mind mapping/brainstorming site.  It is free and allows for many methods of concept mapping.  Great site to use with your classes and students.  Please click the link to see a tutorial on using Cacoo.