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There's no argument about it - Adobe Photoshop remains, hands down, the best photo-editing software on the market. But unless you've undergone formal training, Photoshop proves a difficult program to master, and is expensive to use.

For the home user, Photoshop isn't necessary for basic and semi-advanced tasks, such as resizing, cropping, and exposure correction. There are plenty of other photo-editing programs out there, with which you can do almost anything you could do in Photoshop - and sometimes more. The best part? Many of them are free. Below are some of our favorites, whether you're in the market for a desktop or mobile solution.

Desktop options

Often heralded as the best free alternative to Photoshop, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is an open-source application that relies on a community of volunteer developers who maintain and improve the product. Available for Mac and PC, you get a lot of professional-level editing and retouching tools - perfect for designers who can't or won't shell out hundreds of dollars to Adobe.

Once you launch the program, you'll find a dedicated window that displays the image, and separate windows to organize the toolbox and layers. When using a large display, or two displays, you have a nice, big workspace to play with your images. Icons in the toolbox represent actions such as the crop, lasso, paint and brush tools, and you can apply various effects to your photos. It may seem like Photoshop, but GIMP has its own look and feel.
Download it now for:
Windows MacOS Linux

Apart from basic image editing, PhotoScape also lets you create slideshows and animated GIFs, capture screenshots, and combine and split images. You can customize your toolbar, so you can organize the features you use most, and then revert to the default toolbar when you want to dig deeper into the software's offerings.

PhotoScape software is free to download. But it's part of the Open Candy network, and runs ads for other "recommended" software. This is isolated to PhotoScape, and won't infiltrate the rest of your computer with adware, but it's worth noting.
Download it now for:
Windows MacOS

The Nik Collection is a full image-editing suite offered by Google, and it's now totally free. This is one of the most powerful and complete online photo tools at the moment, and Google providing it all for free was pretty big news. The Collection includes seven total plugins, each with a different focus. Analog Efex Pro focuses on effects that produce vintage looks or make digital photos appear more natural, while Color Efex Pro provides a ton of filters. Silver Efex Pro, on the other hand, is tailored for black-and-white images, while Viveza allows you to alter specific colors in the photo without using filters. Sharpener Pro allows you to improve clarity and Dfine gives you noise reduction capabilities, and so on.

This allows you to either download whatever tool you need at the time, or download them all and use them interchangeably. The tools may take a little time to learn, but by separating out the different functions, the software makes it easier for people to pick and choose what they need in any given moment.

The only downside here is that the Nik Collection is basically one-and-done. It doesn't look like Google will be offering patches or updates to these tools, so they may not have much longevity. Get them while they still work!
Download it now for:
Windows MacOS

This is a case where the apprentice becomes the master. Paint.NET was created as an college undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and it continues to be maintained by alumni of the program. It was originally developed as a free replacement for Microsoft Paint, which comes as part of Windows. Paint.NET has surpassed Microsoft Paint in functionality and has some advanced features.

Paint.NET features an intuitive user interface that supports layers, an "unlimited undo" to back out of any mistake no matter how disastrous, various special effects, and other tools. Where Microsoft Paint was able to do little more than resize images, Paint.NET is able to handle more advanced photo editing that you'd expect from Photoshop and other paid programs.
Download it now for: Windows

HitFilm Express is a free video editing service that specializes in digital effects - which makes it ideal for creating more imaginative photo effects as well. With both 2D and 3D compositing, more than 180 visual effects to choose from, and a community with plenty of ideas, you can make nearly image that you can dream of. From putting a headshot into an Ironman-like HUD, to turning your best friend into a Jedi, this is the app to try if you're aiming for the stars.
Download it now for:
Windows MacOS

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Fixing a photo is quick and easy with these photo-editing apps

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There's no argument about it - Adobe Photoshop remains, hands down, the best photo-editing software on the market. But unless you've undergone formal training, Photoshop proves a difficult program to master, and is expensive to use. For the home user, Photoshop isn't necessary for basic and semi-advanced tasks, such as resizing, cropping, and exposure correction.

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Nothing is more frustrating to a teacher than lack of attention from students. You have spent several weeks or even months working on some project that you thought would be a breakthrough, but nothing happens. Situations like this are very common in modern learning because a lack of interest to engage in teamwork are widespread.

Technology has been effective in eliminating this issue because it has redesigned the idea of collaboration and provided interactive learning opportunities. In this article, I will introduce you to online collaboration tools that can help you to solve the issue of lack of interest for good.

What are online collaboration tools?

Before we begin, let me explain what I mean by those. When I talk about online collaboration tools, I refer to web-based tools that enable teachers and students to perform a wide range of tasks, such as interactive discussions, online collaboration activities, sharing and accessing electronic learning resources and many others.

Here is the collection of great tools that I have gathered for you. Enjoy!

The first tool on my list is a great one for sharing digital content and improving the engagement of the students. It has two versions (for school and for business) and provides a controlled learning environment that helps the teacher to enhance the writing process.

Here are some of the functions you can perform with Padlet:

Teachers can create special brainstorm sessions where they invite students to discuss some topics, all with excellent opportunities provided by Padlet, such as sharing Internet findings, ideas, and visual aids.

Another great lesson idea is book review sessions. You can create a session dedicated to a book and invite the students to share their reviews and comment on the ideas of others.

Students can use Padlet as a portfolio for showcasing their best school projects on their profile.

Use it for giving feedback to provide assessment of students' work

You can include links to various multimedia resources.

This is a simple and effective tool that gained success in the education industry because it lets a group of people work on one document at the same time. This technology opens new possibilities for teachers in terms of increasing the interest of students and improving collaboration because it introduces engaging activities. For example, the teacher can assign several sections of the document to individual students and compare their performance.

The features of TitanPad include:

True collaboration in real time

Various colors for individual editors

Infinite undo function

This is a toolbox for teachers that takes classroom management to another level. With TodaysMeet, this task becomes so much easier because of a wide variety of available functions. They include:

Discussion forums

Empowerment of students by letting them have some teaching responsibilities

Possibility to include unlimited number of students to the class

Meetings

Presentations

Online seminars

Movies and silent activities

Review of works by classmates

It is one of the most comprehensive tools on this list that provides excellent opportunities to work in groups. Indeed, its effectiveness has already been tested by more than 1.5 million people around the world. A teacher can create and manage an unlimited number of discussion forums, meetings, and other groups in one room. This is a must-have if you want to unleash the power of online collaboration.

Here are some of the WIggio 's features:

Virtual meetings and conference calls

To-do lists and task assignment

Email, text, and voice messages

Calendar customization

Document sharing

Socrative is an innovative platform for teachers and students which is essentially an application for effective classroom management. Virtualizing student content has never been easier. The developers of this great app have put a special emphasis on having fun and on interactive activities, which are perfect for increasing the engagement of students.

The features of Socrative are below.

Activities that allow you to engage students

Quizzes featuring the most interesting topics from the lesson

Reporting to enhance the students' understanding of the class on individual levels

Chat and discussion rooms to promote online collaboration

"Space Race" feature that encourages friendly competition among students with intergalactic quiz bowl

Feedback to improve the experience of the students throughout the course

One of the most popular online collaboration tools for teachers is what's called a "web-based meeting playground." It allows the class to perform Internet research collaboratively and share their findings with each other and the teacher.

Twiddla is a great tool for those teachers who want to prepare K-12 students for writing college papers because it involves a lot of writing assignments. Here are the tool's features:

Online meetings

Online discussions

Sharing of images, email, and documents

Voice chat

Screen capture

Unlimited storage

Total moderator control

This is a topic library where teachers can find, create, share, and download inquiry-based discussions on any educational topic. As the result, the teacher receives a unique URL which can be sent to the students to begin the lesson.

With Collaborize Classroom the teachers are free to:

Select hundreds of pre-written lessons

Create their own lessons

Start discussion with students

Receive and give feedback

Here's another popular tool that received a lot of great reviews from teachers (you can read them on the website). It is an online collaboration platform that is perfect for students because it provides many incentives for teamwork as well as great technology to engage in creative working. It also allows you to add more classes to one discussion and save the chat transcript.

The main features of Scribblar are:

Online chat

Upload images and documents

Activities for individual students

Discussions

Separate projects

Over to you!

Using proper online collaboration tools is an important condition for increasing the interest of your students for teamwork. While all tools listed in this article are suitable for this task, have a look at each of them to find out which one will work the best for your class. As a result, you will be able to enjoy all the educational benefits and reach more students than ever before. Enjoy the world of online education and have fun!

Diana Clark is an online tutor and experienced high school educator with 5 years of successful working experience. She covers different topics concerning online education and educational technology and provides help for international students at Admission Service. Feel free to contact her at Twitter.

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Using Online Collaboration Tools to Engage Students in Teamwork

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Nothing is more frustrating to a teacher than lack of attention from students. You have spent several weeks or even months working on some project that you thought would be a breakthrough, but nothing happens. Situations like this are very common in modern learning because a lack of interest to engage in teamwork are widespread.

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Online collaboration is a way for students to both feel comfortable in an environment larger than their classroom and also a way to teach them the aspects of becoming a global citizen. If you find a...

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These Free Applications can Enable a Tremendous Variety of Collaborative Teaching and Learning Interactions and Activities

The 2014 Gates Foundation report, Teachers Know Best: What Educators Want from Digital Instructional Tools, indicates that teachers want tools supporting student collaboration and providing interactive experiences. This doesn't come as a big surprise since these types of tools are fun and engaging. They also support 21 st century skills like collaboration, communication, and creativity.

You know what else teachers like? Good quality tools that are free! And why not? Funds are limited and free is totally affordable!

This week on EmergingEdTech, we've put together a listing of 20 top notch free tools that are being used in schools and classrooms to collaborate and interact on assignments, projects, and other active learning efforts. Many of these applications are totally free, while others have levels of functionality starting at free and then adding additional capabilities through paid options.

These tools deliver a wide array of functionality, from communication to collaborative document editing, whiteboards, and gaming, to full Learning Management System capabilities. There's something here for everyone! Dig in and enjoy!

1. Twiddla ( www.twiddla.com)

Twiddle provides a really easy to use collaborative online whiteboard. This no-setup web based meeting playground is quick and easy - inviting others to collaborate by just hitting the green GO button to start a session and then use the Invite option. This app provides a great set of tools. You can easily add an image, web page, or document as a background to markup. There is a color palette tool, pen width tool, a shapes tool, and text can be inserted. There's even a chat option built in.

2. Google Drive ( drive.google.com)

Most of you are probably already familiar with Google Drive, which lets you share and collaboratively edit Google Docs with anyone else who has a Google account, for free. Sweet. Being able to collaboratively edit documents and worksheets opens up a world of possibilities for interactive classroom activities and projects.

This free tool* allows users to easily create bubble maps, that can be exported in various formats, saved (by exporting and re-importing them in an appropriate format), and yes, edited collaboratively. The use of bubble maps as a teaching tool has been a good practice for decades, but bringing it to a new level by enabling collaborative editing through an online tool is totally 21 st century!
*The Basic plan lets you create, share, and collaboratively edit 3 Bubble Maps.

This multi-platform, device agnostic, kid-safe platform is perfect for active learning share content, have a dialogue (in or out of the classroom), and even get parents involved! A rich set of features including collaboration-enabling functions like Learning Communities and Discussions have encouraged over 34 million teachers and students to adopt Edmodo, making it one of the most popular free education tools on the Web. Check out 10 Reasons Why Edmodo is an Excellent (and Hugely Popular) Digital Learning Platform to learn more.

Yammer is a private social network. Work in groups, share files, co-edit content and more with their free Basic plan. Explore 5 Ways Yammer is Improving Communication, Connections, and Learning in our Schools to learn more.

This popular, widely known platform provides for group meetings tools that can be particularly effective for remote participants to come together. For example, if you're thinking about collaborating with a remote classroom, Skype can be huge asset in doing so. Skype is also great from bringing students who might be stuck at home due to illness or other situations into the classroom to join the class for a collaborative dialogue or other activity.

Vyew is a collaborative interactive white board. It has come a long way since we first covered it on EmergingEdTech years ago. Not only can you create a collaborative whiteboard on line, you can upload images and document and write over them, have a discussion around them, and more. Check out theW hat is Vyew video on their home page to learn more. The free version only allows for a small set of users (10 real time participants), but that can work well if you set up a few separate groups. Larger groups of participants aren't too expensive, starting at $10/mo.

8. Wikispaces ( wikispaces.com)

Wikis provide an easy place to create a members-only web site where users can have discussions, share documents and so on. Wikispaces was built for education. They even have a special classroom tool that is focused on Collaborative Writing: Wikispaces Classroom.

9. Facebook ( facebook.com)

Yeah, that's right - Facebook. If you put up a group page specifically for your class, you get a place of you own to collaborate. Of course, this is only for kids over 13. There are a lot of teachers using Facebook. Check out Facebook Summit 2011, an Excellent Academic Use of the Popular Internet App to learn about one teacher's fun project using Facebook.

