Free Internet/Online Tools to Increase Student Achivement

Okay - Right now I'm at the above workshop at the NCCE Conference. It's been put together by Becky Firth and Kathy Dorr. Check out their wiki at http://techteachingtools.pbwiki.com

Anyway - I thought I would make a link here of all the sites they're sharing so I could easily access it later.

Bubbl.us Essentially an online version of Inspiration. It's a brainstorming software tool. I personally don't use Inspiration, but if you have and like organizing word web type maps with your students. Check this out.

Another brainstorming site to check out is My Web Inspiration.

Library of Congress Excellent resource for social studies teachers. Check out the American Memory link.

Thinkfinity Any Subject - Lesson plans, lesson plans, lesson plans! All must go through a vetting process in order to be posted here.

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives - WOW! Math teachers check this out! Need to make a quick graph? Go ahead, create a graph.

ART TEACHERS! NGA's Kids the Art Zone
Or try out Twiddla and have your students create interactive drawings with other art students next door our around the world.

Interactive Simulations for Science teachers - Projectile Motion experiments. Design a skate park!

Discovery Education-Siemens Science

Reading Teachers - With just a microphone and Audacity, have students read a passage and listen to it on the web.

Having students write journals? Consider using Penzu where students can create a private journal online, and invite you to view it.

Create an online photostory using photos, music and audio. Fieldtrip? Make a photo story of it. Day in the life of a student? Make a photostory.

Writing Teachers - Need a prompt? Want to cover the 6 traits? Want anything to do with writing? Go to Writing Fix.

Making Timelines? Create an interactive timeline complete with pictures and video with Our Story, and upload it to the web.

Getting organized? Need to make a list to figure out who's doing what? Do like Barack Obama does and create a collaborative list using Blist. Be sure to check out the section that references how educators can put this to use.

Need to create a survey or poll? Check out Easy-Poll. Want to know what 500 people think about a particular question? Go ahead and Ask 500 people!

Do your students need to get organized? These 3 sites are designed with student use in mind.

• Shosiku will notify your students by cell phone when an assignment is due.
• Notely allows your students to take notes, create calendars, use a calculator.
• Have them keep track of their classes with Track Class

Assigning a huge project? Do that voodoo that you do and have your students pace themselves at Voo2do.

Putting together web resources for student use later? Make sure everything runs smoothly with Evernote.

Looking for that perfect background soundtrack for your multimedia presentation? Need scary intro music for your students sketch of Ichabod Crane? Go to Free Play Music and search for music by genre or emotion.

You'd like to make a video, but you have no software. No pictures. No video. NO PROBLEM! Go to Animoto and create a video online and store it there. Be sure to sign up as an educator to get this for FREE.

Tired of searching through thousands of suitable photos on the Internet? Go to Flickrstorm and search using tags. This will bring up photos directly related to your search.

Can't get that picture cropped? Need to resize a photo, but can't figure out how? Picasa can help.

Want to put together a multimedia presentation using video, word, PowerPoint, still photos, etc? FlowGram can put it all together.

Need to get creative?

• Collaborative art? Try The Broth.
• Funky modern art? Try Viscosity.
• Scrapbooking? Try Scrapblog.
• Simple animations? Try the flux capacitor at Flux Time Animations.
• Want to have a still picture of yourself (or anything with a mouth) talk to your students online? Try Blabberize.
• Make your own magazine covers, movie posters, motivational posters, calendars, maps, trading cards, etc, at Big Huge Labs. Be prepared to spend some time here. Lots to check out.
• Bring different media together to put together a presentation on a concept with Glogster.

Utility Applications to free up space from your hard drive!

• Tired of attaching files? Emailing documents back and forth from home to school? Are there restrictions on file size and you can't get that picture or large PDF you wanted. Store your files at Drop.io. Want others to have access? Give them the url and they can access it.
• Need to shorten the length of your website? Go2.me will shrink those enormous web addresses into a manageable (and often more memorable) one.
• TinyUrl does the same thing.
• You have five websites you need your students to visit. But the hassle of getting the students to type all those addresses in correctly slows everyone down. Wouldn't it be great if there was just 1 link that opened them all? Go to 1link.in and do just that.

Free Conversions!

• Can't get the (*&^%* movie to open? Upload it to Movavi and they will convert it to the stand alone format that you want and then send it to you!
• Zamzar will do something similar.

Videos
Edublogs.tv

Teachnology: tons of resources for teachers.

Want to see everything that has anything to do with Web 2.0 tools? Try Go2Web. A collection of hundreds of web applications. Not all are education related, but plenty are. AllMyFaves is similar.
Web 2.0 tools related directly to Education with a brief description of each tool: Web2.0 in Education

Make a word poster known as a Wordle at Wordle.net.

Wow! We are all overwhelmed, but excited by the possibilities. Let's check it out and discuss what we have found!