10. Google Hangouts ( www.google.com/hangouts)

Google Hangouts in becoming an increasingly popular alternative to Skype for bringing remote groups of people to together to communicate and collaborate. A couple advantages Google Hangouts has is the potential to have a Hangout recorded, and the fact that you are less likely to have the occasional availability issue that the free version of Skype can have. Combine Google Hangouts and Google Drive (or many of the other tools in this list) and you can collaboratively edit content while you're hanging out!

Create flowcharts and diagrams online with real time collaboration. This a very useful tool in a wide variety of academic disciplines, and being able to collaboratively edit them makes Cacoo a powerful application. Here is a link to learn about and access their free Academic plan: https://cacoo.com/lang/en/academic.

12. Titanpad ( titanpad.com)

What about collaboration on the iPad? Well, a number of the tools in this listing will work fine on many platforms, but Titanpad is geared specifically towards the iPad. TitanPad lets people work on one document simultaneously, and you can get a space for your team on your own private subdomain for free.

13. HaikuLearning ( www.haikulearning.com)

Haiku is a popular education site, and it's free for teachers. The solo plan includes 5 classes with up to 2GB of storage (with the ability to upgrade for a fee if you need more). This cloud-based app provides content sharing, assignments, feedback, grading, and more. Somewhat along the lines of Edmodo, Haiku is a basic Learning Management System that provides rich tools for the classroom.

Just search out a unique hashtag and you're in business. Using a hashtag and a tool like Tweetdeck (also free), where you can dedicate a column to a specific search phrase (your hashtag in this case) and bam!, you've got a live stream of all content posted with that hashtag. Collect and share research or news, create a class poem or story (one student posts to the hashtag at a time, taking turns to build out the content), search out subject matter experts and follow them, and so on. Here are 100 Ways to Teach With Twitter.

15. Minecraft ( minecraftedu.com)

Multiplayer games can be a great way to provide an interactive, collaborative experience in the classroom. With a little know-how, Minecraft players can interact. Read this article to learn more about teaching using Minecraft: Gamifying the Classroom with Minecraft - the Possibilities are Powerful and Endless!

16. Economics-games ( economics-games.com)

Here we have a purpose-built multiplayer game for the classroom. Economics-games.com is a free educational games site for teaching microeconomics, industrial organization and game theory. Choose the game you want to run, enter the number of players and that's it: You just have to communicate their logins to your students and have them connect to the site with their phones, tablets or laptops. You can then observe and debrief the game through your interface.

17. World of Warcraft ( wowinschool.pbworks.com)

Check this site out to learn all about using World of Warcraft and other MMPORGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) in the classroom. Through this site, all project materials, including a fully-developed language arts course, aligned to middle grades standards, are now available under a creative commons license.

18. Bounceapp ( www.bounceapp.com)

Review, notate, share, and discuss any web page with Bounceapp. Bounceapp makes it really easy to grab a web page screen shot and make notes on it. This can then be sent to others. User can share ideas on the same site by each grabbing, notating, and then sharing their work. For a more collaborative experience, Bounce will work with Notableapp.com to let a workgroup collaborate (Notableapp is not free, but there is a free 30 day trial).

Wiggio is a free workgroup application that provides meetings, to-do lists, messaging, calendars, polls, and file sharing. This is a fully blown collaboration environment, and it is free (there is a premium service, but this is really only for organizations looking for a branded workspace and priority support - the primary functionality of Wiggio is totally free).

20. SocialFolders.me ( socialfolders.me)

This is a bit of a stretch as a collaborative tool, but it's a cool app and it could provide for a unique twist on the idea of collaboration. If you are using any of the apps supported by SocialFolders, say, Facebook and Instagram, for group work in a course, Social Folders can provide the ability to allow members of the workgroup to synch selected shared content, making it a sort of collection or gathering place for group content. Besides that, it's a cool app that anyone who uses more than one social media application may find pretty darn useful (coordinate your content across multiple social media apps and back it up at the same time)!

This rich set of free tools can provide an endless array of collaborative, interactive class work for years to come. Happy collaborating everyone!

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20 Fun Free Tools for Interactive Classroom Collaboration - Emerging Education Technologies

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These Free Applications can Enable a Tremendous Variety of Collaborative Teaching and Learning Interactions and Activities The 2014 Gates Foundation report, Teachers Know Best: What Educators Want from Digital Instructional Tools, indicates that teachers want tools supporting student collaboration and providing interactive experiences. This doesn't come as a big surprise since these types of tools [...]

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By Rachelle Dene Poth
Today's technology offers so many options for educators and students that deciding on where to begin can be overwhelming. To get started, think about one new approach that could be the catalyst for positive change in your classroom. In looking at your learning environment, what could benefit your students the most? One area that I immediately thought I could improve upon was classroom collaboration.

How do you find tools to help meet these needs? Resources are everywhere: books, blogs, social media like Twitter chats, Voxer groups, your PLN, or even conferences, EdCamps and similar professional development opportunities. But even with all of these resources available, it still comes down to taking a risk and trying something new.

Here are some helpful and versatile technology tools to easily and quickly integrate into your classroom and get your students in a classroom collaboration mindset.
Discussion Tools: Get Them Talking
Teachers need to hear from students, and we know that asking questions or calling on students to discuss a topic can often make them nervous. When students, or anyone, develop that feeling of "being on the spot", it can become more difficult to encourage students to share what they are thinking, what they are feeling and what their true opinions are. This is where digital tools can provide security and opportunities for students to express themselves. Technology has a true purpose. Students still need to develop the ability-and confidence-to speak in class, but these tools can help by providing a comfortable way for students to develop their voice and express themselves.

Depending on the type of question or discussion format you want your classroom collaboration to focus on, there are many tools available that can help.

1. SurveyMonkey is a good way to ask a variety of questions, find out what students are thinking, use it for a quick formative assessment, and many other possibilities. I have used it to find out how students prepared for tests, what areas they need help with, and even for voting for club officers and planning trips. You have the results quickly and can provide feedback instantly, to plan your next steps in class. It can be a different way to find out about your students and their needs.

2. TodaysMeet is a backchannel tool that can be used in or out of class, as a way for students to contribute to a discussion or ask questions. It can also be used to provide "office hours" online, for students to ask questions beyond the school day. There are many possible uses for this tool, and setting it up is easy.

3. GoSoapBox is a response tool that can be used to ask a variety of questions without students having to create accounts. Students simply need an "event code" provided by the teacher to access the activities available. GoSoapBox can be used for polls, discussion questions, quizzes and more, and provides a fast way to assess students or to simply learn more about them and their thoughts.

4. Recap is a video response tool, where students can respond to a prompt and all responses are compiled into a "daily reel" for teachers to view and provide feedback. Students can respond from anywhere and feel comfortable in sharing their thoughts using this tool.

These are just four of the many options-sometimes it just takes a bit of research. Asking the students for new ways to use the tools you have already been using in class can also be helpful.
Communication Through Collaboration
There are many options which promote classroom collaboration and enhance writing skills and student voice.

5) Blogging: Through blogging, teachers can provide support for students and help them to gain confidence in writing and speaking. We have used Kidblog to complete many writing tasks and creative writing assignments.

6) Wikispaces: A Wiki has worked really well in our classes for having students collaborate on a topic, create a discussion page, and set it up to inform on a topic, to list just a few examples. We created a wiki on Spanish art and also created our own travel agency.

7) Padlet: Padlet is a "virtual wall" which promotes collaboration, communication, creativity and more because of its versatility. Students can write a response to a discussion question, add resources for a collaborative class project, work in small groups, use it for brainstorming or connect with other students and classrooms throughout the world.

Using digital tools in this way is great because the discussions don't have to end when class does. These tools provide ways to get students talking and share their ideas, so that classroom collaboration can even be taken home.
Creating presentations and telling a story
A few options for having students present information in a visual way with options for multimedia include the following:

8) Buncee is a web based tool that can be used for creating presentations, interactive lessons and more, with many options for including different characters, fonts, animations, video and more.

9) Piktochart is a tool for creating infographics, social media flyers, engaging presentations and more. Students have created menus, self-descriptions, movie and tv advertisements, recipe presentations and much more.

10) Visme is a "drag and drop" tool that is easy to use for creating infographics, reports, different presentations and more. It has a library full of images, charts and more, making it easy for users to create exactly what they need.
What are the benefits of these tools?
Each of these tools promote more personalized and meaningful learning for students, along with a healthy dose of classroom collaboration. These tools can be used to enhance, amplify and facilitate deeper and more authentic learning. Using technology just for the sake of using it doesn't make sense. But using it to help students find their voice, learn what they want to do, what they can do and what they need help with, does make sense.

For more, see:
Rachelle Dene Poth is a Foreign Language and STEAM Teacher at Riverview Junior Senior High in Oakmont, PA. Follow her on Twitter at @rdene915. Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update

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10 EdTech Tools for Encouraging Classroom Collaboration

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By Rachelle Dene Poth - Teaching students collaboration skills is more important than ever. Click here for some EdTech tools to help get you started.

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ELA.W.9-10.6

Common core State Standards

ELA: English Language Arts

W: Writing Standards 6-12

9-10: 9th & 10th Grades

6:
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update
individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology'\x80\x99s
capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and
dynamically.

Download Common Core State Standards (PDF 1.2 MB)

|

ELA.W.11-12.6

Common core State Standards

ELA: English Language Arts

W: Writing Standards 6-12

11-12: 11th & 12th Grades

6:
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update
individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback,
including new arguments or information.

Download Common Core State Standards (PDF 1.2 MB)

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. What skills do students gain by using Google Docs?

2. How does Ms. Wessling foster the development of these skills?

3. Imagine using Google Docs in your classroom. What issues might arise?

4. How could you address those issues?

School Details

Johnston Senior High School
6501 Northwest 62nd Avenue
Johnston IA 50131

Data Provided By:

Teachers

English Language Arts / 10 11 12 / Teacher

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High School ELA teacher Sarah Brown Wessling has her students use Google Docs when writing collaboratively. Sarah talks about how she teaches students to navigate the collaborative writing process and learn the etiquette of Google Docs. When students share their Google Docs with Sarah, she is able to assess their progress and leave comments for her students.

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These links provide access to Web sites with resources educators can use in multimedia presentations such as those created with Microsoft PowerPoint, Corel Presentations and Apple Keynote. Please follow the guidelines for copyright and usage that are provided at each Web site. Always use caution when downloading or saving files from the Internet. A note about Copyright.

Disclaimer: The Utah Education Network does not vouch for content appropriateness or curriculum relevance of the following Web sites.

Pictures, ClipArt, And Images

Videos, Movies & Streaming Resources

Multiple Media Types

Sounds, Audio & Music

PowerPoint & Multimedia Slideshow Resources

Examples & Completed Shows

Search Engines for Resources

Related Materials:

Copyright:
The doctrine of fair use specifically mentions "teaching" as one of the purposes for which the reproduction of a work may be considered fair. This does not give you unlimited privileges to reproduce a copyrighted work for teaching, the law specifies four factors to be considered in determining whether a particular use is fair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. The nature of the copyrighted work;

3. Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Also see: Copyright Resources

Roll your mouse over this graphic to read additional information or warnings about a resource.

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Multimedia Resources for Educators and Students

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These links provide access to Web sites with resources educators can use in multimedia presentations such as those created with Microsoft PowerPoint, Corel Presentations and Apple Keynote. Please follow the guidelines for copyright and usage that are provided at each Web site. Always use caution when downloading or saving files from the Internet.

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As educators, the use of Web 2.0 tools is transforming our work, and more specifically the way we support students in the classroom. As schools bring more technology into their classrooms, teachers will in turn strive to put more technology in their students' hands. That is, if they are prepared to do so.

Web 2.0 Tools are online software programs that allow users to do a number of different things. They can be used to teach curriculum content, store data, create/edit video, edit photos, collaborate and so much more. These programs are often free and are used by teachers, students, and sometimes parents, both in and out of the classroom, on a pretty regular basis.

The question then becomes, are educators prepared to use these tools? How can educators best plan to incorporate Web 2.0 Tools into their classroom? How can they best plan to ensure effective tech integration? How can they be sure that the tool remains a support piece to their instructional practice, rather than a replacement?

These are important questions that we need to be able to answer for our own work, but more importantly so that we can continuously strive to be a 21st century educator for our very important clients: our students. The use of Web 2.0 Tools to support instruction is vital. How we use these tools is going to make a critical difference in how we measure our students success and how they are supported to meet 21st century skill sets.

If you are new to this concept, don't feel bad. Embracing the use of tech integration in our daily work beyond word processing and power point presentations is still new to many educators. However, it's important that we accept the fact that Web 2.0 tools are here to stay. The sooner we learn to harness their wonderful power, and how they can bring learning alive in the classroom, the better.

As we talk about Web 2.0 tools, one point I want to stress is that we need to remember that it's not about the specific tools themselves that we use with students, but why, and when the tool is needed. Ideally there also needs to be a culture within the school that values technology use in the classroom. As a former school principal, I can guarantee you that the leadership in the school must also be modeling the use of technology, providing professional development in this area, and seek to build a school community that enables and values the effective use of technology for teaching and learning.

In the spirit of technology for teaching, I want to offer you 8 great Web 2.0 educational tools that I encourage you to seek out, practice with, and learn to incorporate into your work in the classroom. Will it take time to learn to use these tools? Yes. Are the benefits worth the time? Absolutely!
8 Great Web 2.0 tools to support you in the classroom:
Glogster is a great creativity site whose tag line is "poster yourself". A 'glog' is basically an online poster web page. Students can combine text, pictures, graphics, video, and audio to create an interactive online poster. They can click and drag items out of Glogster's resources, choose their own backgrounds, pictures, text boxes, videos, web links, and more! Glogster has a very simple-to-use interface. The final glog can be hosted by Glogster or you can embed it into a wiki, blog, or class web site. ( click here to watch a 2 minute EdTech Talk about Glogster.)

This site was designed specifically for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each of their students with their own, unique blog. Kidblog's simple, powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs.

Linoit is a great service that provides its registered users with virtual "stickies" that can be placed on a canvas or bulletin board area. Both lino users and non-registered guests can post stickies on the canvas. The great thing about linoit is that you can use it at three levels: public, limited access and private.( Click here for a sample of one of my recent canvases.)
LiveBinders
Livebinders were created so that anyone, but especially educators, could do with digital information what we do with the papers on our desk - organize it into nice containers - like 3-ring binders on a shelf. With these online-binders, you can also upload your documents and easily combine them with your links in a neat and organized way. (Here's one of my livebinders.)

This web tool is an easy solution for teachers to open up their classroom and their students to a world way beyond their campus. With Skype, students can learn from other students, connect with other cultures, and expand their knowledge in amazing ways by communicating through their computer with a webcam.

This is a fun and easy-to-use tool for creating short, visual stories. Students can select artwork, drag and organize photos, and add their own text. These creations can then be published on the web with adjustable privacy settings. There is also the option to allow comments, which is perfect for teachers to encourage student collaboration. (Here's one of my Storybirds.)

VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slideshow that allows students to comment on images, documents, and video through text, video, and audio files. Teachers can set up groups and classes as well as moderate comments, embed to blogs, and export to audio files. It is an easy way to differentiate instruction while providing engaging choices to "show" learning, engage in conversation, and think openly and critically about content. ( Click here to see "What's a voice thread anyway?")

Teachers and students can generate word clouds that show prominent words in any body of text. Just enter text you have gathered from students, or even a URL, to see a summary of what the text is about. Wordle also allows you to change the appearance of your word cloud by the shape, font, color, and organization. ( Click here to see a short video on how to use Wordle in the classroom.)
Wetoku
Wetoku is a web service or Web 2.0 tool out of Korea that provides a simple platform for interviewing someone via the Internet. Collaborating globally is a must for our students and connecting can be a challenge. Wetoku makes doing an interview as easy as filling out some basic information, creating an interview session and then sending the creative interview session's URL to the interviewee. Once the recording is done, the interviewer can embed the copy of the URL into a blog or website. You will need a web-cam to use this tool. ( for a video on how to use wetoku.)

Okay, what do you think? Still not sure where all these Web 2.0 tools fit into your school or district standards? Well for those who are still skeptical, ISTE has developed a great set of educational technology standards for teachers. These standards, called ISTE NETS, seek to move beyond the tool and address the bigger picture of technology in the classroom and in the professional practice. You can take a look at them here.

I hope you've enjoyed taking a look at these 8 amazing tools!

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As educators, the use of Web 2.0 tools is transforming our work, and more specifically the way we support students in the classroom. As schools bring more technology into their classrooms, teachers will in turn strive to put more technology in their students' hands. That is, if they are prepared to do so.

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Presentations & Multimedia - EdTechTeacher

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Video in the Classroom In addition to being fun and motivating, video projects teach students to plan, organize, write, communicate, collaborate, and analyze. A successful video project has undergone a process of researching, scripting, organizing, filming, editing, and publishing. Students also have ... Read more

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TeachersFirst Edge - Tools for Multimedia

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TeachersFirst Edge shares teacher reviews of today's web tools and how to use them safely and within school policies as tools for teaching and learning. Web 2.0 tools can be powerful learning tools for today's techno-savvy students and their more adventurous teachers.

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Online Teaching Tools and Resources | Yale Center for Language Study

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This page contains a list of free tools and resources for language teachers to use in their classrooms:

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21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning

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Welcome to the third in a series of PBL Mania Posts. For the next few weeks I am celebrating Project Based Learning. In this post I will introduce you to some multimedia mega-sites found on the web that can be used in the PBL classroom. Before reading please take a moment to subscribe to this 21centuryedtech Blog by email or RSS and also give me a follow on Twitter at mjgormans. You will not want to miss this series or future posts involving STEM, Flipping the Classroom, Technology Integration, Common Core, and 21st Century Skills, So Sign Up Now! As always... thanks and have a great week. - Mike Gorman (21centuryedtech)
Quick Notes - You may be interested in learning more about PBL World in Napa, CA presented by BIE this June. It will be exciting and registration is now open. Reed Timmer from the Discovery Channel will be hosting a free STEM Webinar entitled Behind Stormchasing on Monday, February 13 at the Siemens STEM Academy. Learn more, along with discovering 11 great weather education sites, in this STEM blog post. Join us in Indiana as we celebrate digital online learning the whole month. Feel free to visit the 29 Day Web 2.0 Challenge (A new Web 2.o Tool every day) and the start of Indiana's Digital Learning Stories on YouTube. There are also four free Flipped Classroom Webinars this week hosted by my friend, Libby Lawrie at My Big Campus. I will even join in to give my two cents... or better yet... free advice. They are: Flipped Classrooms Straight Answers on 2/13 (6:30 PM EST) and 2/14 (3:30 PM EST) along with Easy Steps For First Time Flippers on 2/15 (6:30 PM EST) and 2/16 (3:30 PM EST). Now on to the 30 multimedia resources.
30 Online Multimedia Resources for PBL and Flipped Classrooms: Lessons and Formative Assessments
In this PBL Mania Post I explore Online Multimedia Resources. These fantastic mega-sites can provide lessons and formative assessment activities for PBL. The power of project based learning integrated with this type of online technology allows teachers to provide multimedia that can be used individually, in groups, or even at home. The multimedia may be a movie, sound clip, picture, simulation, reading, or game. In PBL, the multimedia may be an entry event, a tutorial, a basis for further discussion and inquiry, or a tool that measures student understanding. It could possibly even be an assignment or activity for students to investigate at home. Best of all, students can even be in control of the speed of delivery and even control their own remediation by repeating sessions. Multimedia can be used to flip the classroom, allowing students to participate and formulate their own inquiry through teacher facilitated posts in content delivery systems such as Edmodo or My Big Campus. Let's take a look at some of these large mega resource sites.

WGBH Teacher Domain - Teachers' Domain is a free digital media service for educational use from public broadcasting and its partners. You'll find thousands of media resources, support materials, and tools for classroom lessons, individualized learning programs, and teacher professional learning communities.

PBS Teachers - Launched within the last year, PBS Teachers is an awesome place for all kinds of educational multimedia. PBS Teachers is PBS' national web destination for high-quality preK-12 educational resources. Here you'll find classroom materials suitable for a wide range of subjects and grade levels. They provide thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations. These resources are correlated to state and national educational standards and are tied to PBS' award-winning on-air and online programming like NOVA, Nature, Cyberchase, Between the Lions and more.

The Khan Academy - At Khan, students and teachers are encouraged to "Watch... Practice... Learn almost anything for free". The academy has a library of over 2,700 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 276 practice exercises. They make it clear that they are on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace. So many people watch the Khan Videos but overlook their amazing Practice Sessions. If you have trouble because of school filters blocking Khan, look into My Big Campus ... also in this article.

YouTube - Let's not forget YouTube and its amazing searchable collection. These videos can be used for teaching a concept, providing an entry event, or providing the catalyst for a discussion that climbs the Bloom's Taxonomy ladder. Having trouble with those school filters?... check out My Big Campus and You Tube Education.

Thinfinity - This site is worth an entire write-up in itself and will provide a wealth of activities for PBL products. You will find quick and easy access to the highest quality teaching and learning materials. Verizon Thinkfinity offers comprehensive teaching and learning resources created by some amazing content partners which are the most respected organizations in each academic subject area and literacy. The easy-to-navigate K-12 resources are grade-specific and are aligned with state standards. This truly is an amazing online community where, along with great resources, you can network with friends and other teachers, and share ideas, plans and advice with others in the education community.

NeoK12 - Take a look and you will find a vast collection of resources and Web 2.o tools that might fit into any lesson. Along with pictures and videos that have been teacher selected, there are also some other amazing features. You can allow your students to create their own mashup presentations using Flickr and Wikipedia. There are quizzes, interactive diagrams, and games that can provide for formative assessment and problem solving.

Watch/Know/Learn - Imagine hundreds of thousands of great short videos and other media, explaining every topic taught to school kids. Imagine them rated and sorted into a giant Directory, making them simple to find. WatchKnowLearn is a non-profit online community devoted to this goal. Presently this community has over 30,000 videos and is growing every day through contributions from teachers across the globe. The co-founder of Wikipedia has launched a Web site designed to offer free access to thousands of education-related videos for students ages 3-18. Larry Sanger, who helped create Wikipedia states the site, "will allow students and teachers to sort through a library of online videos by content, and pick out what they need". Topics range from math and science to history. The site is meant to house and organize videos that are free and available online, yet which many educators may not have the time to search for or may find difficult to locate

NBC Learn - While this is a pay service, I am providing a link to some of their free material that might just connect to your standards. NBC Learn is staffed by veteran NBC News producers, who have created scores of original stories and Town Hall events around the country, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and others. The free area includes award-winning collections; Chemistry Now, Changing Planet, Science of NFL Football, Science of NHL Hockey, Science of the Winter Olympic Games, and Finishing the Dream. Videos and archival news stories are correlated to state standards and the Common Core.. Videos are generally short - less than six minutes in length - enabling instructors to engage and enlighten their students without wasting precious class time.

Discovery Education - This outstanding pay service also has a section that is free, found via this link. Discovery Education offers a broad range of free classroom resources that complement and extend learning beyond the bell. Foster deeper engagement and provide opportunities for students to take charge of their own learning with high quality, engaging, relevant tools designed for today's busy teachers. Take a moment to explore Discovery's programs and contests, interactive games, puzzles, lesson plans, videos and more.

Smithsonian Channel - From one of the greatest museums comes a network, and this website filled with some amazing clips, games, and activities that might just provide the right spark for some PBL.

National Geographic - Find some amazing videos, pictures, segments, and stories that could be used to spark interest or engage inquiry. Whether it be a discussion starter, an informational lesson, or a question raiser, you will find some awesome content at this site.

History.com - This is an amazing site that is sure to provide a game, video clip, or article that will engage students. Whether it be a hook to begin a study or some outstanding information to sustain learning, it is definitely worth a look.

C-SPAN Video Library - A great collection of both short and longer video clips that allow students to explore the workings of government. Did you know that CSPAN also includes American History TV, Book TV, Campaign 2012, and Washington Journal? Best of all, check out a large number of resources on CSPAN in the Classroom.

BBC Learning for Teachers - What an amazing amount of activities and resources, including over 9000 video clips. Enjoy a visit... you might just stay awhile!

PicsForLearning - Not everything has to be video. Perhaps you wish to use a still image to facilitate a discussion and promote inquiry.

iTunes Education Podcasts - Countless numbers of videos and series' that cover every educational topic imaginable.

Pulse of the Planet - Each weekday, the Pulse of the Planet radio series provides its listeners with a two-minute sound portrait of Planet Earth, tracking the rhythms of nature, culture and science worldwide, blending interviews with extraordinary natural sound.

Center for Civics Education - Make sure you discover these amazing podcasts, slideshows, and videos. Not to be missed is the 60 second civic education podcast series.

Newton's Apple - Discover the fascinating science of the world around us through over 300 video clips. Browse the categories, or enter a question or a keyword in the search box. There are a number of videos with resource guides included.

American Field Guide - Over 1400 short video covering all areas of science.

Exploratorium TV - Browse hundreds of webcasts, video clips, podcasts, and slideshows from the Exploratorium's collection of original programming, from remote scientific expeditions to fun hands-on activities.

Chemistry Video Collection - Excellent selection of videos that relate to chemistry. Contains experiments and many simulations that might not be able to be demonstrated in a standard school lab.

Science Hack - Every video on this web site is screened by scientists to ensure accuracy.

Math Interactive - MathActive lessons are Flash-animated math modules designed for grades K-12. Each module features content that touches a geometry performance objective from the Arizona Academic Standards for mathematics.

Sports Science - Awesome collection of short videos that will engage kids in science and math from the people at ESPN.

Science Videos - A selection of engaging videos and podcasts from the creators at the New York Times.

Copernicus Project - Selection of short biology resources and videos.

How Stuff Works Science - Excellent collection of videos that cover interesting and engaging topics across the science curriculum.

Ted Talk - What an amazing place to begin some deep and meaningful conversations and thought. In fact, there are some amazing videos if you are working on the skill of collaboration. Or check out the hundreds of other categories.

Science For Kids - Cool place for videos and activities. But wait... while you are there check out Kids Math Games and Fun English Games. You will find a gold mine of resources that can be put into a unit to help your students master content in a project.
Thanks for joining me and for learning about Project Based Learning. Join me in future weeks as together we continue this series on PBL Mania. After that, discover more posts devoted to 21st century education including such topics as Flipped Classrooms, Project Based Learning, Assessing 21st century skills, technology integration, web resources, and digital literacy. I enjoy learning from all of you. Also, remember to subscribe to this 21centuryedtech Blog by RSS or email and follow me on twitter at . I also appreciate your sharing of this post and any retweets. I hope you enjoyed this journey through a land of on-line PBL multimedia possibilities. Have a great week! - Mike Gorman (21centuryedtech)

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30 Online Multimedia Resources for PBL and Flipped Classrooms

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Welcome to the third in a series of PBL Mania Posts. For the next few weeks I am celebrating Project Based Learning. In this post I will introduce you to some multimedia mega-sites found on the web that can be used in the PBL classroom.

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Free Educational Technology for Teachers

Do you support Free Technology for Teachers? If Yes, I highly encourage you to share this Free Educational Technology Resource with fellow teachers interested in implementing Free Technology in Classroom.

I am a great supporter of Free Educational Technology. This is why I created a list of 321 Free Tools for Teachers separated in the following 18 categories:

19 Free Tools To Create Infographics For Teachers

19 Free Text To Speech Tools For Teachers

21 Free Digital Storytelling Tools For Teachers

15 Free Podcast Tools For Teachers

28 Free Survey, Polls, and Quizzes Tools For Teachers

17 Free Screen Capturing Tools For Teachers

30 Free Social Bookmarking Tools For Teachers

14 Online Bibliography and Citation Tools For Teachers

13 Free Sticky Notes Tools For Teachers

30 Free Photo and Image Editing Tools For Teachers

17 Free Testing and Quizzing Tool For Teachers

15 Free Web Conferencing Tools For Teachers

15 Free Authoring Tools For Teachers

5 Free Annotation Tools For Teachers

8 Free Video Tools For Teachers

6 Free PDF Tools For Teachers

34 Sites To Download Royalty Free and Creative Commons Music For Teachers

17 Free Stock Photos Sites For Teachers

19 Free Tools To Create Infographics For Teachers

1. amCharts Visual Editor This editor allows you to use amCharts as a web service. This means that all you need to do is to configure the chart and paste the generated HTML code to your HTML page.

2. ChartsBinCreate your own interactive map. It's free for now.

3. DipityCreate an interactive, visually engaging timeline in minutes. Use dynamic visualization tools to display photos, videos, news and blogs in chronological order.

4. Easel.lyCreate and share visual ideas online. Vhemes are visual themes. Drag and drop a vheme onto your canvas for easy creation of your visual idea!

5. GapminderGapminder is used in classrooms around the world to build a fact-based world view.

6. GliffyGliffy.com is a free web-based diagram editor. Create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans, user interface designs and other drawings online.

7. Google Chart ToolsProvides several tools for making data more comprehensible. Special URLs can be used to embed graph and chart images in users' own web.

8. Hohli Charts Online Charts Builder

9. infogr.am Create infographics and interactive online charts. It's free and super-easy! Follow other users and discover amazing data stories!

10. Inkscape An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

11. Lucidchart With Lucidchart you can create flowcharts, org charts, mind maps, concept maps and many types of helpful visual communication. Lucidchart is completely free for students and teachers (no strings attached).

12. PiktochartPiktochart- Make Information Beautiful. Create infographics. Engaging presentation app.

13. PixlrWelcome to the most popular online photo editor in the world!

14. Stat PlanetStatPlanet (formerly StatPlanet Map Maker) is free, award-winning software for creating interactive maps which are fully customizable. In addition to maps, the software also has the option of including interactive graphs and charts to create feature-rich infographics.

15. Tableau PublicTableau Public is a free tool that brings data to life. Easy to use. Spectacularly powerful. Data In. Brilliance Out.

16. VenngageVenngage is built for people who work with data. From analysts who want to communicate their data better, to the executives who want to understand insights faster and everyone else who uses data to make their decisions, Venngage has been made to make insights easier.

17. visual.lyLike infographics and data visualization? Visual.ly is the world's largest community of infographics and data visualization. Come explore, share, and create.

18. What About Me?Create an infographic of your digital life and become inspired by the people you know, the things you see, and the experiences you have online.

19. WordleWordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

19 Free Text To Speech Tools For Teachers

1. AnnouncifyListen to your web. After Announcify conquered Android™ phones, it's now here to announcify your life at Google Chrome. Announcify reads out loud every website you want. For example, if you're too tired but still need to study one more Wikipedia entry, Announcify can help your tired eyes relax.

2. BalabolkaBalabolka is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV, MP3, MP4, OGG or WMA file. The program can read the clipboard content, view the text from AZW, CHM, DjVu, DOC, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, MOBI, ODT, PRC, PDF and RTF files, customize font and background color, control reading from the system tray or by the global hotkeys.

3. Chrome SpeakChrome Speak (App Version), select the text and right-click to speak with offline tts engine, TTS (text to speech). Chrome speak provides native support for speech on Windows (using SAPI 5), Mac OS X, and Chrome OS, using speech synthesis capabilities provided by the operating system. On all platforms, the user can install extensions that register themselves as alternative speech engines.

4. DSpeechDSpeech is a TTS (Text To Speech) program with functionality of ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) integrated. It is able to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced based upon the vocal answers of the user. It is specifically designed to quickly and directly provide the functions and improved practical usefulness that are requested by this kind of program. In the meantime, the evasiveness and resource consumption is minimal.

5. FoxVoxFoxVox will speak any text you highlight in a web page. FoxVox can also create audiobooks in mp3, ogg, and wav formats. You can now easily turn your blogs and articles into podcasts.

6. Free Natural ReaderIt can convert any written text such as Microsoft Word, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails into spoken words.

7. OdiogoOdiogo's media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device.

8. PediaPhonLearning during jogging and driving! E-learning and m-learning with MP3 players and mobile phones! A podcast and a winamp play list will be generated too. MP3 files, play lists and podcast automatically generated from Wikipedia! Let your computer read out the Wikipedia for you!

9. PowerTalkPowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic 'Text To Speech' programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.

10. QR voiceQR Code allows users to converts text-to-speech, generates QR Code for speech URL and Simplifies share text-to-speech files.

11. Select and SpeakSelect and Speak uses iSpeech's human sounding text to speech (TTS) to let you select text from almost any website and make it talk.

12. SpeakingFoxConverts text to audible speech on Mac OS X.

13. SpeakIt!Select text you want to read and listen to it. SpeakIt converts text into speech so you no longer need to read. SpeakIt reads selected text using Text-to-Speech technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages.

14. SpokenTextSpokenText lets you easily convert text into speech. Record (English, French, Spanish or German) PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, and web pages, and convert them to speech automatically. Download your recordings as .mp3 or .m4b (Audio Book) files (in English, French, Spanish and German) of any text content on your computer or mobile phone.

15. Text to VoiceTTS gives Firefox the power of speech. Select text, click the button on the bottom right of Firefox window and this add-on speaks the selected text for you. Isn't it brilliant? Audio is downloadable.

16. text2speechFree online text to speech converter. Just enter your text, select one of the voices and download the resulting mp3 file to your computer. This service is free and you are allowed to use the speech files for any purpose, including commercial uses.

17. VokiVoki is a FREE service that lets you create customized avatars, add voice to your Voki avatars, post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile, and take advantage of Voki's learning resources.

18. vozMeVozme is an online text to speech program that lets you type-in any English or Spanish text and then play it as an audio stream.

19. WordTalkA free Windows text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word. It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary and a text-to-mp3 converter.

Listen Text-to-Speech Voices with the Right Authoring Tool Vendor

Find, choose and compare the top eLearning Authoring Tool Companies featuring Text-to Speech Voices!

21 Free Digital Storytelling Tools For Teachers

1. AnimotoUnlimited Videos For Educators. Enhance your digital classroom with Animoto, an ideal tool for creating videos and presentations. It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life. Educators can apply for a free Animoto Plus account for use in the classroom. Its powerful features can be used to create stunning presentations incorporating images, video clips, music and text.

2. BubblrBubblr is a tool to create comic strips using photos from flickr.com Begin searching images and add bubble to them.

3. CapzlesAll of your media, your life, your stories together like never before. Create rich multimedia experiences with videos, photos, music, blogs and documents.

4. CartoonistCartoonists is an online tool to create cartoons or personal digital stories, consisting of professional backgrounds, characters, props, images and text. With Cartoonist, you can create multimedia stories. You can use the tool to create comic strips or more personal digital narratives.

5. Comic MasterComic Master allow you to create your own short graphic novel. With Comic Master you can decide how you want the page or your graphic novel to look, to add backgrounds, choose characters and props to appear in your scenes, to add dialogue and captions, and much more

6. Domo animateImport your pictures, select a nice song to accompany the slideshow and you are done! Your pictures will be the hero of your own personalized Domo adventure. You can create your own Domo adventures in minutes with their easy-to-use animation studio.

7. GeneratorGenerator is a creative studio space, a space where you can explore the moving image, be inspired, create your own moving image works and share your creations with the Generator community.Gain a deeper understanding of the context of these inspiring stories through their Education Themes section. Try the Storyboard Generator and either choose a script or build your own storyboard and share it with your friends.

8. MakeBeliefsComixAt MakeBeliefsComix you can create your own comic strip with an easy and fun way. You have to choose a character and emotion. Then you have to add talk or thought balloons and start your character talking. You can add other characters and more conversation. Also, you can add colored backgrounds, objects and panel prompts to keep your viewers interested. Least but not last, you can continue to edit and make more changes, and when you are done you can print or email your comic!

9. MapSkipThe purpose of MapSkip.com is to create a weave of stories about the places in our lives. Users are invited to create a free account and to mark up places in Google Maps with their own stories and photos. Users can browse each other's stories and can rate and discuss them. MapSkip is free to use and free of ads.

10. PicLitsPicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.

11. PixtonPixton empowers the world to communicate graphically with comics. Pixton introduces the world to Click-n-Drag Comics™, a revolutionary new patented technology that gives anyone the power to create amazing comics on the web. From fully posable characters to dynamic panels, props, and speech bubbles, every aspect of a comic can be controlled in an intuitive click-n-drag motion. Pixton is free for fun but has paid version for Schools and Businesses.

12. SlidestoryCombine sharing pictures and narration and what do you get? Slidestory! Slidestory is a new, exciting and FREE way to make presentations and share them on the Internet.

13. SmileboxSmilebox lets you quickly and easily create slideshows, invitations, greetings, collages, scrapbooks and photo albums right on your computer. To get started, download and install the Smilebox application. Then simply, select the photos you want to use, choose a template add comments and music and voila, you've made a Smilebox! With more than 1000 customizable templates to choose from, you'll find inspiration around every corner.

14. Smories.comSmories are original stories for kids, read by kids. The idea behind Smories is to publishes stories for kids read by kids. Also, you will find a lot of stories in various subjects submitted by teachers and authors.

15. StorybirdStorybird lets anyone make visual stories in seconds. They curate artwork from illustrators and animators around the world and inspire writers of any age to turn those images into fresh stories.

16. Zimmer TwinsThe Zimmer Twins is a site devoted to kids and creative storytelling. Since 2005, the Zimmer Twins has invited children to create and share their own animated stories. It is free for Kids & Families to join, make and watch a movie and paid for Educators and Schools.

17. ZooBurstZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life. ZooBurst books "live" online and can be experienced on your desktop or laptop computer, or on your iPad via the free ZooBurst mobile app. Authors can arrange characters and props within a 3D world that can be customized using uploaded artwork or items found in a built-in database of over 10,000 free images and materials. Basic accounts are 100% free and let you get started using ZooBurst right away.Free apps for digital storytelling

18. Puppet PalsCreate your own unique shows with animation and audio in real time! Simply pick out your actors and backdrops, drag them on to the stage, and tap record. Your movements and audio will be recorded in real time for playback later.This app is as fun as your own creativity. Act out a story of Pirates on the high seas, fight as scary monsters, or play the part of a Wild West bandit on the loose. You can even combine any characters however you want!

19. ShowMe Interactive WhiteboardTurn your iPad into your personal interactive whiteboard! ShowMe allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online. It's an amazingly simple app that anyone can use, no matter how young or old!

20. Sock PuppetsSock Puppets lets you create your own lip-synched videos and share them on Facebook and YouTube. Add Puppets, props, scenery, and backgrounds and start creating. Hit the record button and the puppets automatically lip-synch to your voice.

21. Toontastic: FREEToontastic is a storytelling and creative learning tool that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family around the world through simple and fun imaginative play! With over 2 million cartoons created in over 150 countries, parents and teachers rave about the app... and kids can't stop creating!

15 Free Podcast Tools For Teachers

1. Ardour Ardour is a free, fully-featured digital audio workstation, similar to other software like ProTools, Nuendo, Sonar and Logic, and capable of replacing analog or digital tape systems. Available for Mac OS X, Linux.

2. AudacityAudacity is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. Audacity is available for Windows, Mac, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.

3. BlogAmpBlogamp is a web-based audiocasting solution that combines a rich media on-demand experience with podcasting. Blogamp's robust administration utility and content manager allows site owners and bloggers the ability to customize the on demand presentation as well as utilize the many add-on features depending on who the target audience is.

4. EasypodcastEasypodcast is a GUI tool for easy podcast publication. Easypodcast is multi-language (english and spanish) and cross-platform: tested on Windows and Linux (kde). This is possible thanks to wxPython.

5. EvocaCreate and Share Digital Voice Recordings Using mobile, landline, Skype & smartphones, tablets and computers.

6. HuffDufferCreate your own podcast. Find links to audio files on the Web. Huffduff the links-add them to your podcast. Subscribe to podcasts of other found sounds.

7. MP3myMP3 RecorderSaves any audio you hear on your computer straight to mp3 or wav.

8. OdiogoOdiogo's media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device.

9. PodbeanPodbean.com is an easy and powerful way to start podcasting. Easy to publish your podcast in 3 steps. No tech to learn. Powerful promoting tools, iTunes Preview, Statistics. Wonderful income chances with ads, paid subscriptions.

10. PodOmaticRecord video and audio podcasts. Receive in-line calls from listeners.

11. SoundCloudShare Your Sounds. Capture a voice, moment or music in seconds or upload audio you've already created. Everyone has sounds to share. Now you can share yours. Publish to social networks or embed your sounds on your site.

12. StudioRackStudioRack is a modular live audio and video production system for the Windows O.S., intended for the more demanding podcaster, audio and video producers, DJ's, radio stations, tv stations etc.

13. TalkShoeCreate, schedule and run a live show. Integrate the recording on your website.

14. VozMeConvert text to MP3.

15. YAKiToMe!Uses the world's best text to speech (TTS) software. Upload documents, cut and paste text or link to feeds. Text reader converts text to speech automatically.

28 Free Survey, Polls, and Quizzes Tools For Teachers

1. addpollThe easiest way to create polls, surveys and html forms... on the web. Find out why we're the greatest online survey and poll software in the world with integrated form builder.

2. AnswerGardenAnswerGarden is a new minimalistic feedback tool. Use it as a tool for online brainstorming or embed it on your website or blog as a poll or guestbook.

3. Boo rooCreate online polls in minutes with our free polling tool. Use our comprehensive poll builder in order to create beautiful polling solutions in your browser, for free.

4. Jotform Quiz Maker - Our no-code tool lets you use custom conditional logic, tons of templates, and form analytics features to grade your quizzes automatically and efficiently. Share your quizzes with a link or embed them in your site.

5. DoculiciousEasily create embeddable web forms that generate PDF documents.

6. FluidSurveysOnline Survey Software & Form Tools at their best! Create forms & questionnaires with the best online survey software. Get started in seconds!

7. Forms on the FlyAmazing online forms made simple. Quickly create quizzes, tests, surveys, diagnostics & assessments for your website.

8. formsiteOur Drag & Drop editor, combined with over 40 question types, enables you to easily create almost any type of form or survey. Once you begin collecting results, we provide the functionality to email, analyze, share, and download your data.

9. FormspringFormspring is the place where you can share your perspective on anything. Members express their point of view and personality through engaging conversations and interact with friends, followers, and people they just find cool.

10. FoSpaceThe ability to publish self-calculating order forms, online surveys, contact forms, employment applications, rental applications or any type of online form imaginable, without having to hire a programmer, has finally been realized.

11. Freeonlinesurveys.comCreate your own Free Online Survey. Over 1 million users!

12. GFXPOLL.comThe best website to create free graphical polls for your website, forum or even email.

13. Google Forms (part of Google Drive)Collect RSVPs, run a survey, or quickly create a team roster with a simple online form. Then check out the results, neatly organized in a spreadsheet.

14. Kwik SurveysKwik Surveys makes your job easy. Design surveys,forms, polls and feedback forms. It's free!

15. MySurveyLabProfessional online surveys. Fastest online survey tool on the market. Beautiful yet simple color themes.

16. Orbeon FormsOrbeon Forms is your solution to build and deploy web forms. It handles complex forms typical of the enterprise or government, implements the W3C XForms standard, and is available in a free open source Community Edition, as well as a commercially supported Professional Edition.

17. PollDaddyThe most powerful and easy-to-use survey software around. Create stunning surveys, polls, and quizzes in minutes. Collect responses via your website, e-mail, iPad, Facebook, and Twitter. Generate and share easy-to-read reports.

18. PollhostIn a hurry? Create a free poll as a guest at Pollcode.com ... No need to sign up, quick free and easy!

19. ScattervoxScattervox is a new kind of poll! When you create a poll, you ask users to show how they feel about different people, places, or things by plotting them on a two-dimensional graph. It's like an interactive infographic!

20. SISsurveyCreate free online surveys and polls using SiS Survey. With SiS Survey you can now create surveys and polls for your website, blog and social network profiles.

21. SonarIf you need to feel the pulse of your community, or to get feedback on anything, SonarHQ is the easy and cost-effective way to get answers to your questions. The smarter, faster and easier way to create surveys.

22. SurveyMonkeySurveyMonkey is the world's most popular online survey tool. It's easier than ever to send free surveys, polls, questionnaires, customer feedback and market research. Plus get access to survey questions and professional templates.

23. Surveys EngineSurveys Engine is lightwheight online surveys server software. This tool enables you create various surveys and questionaires, from small and simple to large and complex. Surveys are hosted in our site so you and survey respondents don't need any software or server, just Internet browser.

24. SurvsCreate online surveys with simplicity and elegance. Survs lets you create, distribute, and analyze online surveys and questionnaires with a friendly interface and powerful features. Survs gives you everything you need to gather feedback.

25. Vizzual FormsVizzualforms is a web based service that will let you create forms and surveys, publish them online and see the results!

26. Web Form FactoryWeb Form Factory is an open source web form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend code to tie your form to a database. By generating the backend code for you, WFF saves you time... time you could spend doing more interesting stuff.

27. Web Online SurveysCreate questionnaires with point and click ease. This is an all in one service designed for people who are not computer experts and have the need to conduct surveys by themselves.

28. WufooWufoo is a web application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun.

17 Free Screen Capturing Tools For Teachers

1. Aviary Compatible with all modern browsers, including mobile devices which support Javascript and HTML5 or Flash. Customize with our code generator and integrate within minutes! Media creation tools: image editor, audio editor, screen capture.

2. Clip2NetThis free service allows you to upload desktop area image or files on the web really fast such as Desktop area capture and upload, Video capture and upload, Upload image from Clipboard, Upload text documents and much more.

3. Faststone Capture A powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. It also allows you to record screen activities and sound into video files.

4. Greenshot A free screenshot tool optimized for productivity. Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with key features such as quickly creating screenshots of a selected region, window or fullscreen; capturing of complete (scrolling) web pages from Internet Explorer, easily annotating, highlighting or obfuscating parts of the screenshot and much more.

5. JingSimple and FREE, Jing is the perfect way to enhance your fast-paced online conversations. Create images and videos of what you see on your computer screen, then share them instantly!

6. KingKong CaptureCapture onscreen images fast and easy. Quick capture of your desktop, selected areas and objects. Easy printing of screenshots. Automatic saving in various supported graphic file formats are some of the key features of KingKong Capture.

7. kwout"kwout" is a way you quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map. To use this service, all you need is to add our bookmarklet to your favorite browser. Takes a screenshot, cut out an aread, and then embed it anywhere that you want.

8. PrtScrScreen capture tool. Accessable through Ptr Scr, Ctrl+Prt Scr, or custom hotkey. Captures full screen, rectangle selection, freehand selection, or active window. Can capture mouse cursor. Supports multiple monitors. Much better than Microsoft's own Snipping Tool.

9. RumshotRumshot is an application for Windows similar to SnapShooter (Mac OS X) developed by Andrew Powell. Screenshots are a great way to show your desktop setup to friends and colleagues. But why settle for thumbnail of your carefully constructed desktop? Get classy - use Rumshot to automatically generate a themed and stylish screenshot preview!

10. ScreenDashCapture images from your computer screen with ease. If you can see it on-screen, you can capture it, including web-pages, PDF files, programs, etc.

11. ScreenhunterAward-winning screen capture solution to capture your screen, print and edit. Also with auto-scroll web pages, auto-capture, webcam and video screen capture.

12. ScreenpressoScreenpresso captures your screen (screenshots and HD videos) for your training documents, collaborative design work, IT bug reports, and more...

13. Screenshot CaptorScreenshot Captor is a best-in-class tool for grabbing, manipulating, annotating, and sharing screenshots. It's different from other screenshot utilities in several notable ways such as optimized for taking lots of screenshots with minimal intervention; highly configurable to make it work the way you want it to but stays out of your way in the system tray, excellent multi-monitor support, full set of scanner acquisition tools and scanner image correction, and perfect capture of Windows 7 partial transparency effects.

14. ScreenSnaprScreenSnapr's aim is to provide a simple and straight-forward approach to image capturing and sharing. Without any of the extra fluff, ScreenSnapr makes sharing images as easy as possible. Press the shortcut and go!

15. SkitchAnnotate, edit and share your screenshots and images... fast. Download now, it's free! Get your point across with fewer words using annotation, shapes and sketches, so that your ideas become reality faster.

16. TinyGrab:Social Screenshot sharing. Take a screenshot and share it with your clients or friends in less time than it took you to read this sentence! TinyGrab 2.0 makes simple screenshot sharing social. Taking the critically acclaimed original TinyGrab and building on it. TinyGrab 2.0 adds a tonne of new features and proves on the existing service.

17. Websnaprwebsnapr lets you capture screenshots of (almost) any web page. Allow your visitors to instantly visualize any web page before clicking. Increase site traffic, click-through rate and site stickiness.

30 Free Social Bookmarking Tools For Teachers

1. SymbalooeduOrganize and Share the best of the web with your students. Organize teaching resources all in one place. Encourage student to student communications. Promote innovation while maintaining simplicity in teaching.

2. PearltreesA place to collect, organize and share everything you like on the web. Add everything you like and organize it naturally. Enrich your collections and collaborate on your favorite topics. Discover millions of pearls to your interests.

3. 19 pencilsDiscover resources for your PreK-12 students from teachers around the world. Save thumbnails of web resources to a class page for easy student access.

4. A1-WebmarksA1-Webmarks is a free service that combines the convenience of a personal webmark server with the power of social webmarking.

5. All my favoritesShare your internet bookmarks. AllMyFavorites is free for personal use.

6. BibSonomyBibSonomy is a system for sharing bookmarks and lists of literature. Why dont you try it yourself? Collect, organise, and share bookmarks and publications.

7. BookmarkGSave and share interesting sites and articles

8. BuddymarksBuddyMarks.com has been called "The online personal, group and social bookmarks manager."

9. DeliciousDiscover, remember, and showcase your passions from around the web.

10. Diigo Education EditionDiigo is a powerful online research tool and collaborative research platform that integrates several key technologies, including social bookmarking, web annotation, tagging, and group-based collaboration, to enable a whole new process of online knowledge management and participatory learning in the 21st century.

11. EdshelfReviews & recommendations of tools for education. edshelf is a directory of websites, mobile apps, and desktop programs that are rated & reviewed by parents & educators, for parents & educators. We help you find the right educational tools for your specific needs.

12. EvernoteRemember everything. Save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see. Evernote works with nearly every computer, phone and mobile device out there. Search by keyword, tag or even printed and handwritten text inside images.

13. GivealinkShare your bookmarks with the community and help others navigate the Web. Use the GiveALink visualization tool to visualize and organize your bookmarks.Play the GiveALink games to create social links across the Web.

14. Historioushistorious saves you time by helping you find webpages you saw before. Bookmark sites with a single click, then find them again by searching for any word in the content of the page!

15. ikeepbookmarks.comiKeepBookmarks.com allows you to upload, and keep, your bookmarks on the web. You can access them at any time, from any computer... anywhere!

16. Jog The WebJOG THE WEB is a web-based tool that allows anyone to create a synchronous guide to a series of web sites. Its step by step approach of taking viewers through web sites allowing the author to annotate and ask guiding questions for each page is unique.

17. Learn FizzFind, organize and share the best free learning on the web.

18. linkaGoGoThe free Online Favorites manager and Social Bookmarking application. Storing your Bookmarks (also known as Favorites, Anchors, Links or Hotlists) online. Your bookmarks are available on any computer with access to the Internet, protected by a password. So you can access them from everywhere, not only from home, but also from work, when you are visiting friends, when you are traveling etc.

19. LivebinderCollect your resources. Organize them neatly and easily. Make an impression

20. NetvibesEverything that matters to you, all in one dashboard. Netvibes is a personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web and digital life aggregation.

21. NetvouzNetvouz is a social bookmarking service that allows you to save your favorite links online and access them from any computer, wherever you are.

22. PinboardSocial Bookmarking for Introverts. Pinboard is a fast, no-nonsense bookmarking site. No ads, no fluff.

23. PinterestA content sharing service that allows members to "pin" images, videos and other objects to their pinboard.

24. RedditUser-generated news links. Votes promote stories to the front page.

25. Save ThisSave links to your favorite web pages from any site. Access your links from any computer or Web enabled wireless device. Organize your saved links into folders that you create. Share your saved links or folders with friends.

26. SharetivityShare, Save and Search. Your social network enhances your search experience

27. SmubSmub is the bookmarking, link-sharing & bookmark management tool for smartphones and any PC or Mac.

28. StumbleuponStumbleUpon is the easiest way to find cool new websites, videos, photos and images from across the Web. We make the best recommendations just for you.

29. TwoBrainsTwo Brains is an application that approaches the learning process in a different way. The application is built around goals, because in the end that's what you truly care about

30. Vi.sualize.usBookmark the pictures you like around the web. Enjoy people's favorite images

14 Online Bibliography and Citation Tools For Teachers

1. CitationGenerator -It's cloud-based, ad-free and quick (and easy) to use!

2. Citation Machine - FreeCitation machine helps students and professional researchers to properly credit the information that they use. Its primary goal is to make it so easy for student researchers to cite their information sources

3. Citefast - FreeCite your work at APA, MLA, and Chicago without leaving http://www.citefast.com/ in three easy steps. Your citations will be kept as long as you keep visiting the site. After four days of inactivity your citations will be deleted.

4. Citelighter - FreeStore, organize, and share your education and research for free. Creating internet-research bibliographies can be infuriating to say the least, so Citelighter grabs all relevant info to create accurate citations for you. Anything we miss you can add yourself, and we'll save your additions for future users.

5. Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Citation Wizard - FreeOffer three Citation Styles: APA, CSE, formerly known as CBE, and MLA. All feature specific templates for citing online Journals, Web pages with and without authors, electronic Books and Databases.

6. Oregon Public Education Citation Maker for MLA - FreeDo you need to cite your sources? You can use this tool to create a Works Cited list of research sources following the MLA and APA standard citation formats.

7. Recipes4Success - FreeCreating a complete and correctly formatted citation is a challenge for many students, especially documenting sources such as art and music that aren't included in traditional citation formats. Create a citation formatted in either APA or MLA style. Students will still need to completely document the information, but the Citation Maker will format it for them.

8. RefDot - Chrome Extension - FreeMaking citation easy. Cite and store books or journal references. Add books automatically from amazon book pages. Cite books, journals and sites with this handy little extension.

9. Zotero - FreeZotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work-in the web browser itself. Whether you need to create footnotes, endnotes, in-text citations, or bibliographies, Zotero will do all the dirty work for you, leaving you free to focus on your writing. Create citations in Word and OpenOffice without ever leaving your word processor and add references to an email, a Google Doc, or some other editor simply by dragging one or more references out of Zotero.

10. EndNoteEndNote enables you to move seamlessly through your research process with flexible tools for searching, organizing and sharing your research, creating your bibliography and writing your paper. You'll save hours building and maintaining reference libraries and creating bibliographies. With unique features to maximize your time like automatically finding full text and updating records, EndNote lets you spend less time in the details.

11. NoodleToolsA powerful, integrated platform for research & literacy. NoodleTools is your instructional partner for differentiated teaching of literacy skills, critical analysis, sound reasoning, and collaborative group research.

12. ReferenceME - Android AppBetter essays, faster! Simply scan the barcode of a book using your mobile phone camera, and ReferenceME will create your bibliography and citations in moments. If there is no barcode you can find the book's ISBN or simply enter the details yourself, and turn them into references in any of the major styles used by universities and libraries. ReferenceME creates Bibliographies and Citations/Footnotes for Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, MHRA, MLA, Oxford and APA.

13. RefWorksRefWorks -- an online research management, writing and collaboration tool -- is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.

13 Free Sticky Notes Tools For Teachers

1. CorkboardRemember and share what's important to you. Collaborate with others on a single Corkboard. Post and access on your computer or on-the-go. Organize your postings into Corkboards. Share what you post on your Facebook wall and get notified of new comments on your postings.

2. Hott NotesFree sticky notes reminders for your desktop. A simple, easy-to-use sticky notes software for Windows.

3. LinoitSticky and Photo sharing for you. A free sticky and canvas service that requires nothing but a Web browser.

4. ListingsOnline sticky notes. Take notes from your browser. Share and collaborate with others in real-time. Reach your notes from anywhere. Super fast, free and ridiculously easy.

5. Notepad2A fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry.

6. PadletPadlet gives you a blank page (a wall) and you put anything you want on it, anywhere. Perhaps the easiest site for children to use. Pose questions, get their answers, and give them feedback - all on the same page.

7. ScrumblrScrumblr is a web-based simulation of a physical agile sprint board that supports real-time collaboration.

8. Simple Sticky NotesWhat is Simple Sticky Notes? It's a simple, easy-to-use, absolutely free, fast and efficient note taking software.

9. SpaazeSpaaze (pronounced "space") offers it's users so called boards. Each board is an infinite space which resembles a virtual cork. On these boards, items can be put. Currently Spaaze offers 7 different items: Labels, Notes, Bookmarks, Images, Files, Videos and HTML. These items can be edited in place, moved via drag and drop and positioned freely on the board. Therefore it's possible to arrange a bunch of items any way you like, which makes it possible to use it for many different use cases.

10. StickiesStickies is a PC utility. Just like a real sticky piece of paper: Once on screen, stickies will remain where placed until closed, even through reboots. Stickies appearance can be customised; fonts, colours and buttons may be changed, and styles saved. Stickies can be resized and store text or images. Stickies can snap to each other and to the sides of the screen to keep them neatly lined up. Stickies can be attached to a web site, document or folder so they only show when it's on screen, and much more...

11. StickrWith Stickr you can create streams, subscribe to your friends' feeds, form and join groups, follow people you like, leave private comments. Stickr feed can be embedded to your homepage or blog, your account can be associated with accounts on other social networking sites.

12. StickyPadStickyPad is an invaluable, easy-to-use tool that lets you place sticky notes on your desktop. You can type notes to yourself, set meeting and appointment reminders, keep track of a to-do list, and anything else you would do with paper notes.

13. StixyStixy helps users organize their world on flexible, shareable Web-based bulletin boards called Stixyboards. Unlike most personal productivity or project management software, Stixy doesn't dictate how users should organize their information. Users can create tasks, appointments, files, photos, notes, and bookmarks on their Stixyboards, organized in whatever way makes sense to them.

31 Free Photo and Image Editing Tools For Teachers

1. Aviary A better photo editing solution for web and mobile.

2. Cacoo Cacoo is a user friendly online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site maps, wire frames, UML and network charts. Cacoo can be used free of charge.

3. Chart ChooserWe've rebuilt our favorite tool for improving Excel and PowerPoint with HTML5 goodness. Use the filters above to find the right chart type for your needs. Then download as Excel or PowerPoint templates and insert your own data.

4. ChartGizmoWith your free account from ChartGizmo you can now create charts for your website, blog and social network profiles.

5. ChartToolCharts and graphs are a great tool because they communicate information visually. On Onlinecharttool.com you can design and share your own graphs online and for free.

6. Colorcinch An intuitive photo editor that lets you transform your photos into stunning cartoons, characters, and animes! Creating your avatar can be done with just a single click. Photo editing made simple, beautiful, and for everyone. It's free, no sign-up is needed.

7. CoSketchCoSketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images.

8. Creately100's of thoughtful features to make creately diagramming quick and natural, its a joy to use.

9. Creative Docs.netCreative Docs .NET is a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text, ideal to quickly write short documents, manuals, posters, illustrations, schemas, plans, flow charts, and much more.

10. diagram.lyDraw Diagrams Online, free. draw.io is an online diagramming application and github project. It features the full range of visual configuration you expect, as well as web application features such as a full range of export options, a large collection of icons, real-time collaboration and embedded widget sharing.

11. DoppelMeWith DoppelMe you can create a cool graphical likeness of yourself, your friends, family or any group of people for use as an avatar in forums, instant messenger, blogs and almost anywhere else on the web. It's free and there are no Flash, ActiveX controls, downloads or toolbars needed - just your browser and a few mouse clicks. That's it!

12. Flash PAINTThis is an online full paint application. Draw online with paint tool. Save on your disk your drawings and send your drawing to the public gallery.

13. Flowchart.comFlowchart.com is an online multi-user, real-time collaboration flow charts service. It's Flowcharting made easy.

14. Gickr.comInstantly create Animated GIF online, free, right now! Just upload pictures or grab them from your Flickr.

15. GlogsterLooking for a new way to express yourself? Mash up music, photos, videos, & more to express what you care about. Your ideas, your emotions, your Glogster. Glogster costs 10 seconds to sign up. That's it! Everything on Glogster is free & always will be.

16. GoAnimateMake Amazing Animated Videos! Use our Video Maker to create videos for free.

17. Google SketchUpIntuitive and fun to use. Re-imagine your living space. Model buildings for Google Earth. Use SketchUp for free.

18. InkscapeAn Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

19. Paint.NETSimple, intuitive, and innovative user interface. Every feature and user interface element was designed to be immediately intuitive and quickly learnable without assistance.

20. PencilPencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

21. PhotoPeachOur idea is to help you tell better stories online using photos. With PhotoPeach you can create a rich slideshow in seconds to engage your friends or family. We also support background music, captions, and comments so you can elaborate on your story further.

22. PicMarkrFree Watermark. Add Custom Watermark with PicMarkr! PicMarkr lets you to add custom watermark (image or text) to your images online and free.

23. PixlrWelcome to the most popular online photo editor in the world...

24. ReshadeHere you can resize images maintaining quality, edges and texture. This means Reshade reduces or eliminates most of the usual side-effects of photo enlargement.

25. Rich Chart LiveCreate for free enjoyable and captivating Flash Charts from your web browser.

26. Roxio PhotoShowMake Free Photo Slideshow. It's so easy that just about anyone can tell an engaging, one-of-a-kind PhotoShow story in just minutes!

27. Slidestory Combine sharing pictures and narration and what do you get? Slidestory! Slidestory is a new, exciting and FREE way to make presentations and share them on the Internet.

28. SplashupSplashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With the features professionals use and novices want, it's easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once.

29. SUMO PaintWeb's best image app, hands down! Our editor is full of unique features that let you unleash your creativity.

30. ToondooWorld's fastest way to create cartoons!

31. VokiVoki is a FREE service that lets you create customized avatars. Add voice to your Voki avatars. Post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile. Take advantage of Voki's learning resources.

17 Free Testing and Quizzing Tool For Teachers

1. ClassMarkerClassMarker's secure, professional web-based testing service is an easy-to-use, customizable online test maker for business, training & educational assessment with tests and quizzes graded instantly - saving hours of paperwork!

2. ClassToolsCreate free games, quizzes, activities and diagrams in seconds! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!

3. Easy Test MakerEasyTestMaker is a free online test generator to help you create your tests. You can create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, matching, short answer and true and false questions all on the same test. You can also insert instructions and divide your test into multiple sections.

4. Hot Potatoes You can choose from the following six types of questions to create your interactive quiz: crossword, multiple-choice, short-answer, gap-fill, matching/ordering and jumbled-sentence.

5. iQuiz MakeriQuiz Maker is an easy way for you to create custom quizzes for the iQuiz game for the iPod. iQuiz Maker works seamlessly so you can write, create, package your very own quizzes. Download the free application today to begin putting the world to the test.

6. ProProfs Quiz SchoolCreate Online Tests & Quizzes Easily. Over 100,000 quizzes created. Over 1 million quiz takers.

7. QuandaryQuandary is an application for creating Web-based Action Mazes. An Action Maze is a kind of interactive case-study; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it.

8. QuedocOur quiz software not only plays quizzes, interactive lessons and revision aids; it also helps you create your own learning content and work cooperatively with others in the process of authoring.

9. Quiz RevolutionMake Free Facebook Quizzes and Free Online Quizzes. Interactive Multimedia Quizzes That Can Be Embedded On Any Site.

10. YacapacaIf you are a teacher you can use 15,000 quizzes in every subject or you can create quizzes, surveys, tests, eportfolios and more.

11. FunnelBrainFunnelBrain gives you and your friends a new way to learn. You can form study teams, play games, take quizzes, and show off your intellectual prowess. It's fun, it's free and you'll do better in class.

12. JeopardyJeopardyLabs allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own jeopardy template is a piece of cake.

13. EdgamesUse games to enhance your classroom teaching! On this site you will find more than just one or two games, we have categories of games for all types of classrooms.

14. QuizSlidesThe easy way to create stylish, interactive online test!

15. What2LearnThe fun and effective way to learn. Play some of our thousands of revision games and quizzes or make your own. Whether you are revising for examinations and tests such as GCSE and SATs, or simply looking for a powerful and engaging way to develop literacy and understanding, register today and start the learning fun.

15 Free Web Conferencing Tools For Teachers

1. AnyMeetingAnyMeeting is free with ads. It allows for meetings of up to 200 people, and has essential functionality like screen sharing, VoIP and phone conferencing, meeting recording and it even has a follow-up functionality.

2. BigBlueButtonBigBlueButton enables universities and colleges to deliver a high-quality learning experience to remote students.

3. Google+ HangoutWould you like to see, hear, and share information to your online learners. With Google+ Hangouts you can have a video group chat for up to 10 people for free! It is a powerful tool much better than a Web Chat.

4. ManagemeetManageMeet.com is a online service that enables teams to collaborate on tomorrows solutions in real-time. Share knowledge, collect ideas, analyze and decide.

5. Meetin.GsUnlimited meetings with 6 participants/meeting, material exchange, agenda & notes, 5MB size limit per file, and Skype integration.It's also a great place to edit documents together with a group and anyone can mail-in notes and other materials via email.

6. MeetingBurnerHost up to 10 webinar attendees for FREE with no ads - forever! Instantly share your screen with anybody. Works with iPhones, iPads, and Android Phones. You'll also get analytics for your meetings so that you can see how your guests interact with your content.

7. MikogoScreen sharing has never been so easy! Have an online meeting, give a presentation, or provide remote support with Mikogo. Sign up today and see how simple online meetings can be!

8. ShowDocumentShowDocument lets you do quick and easy real-time collaboration with others with no software required.

9. Sync.inSync.in is a web based word processor for people to collaborate in real-time. When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate with text documents, useful for meeting notes, brainstorming, project planning, training, and more.

10. TokBox Video ChatTokBox makes it easy to add video chat to your site using either the OpenTok API or OpenTok Widgets.

11. TwiddlaMark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it's all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly.

12. VyewVyew allows you to meet and share content in real-time or anytime. Upload images, files, documents and videos into a room. Users can access and contribute at anytime.

13. WebHuddleMeetings can be conducted either in conjunction with an enterprise's existing teleconferencing service, or utilizing WebHuddle's optional voice over IP.

14. YugmaYugma free web conferencing allows anyone, anywhere to instantly share their desktop and ideas online with others. To start hosting your own meetings, sign up today for FREE. Your Yugma Free web conferencing account allows you to invite up to 1 attendees with 30 minutes meeting limitations.

15. Zoho MeetingGet started with online meetings, start sharing your desktop to anyone, anywhere at any time.

15 Free Authoring Tools For Teachers

1. Easygenerator Easygenerator provides cloud-based eLearning authoring software. Easygenerator enables instructional designers and subject matter experts to rapidly create the most engaging courses that have the highest learning impact. Easygenerator is affordable, easy to use, and future proof. Simply create, design and publish your eLearning courses. Used and loved by 5000+ users in more than 120 countries in both enterprises and universities. Easygenerator's headquarter is located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

2. LCDSThe Microsoft Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a free tool that enables the Microsoft Learning community to create high-quality, interactive, online courses and Microsoft Silverlight Learning Snacks.

3. SmartBuilderSmartBuilder is the award-winning course authoring tool that enables you to create rich Flash e-learning with an easy-to-use interface.

4. The Multimedia Learning Object Authoring ToolThe Multimedia Learning Object Authoring Tool enables content experts to easily combine video, audio, images and texts into one synchronized learning object.

5. authorPOINT authorPOINT is an authoring tool that allows users to capture presentations and add pre-recorded audio/video, all inside of Microsoft PowerPoint. authorGEN also offers authorPOINT Lite, which converts PowerPoint presentations to Flash.

6. DipityFrom what we can glean from their website, Dipity is an online timeline creator. Users, known as Dipsters, can create their own content on subjects that are meaningful to them and share them with other users. Dipsters can also integrate social media into their timeline, utilizing real-time updates.

7. Document Suite 2008Document Suite 2008 is an authoring tool that helps transform documents into online help modules.

8. IzzuiIzzui is a hybrid social learning application that can be linked with QuickLessons. Izzui uses Facebook as an LMS to track and deliver courses. Izzui also has an e-Commerce capability allowing users to charge and pay for courses that they have created.

9. JackdawJackdaw produces SCORM 1.2 compliant content that is easily integrated into any LMS. Users can create interactive content either from scratch or with the the help of over 100 templates. Jackdaw also lets users create content that they can then sell on the Open Elms web-store.

10. LessonWriterFrom what we can gather from their website, LessonWriter is a tool for teachers that allows them to create lessons from any passage. These courses allow teachers to be creative with their lesson plans and also saves them a great deal of time.

11. MOS SoloMOS Solo offers a way for users to create content on the go without having to rely on a constant Internet connection. Even though they are using an offline content creation tool, they do not lose any of the functionality or power to create their multimedia content.

12. myUdutuA free online authoring tool with a suite of WSIWYG tools, allowing users to create courses in an approachable environment. Claims to export SCORM 1.2/2004 conformant courses to be used in a 3rd party LMS or integrate into social media sites, such as Facebook.

13. QuickLessons Authoring ToolQuickLessons was built from the ground up to be a completely SaaS based content authoring tool, requiring the user to only have access to a web-browser. QuickLessons comes equipped with quizzes, games, characters, out-of-the-box animations and other customizable content to allow users to create truly unique and interactive flash-based content to meet their needs. Users can either use QuickLessons for free, publishing their content only to Facebook, or they can buy an individual, corporate or academic account.

14. ScratchFrom what we can gather from their website, Scratch is a creative tool that helps users create content that is beyond the barriers of traditional page-turners. Scratch users can create interactive stories, animation, music, and art, then share their creations on the web.

15. xtimelinextimeline is a tool that allows users to create timeline based content for free. Users can also share their timelines with other users, creating a community.

5 Free Annotation Tools For Teachers

1. Diigo It's one of the most commonly used free web annotation tools which lets you bookmark and tag web pages. In addition to that, you would also be able to highlight a part of a webpage if you wish to emphasize something and attach sticky notes to it. Its advanced search allows you to rummage through the text of pages you have bookmarked which includes tags, titles, URLs and even your own comments and highlights. One of the best features of Diigo is your ability to comment on other users' notes which can be set to either public or private.

2. A.nnotate A.nnotate is not just a free annotation tool but also a collaboration and indexing tool. It can be used to catalogue images and other document formats. It also makes it easier for you to work with a group especially when documents are needed to be sent through email back and forth because of comments of different users. With the use of A.nnotate, you can simply create a single read-only copy of your document and share it with whomever you like so you could all comment on it. Another good thing about it is, it is very easy to use and it works fine in commonly used web browsers without you having to install software or plug ins. You may sign up for a free account which gives you credits for annotating 30 items every month, anything above that will require payment.

3. Bounce App Bounce app is a very simple free annotation tool that works just as effectively as others in the market. You simply log on to their website, enter the URL of the webpage you'd like to comment on and then click on Grab Screenshot. Voila! You'll have a screenshot of that webpage and you're now ready to comment on it by dragging the mouse and creating red boxes (like the one you see below). These red boxes are labelled with another box that contains your name and has a space for your comments. One of the best features of Bounce is that you can share your feedback on either Facebook or Twitter and let your friends see it.

4. Crocodoc Crocodoc Personal is a free annotation tool used for commenting on documents. Simply log on to their website, upload a PDF file, Office Doc or image, modify it using Crocodoc tools which allow you to highlight, draw or comment on it. When you're done, click on Share button at the upper right hand corner of the page and send the link to whomever you'd like to share the document with. You may share it through copying the link and sending it through email or IM, or you may even embed it on your blog or website. However, if you would like to store your files or view your upload history, you have to sign up for a Crocodoc account but you need not worry because this app is absolutely for free.

5. Markup.io Markup allows you to draw on any webpage using built in tools. Simply go to their website, drag the icon located at the lower right hand corner of the page to the bookmark bar of your browser.

8 Free Video Tools For Teachers

1. Ezvid Ezvid is a 100% free video creation tool that allows you to capture everything that appears on your computer screen. It also allows you to edit your recorded videos by splitting your recordings, inserting text and audio, controlling the speed and even drawing directly on your screen. There's also a Gaming Mode specially designed for gamers to avoid black screen problems when recording games such as Diablo III and Call of Duty which are full screen games. You can save your edited videos for later use or you may directly upload them on YouTube.

2. BlueBerry Flashback Express Recorder This recorder just, like other screencast tools, enables you to capture your screen while recording yourself through a webcam. It introduces quite a long list of features that will let you edit videos like a pro. BB Flashback Express Recorder also has a very easy user interface that allows you to decide what area of your screen you would like to capture and whether to record sound and web activity or not. Another good thing about it is that you can have scheduled recordings so you wouldn't have to miss online events. It also includes a player which works like a VCR and allows you to review your recording frame-by-frame.

3. ScreenrScreenr is a web-based screen recorder. Yes, you read it right. It's web-based so that means, you wouldn't have to install it on your computer but it requires Java to run. Screenr allows you to easily capture your screen by logging on to their website, clicking on the record button and keeping it open while you are capturing your screen activity. Keep in mind that you only have a maximum of 5 minutes per recording. Files are saved on the site. When you're finished, you'll be given a link that can be easily shared by email or can be embedded on websites. It's absolutely free, works on both MAC and PC and will work even on your iPhone.

4. Rylstim Screen Recorder Rylstim is a very simple and easy to use Screen Recorder which, aside from capturing your screen, also allows you to record events happening on the monitor including right and left clicks. It has a minimalistic and intuitive interface but supports multiple CODECs. You can also customize the video frame rates. Rylstim Screen Recorder works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows

5. Krut Krut is a screencast tool that works in almost any Operating system and requires Java to run. It's a very simple program with only 3 basic controls: Record, Snap for still pictures, and the Arrow button used to adjust the borders of your recording area. It's very minimalist without all those complicated features that other screencast tools offer, but it can be powerful too because of some additional features such as timer-controlled recording. You can also use it for recording streaming video and audio.

6. CamStudioCamStudio is a pretty straightforward program that lets you record your screen and audio and produce outputs in AVI or SWF format. It enables annotation such as text and call out inserts and even provides you some cursor options such as default, hidden or highlighted, which should be carefully laid out prior to recording. You have some video options too which lets you control compression, frame rates , quality and time lapse but aside from that, you can't really do much with the video because it doesn't include editing capabilities.

7. Webineria Webineria is an open-source easy-to-use screencast tool which lets you capture your screen activity and do "picture-in-picture" video by adding your webcam stream. It provides you 3 frame rate options: 5, 10 and 15 frames per second and outputs can be produced in either AVI or FLV format. It has built in features too that let you adjust the boundaries of your record area, use hotkeys to pause and resume recording. Outputs are saved on the site and can be shared via email links or embedding on websites.

8. Screen-O-MaticScreencast-O-Matic is a screencast tool which has both web-based and desktop versions. It's very easy to use and will run so long as you have Java installed on your computer. It has free video hosting and allows you to record your screen or both your screen and webcam. You may also publish your output directly to YouTube. The free versions of Screencast-O-Matic has limited features though. For instance, there's a 15-minute recording time limit, there's a small watermark when recording, it doesn't allow webcam-only recording and it doesn't allow you to zoom and annotate while recording.

6 Free PDF Tools For Teachers

1. Adobe Reader XIAdobe Reader is a trusted high quality tool that allows you to view and print your PDF files. It also lets you interact with PDF content, including multimedia. Other features covered are adding and verifying digital signature, annotating on PDF pages, creating and filling out PDF forms, and printing out these documents.

2. Doro PDF Writer by CompSoftDoro PDF Writer is very easy to use and is pretty straightforward. It doesn't have all the other options that other PDF tools have but it works great in printing PDF files. It is installed as a virtual print driver and converts any printable document or image to PDF format. It can be powerful too as it lets you set the author name and even protect it with a password before conversion. Just select it from the program's setting menu before printing a PDF document and it will launch and provide you the option to change the document's metadata. On top of those mentioned is the ability to enable and disable copying, pasting and printing functions of the document. It is compatible with XP, Vista, Windows 7 and 8.

3. BullZip PDF Printer by BioPDFBullZip is another PDF tool that works as a virtual print driver and uses Ghostscript to convert documents. Like Doro, it also allows you to convert printable document or image to PDF format but on top of that, it also lets you add watermarks, merge PDF files and even add protection to your PDF files. It is free for up to 10 users and offers installation of promotional, third party components. You may check the guidelines here.

4. PDFTK BuilderThis is an open source PDF tool used which allows you to easily reorder or merge selected pages. It is also capable of splitting and rotating pages and adding stamp and encryption to your file. Aside from those mentioned it doesn't offer too much and even lacks the basic function of watermarking with background text.

5. PDFill PDF ToolThis is probably one of the most user-friendly free PDF tools that offer you so many features. It provides the most important functions such as merging, splitting, reordering, rotating and cropping pages and even allows you to add headers, footers and watermarks. It also offers additional features such as encrypting and decrypting security options, and deleting, flattening and adding form fields. It requires GhostScript and Java to run.

6. jPDF Tweak It can be a good choice when you want to get as many features as you can in just one application. It lets you merge, split, reorder and rotate pages, and add watermarks and encryption too. You can also digitally sign PDF documents using it. There are features for attaching files to PDF and editing metadata as well. jPDF Tweak requires Java 5, or even higher, to run. It uses iText library to manipulate PDF documents and JGoodies Forms for its GUI.

34 Sites To Download Royalty Free and Creative Commons Music For Teachers

1. Archive's audio and MP3 library This library contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.

2. ArtistServer Free independent music, 11,000 mp3 downloads by more than 10,000 artists.

3. Audiofarm It´s the best and easiest way to find new and interesting music, audio recordings, people and friends from around the world.

4. Audionautix All music in this online collection created by Jason Shaw. Released under Creative Commons license 3.0 You are free to use the music (even for commercial purposes) as long as you credit "Music from - audionautix.com"OR provide a link to this website from yours. Music must be part of some other created works. No further permission is required.

5. BeatPick Creative Commons licenses allow the use of music for free for non-commercial projects, provided that users credit your name in association with their multimedia projects. Thus, we provide music for free for scholastic and socially involved projects, while we require that governmental funded ones pay a licensing fee. For personal use, we encourage our users to buy the albums/EPs from our site. To obtain the download of the required files, all projects must provide us with their name, e-mail and project description, allowing us to control that they are indeed entitle to such uses.

6. Brainy Betty Free Sound Clips and Music for Presentations!

7. Bump Foot Bump Foot is a non-profit netlabel in Japan. There are two main branches. Bump side : techno and house, or based on them. Foot side : ambient, IDM, or etc... other than bump side.You are free: to Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to Remix - to adapt the work.

8. CASH MusicCASH Music is a non-profit organization that hosts digital tools for musicians and labels to share their music. The digital tool allows for uploads and downloads of songs and sharing is made easy.

9. ccMixter Looking for music for a video, school project, game you're developing, podcast or just for listening in your cubicle or mobile music device? Find exactly the music you're looking for - podsafe, liberally licensed - using dig.ccMixter Music Discovery tool.

10. CCTrax All showcased music is available under one of the six Creative Commons licenses. They authorize free music download and enable the artists to promote their music while protecting their rights.

11. DanoSongs Hi, I'm Dan-O and I post my original music as free MP3 downloads here on DanoSongs.com. You can listen to the songs online or download the tracks. It's also legal to use the music royalty free in your video, game, film, presentation, slideshow or website.

12. FMA The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

13. Freeplay Music Library Freeplay's first product, the Freeplay Music Library, is a comprehensive collection of High End Broadcast production music spanning all the popular musical genres, available for download either on-line or via our Portable Hard Drive.

14. FreeSFXDownload free sound effects.Stuart Duffield has been creating audio professionally for 18 years. Having worked predominately in the Games Industry, he has produced a wide range of audio for various worldwide clients and numerous high profile projects. Based in the UK, Stuart has a history of synthesising, recording, designing, processing and editing audio of all types. Having worked in-house for a number of major Game Developers, Stuart currently works on a freelance / contract basis. This involves audio design, music composition and voice production in various forms - for Games, Animation, TV and Film.

15. Freesound Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse.

16. iBeat Free Beats - Download beats, loops, breaks and samples Free beats, loops, and breaks - iBeat.org iBeat - pushing beats, loops and breaks since 2007. Free under Creative Commons licensing.

17. Incompetech Incompetech hosts a wide variety of royalty free music. You can browse their selection by genre or feel. "Feel" would include things like: Action, Relaxed, Intense or Humorous; you can select a combination of 'Feels' and it will check its database for selection matches. Clips can be played on the website and instantly downloaded as well.

18. Jamendo370,000 tracks.Free music for all. Enjoy unlimited music, it's completely free and legal.

19. JewelBeat Free Background Music. Easily search thru over 4,000 free background music and sound effects simply by using keywords. No need to download to preview - just type in keywords, listen immediately then download what you need! Start searching for free background music.

20. Josh Woodward Yes, you can freely download, share and use all 180+ of Josh Woodward songs.

21. Kompoz Kompoz is an online community that prides in collaboration between artists from all over the world. Artists post their clips on the website where anyone can download it and use it for their own productions. They can also add their own instruments or creative mix to the original clip and upload it on the website again.

22. LifeSounds LifeSounds works on the integration of music throughout the curriculum. Their desire is to build each individuals' ability to strengthen their emotional intelligence and to encourage understanding between people.

23. Musopen Set music FREE. Musopen (www.musopen.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.

24. Orphan Songs The Orphan Songs website is running by Carl-Otto Johansson. Most of the music here is free to download and use. (Creative Commons).

25. PacDV This is a small database of free audio clips organised by mood or emotion such as: Warm, Loving, Serious or Lonely.

26. Partners in Rhyme Royalty free music libraries for you to download and start using right away in your commercial projects. These high quality music tracks will make your projects more effective and sound more professional.

27. Public Domain 4U Great Historical Music Recordings, Free to Download, Play, and Share. Our musical heritage is our culture. The Past should be appreciated, not neglected. These artists are so unique, they should never be forgotten. This site is designed for your musical edification. This site can not grant any commercial uses of this material.

28. Purple Planet Free Collection of Royalty Free Music available for download, composed and performed by Geoff Harvey and Chris Martyn Music can be used free of charge for web-based projects e.g. YouTube (see 'Using Our Music' for more info) in exchange for a link to our site. Donations are welcome!

29. Restorm This is a platform to sell music to the public. Also, you can download some of their free selection of music just by creating an account.

30. Royalty Free Music Library Royalty Free Music Library is proud to offer one of the largest offerings of online broadcast-quality royalty free music anywhere on the web. Download royalty free music from 3 of the top royalty free catalogs online:

1. Royalty Free Music Revolution - The definitive royalty free music catalog with over 1000 songs from some of the top composers in the industry.

2. Radical Music Library - Royalty free music with cutting edge productions and "indie" attitude. Created by professional composers with a long list of film and television credits.

3. Mojo Music Library - An offering of top- notch royalty free music with broader coverage on each CD for those who need a bit wider coverage for their budget.

31. SampleSwap Creative Commons Licensed Electronic Music for Commercial and Non-Commercial Royalty-Free use(Free professional-quality MP3s for DJ'ing, film scores, radio, TV, video games, podcasting, etc.). These pre-cleared songs were uploaded by artists at sampleswap.org under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. Please be sure to read the licensing information for each track carefully before using any of this music.

32. Sonnyboo 40 completely free pieces of music. For each and every single song below, all you have to do is credit the songwriter - Peter John Ross (www.sonnyboo.com) and the music is your to use for free.

33. SoundCloud SoundCloud is a website where artists share their new tracks to the world. There is a section under Creative Commons license where you can download other people's tracks. You can stream the available clips and it takes just a simple click to get the MP3 file without any registration.

34. Stock Music Boutique Stock Music Boutique library offers high quality royalty-free production music. All tracks have full music clearance ready for instant buy out. Find a track you like and use it forever at no extra cost.

18 Free Stock Photos Sites For Teachers

1. PublicDomainPictures.net is a repository for free public domain photos. You can download high quality photos, upload your own pictures, earn money to charity, get exposure and gain popularity and improve your photographic and graphic skills.

2. FreeImages is not just another clipart graphic site!.... more than 6000 original stock photos all for FREE! Free images is a high quality resource of digital stock photographic images for use by all. All images in their collection are free to use on websites and printed materials.

3. FreeFoto.com is made up of 132232 images with 182 sections organized into 3630 categories.

4. Free stock photos, easy to download, easy to browse. Use them for commercial or personal design projects of any kind! Some are even public domain, so you can use those for whatever you want. Whether you're looking for free stock designs for your project, free stock photography for your next big design or something in-between, freestockfor.us is your resource for quick downloads!

5. FreePixels offers free high resolution stock photos for use in both personal and commercial design projects.

6. Nearly 100% of their Royalty Free Stock Photos are Free Download. Every image is absolutely free, with some more options to buy individual higher resolutions. They can be used either for private or commercial purposes. In exchange, we only ask you to use the images according to our Licensing.

7. The SXC (stock.xhng) is a website providing free-to use stock photography and illustrations. The stock.xhng operates as a hybrid of a picture library site and a social networking site; registered users may set up a personal profile, upload their photographic works to share with other users, write a blog and participate in online forums to discuss and critique each others' work.

8. The 4 Free Photos is an online community of photographers who enjoy taking pictures and decided to share them with the public to use them for free in their private or commercial projects. They hope you will find the collection of free and public domain images useful.

9. Morgue File is an easy to use free photo site. Free images for your inspiration, reference and use in your creative work, be it commercial or not!

10. From Free Digital Photos you can download royalty free photos and illustrations for websites, newspapers, magazines, video and TV productions, iPhone applications, PowerPoint presentations, forums, blogs and school work.

11. Turbo Photo offers Free stock images from 10 categories (3.4 GB). Stock images are in the public domain.

12. If you are a designer you can download high resolution RF stock images for free from Dreams Time. If you are a photographer you have the opportunity to achieve a great portfolio exposure by offering free images.

13. Image * After is a large online free photo collection. You can download and use any image or texture from our site and use it in your own work, either personal or commercial.

14. In Public Domain Photos you can access 5,000 free photos, 8,000 free cliparts. All photos on this web site are public domain. You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial.

15. The photos in the Flickr Free Use Photos Group are available for use by anyone. There is no need to give credit or to fear rights infringement. These images are posted by their creators. By posting to this group, you're allowing freedom of use.

16. Free photos and clip art from Microsoft Office Online

17. Every Stock Photo is a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free, without advertising, and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos.

18. PikWizard offers a stunning library of over 1 million stock images and videos. These are royalty free and safe for commercial use, with no attribution required. You can also take each image and edit on graphic design software, Design Wizard!

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324 Free Tools for Teachers - Free Educational Technology

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At this article you will find 324 Free Educational Technology Tools for teachers, online educators, instructors and eLearning professionals.

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In today's world, you would be hard-pressed to find an area of life that hasn't been affected by the process of digitalization. In other words, modern technology has pretty much permeated every pore of our society, and that includes education, as well. However, there is still lots of potential in that field that hasn't been taken advantage of, and that situation should be remedied in the future, because there are plenty of benefits digital education is here to give.

While the term digital classroom is very loosely defined, it applies to those classrooms which employ modern technology and communications in order to provide students with information. They use that information online, or in a traditional classroom with their teachers and fellow students in order to learn new lessons.

What modern technology enables us to do is to introduce elements of gamification into the education process, which should improve student motivation and information retention, as well as their ability to do their own research and work in teams. It also allows for individualization of learning and encourages students to seek out the content that they like.

With that in mind, we have put together a comprehensive list of 12 digital tools for digital classrooms that can help you create your own digital classroom. Keep on reading to find more about each and every one of them.

1. Moodle.
Moodle, which is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, is an expansive tool that is a Learning Management System (LMS) at its core, but which also enables students and teachers to create their own custom learning environments that fit their needs perfectly. Furthermore, it is also an open-source initiative, which makes it free, and its functionality can be expanded through integration of different features, plugins, and modules.

2. Engrade.
Engrade allows teachers to keep track of all their classes with just one application, and that includes managing grades and exporting them to Microsoft Excel. The same app can be used to track student attendance, as well as performance in class. Another useful feature of Engrade is that teachers can create interactive lessons using the materials they have collected online, and even make online quizzes that will prepare their students for future tests.

The digital era is definitely here to stay, and there is little we can do to stop it. The fact of the matter is, we may not want to, especially when it comes to education, which can be enhanced by all these different tools for digital classrooms; platforms, apps, and devices. What matter is that students learn, and by communicating with them through a medium that they are familiar with, we have better chances of engaging and getting through to them. Let's lead them into the future.

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12 Aid Tools For Digital Classrooms - eLearning Industry

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In today's world, you would be hard-pressed to find an area of life that hasn't been affected by the process of digitalization. In other words, modern technology has pretty much permeated every pore of our society, and that includes education, as well.

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Digital Multimedia Tools | Faculty Innovation Center

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You don't need expensive software to produce engaging course content for use inside and outside your classroom. Check out the following options -- many are free and work inside your web browser and with Canvas (no downloading necessary!) -- to enhance the quality and effectiveness of your presentations.

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Using Media to Enhance Teaching and Learning

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Media can be used in almost any discipline to enhance learning, both in class, and also for out-of-class assignments. Short film and television clips, written articles, and blog postings can be viewed to reinforce concepts and spark discussion. Songs and music videos, especially when the lyrics are made available, can be used to the same effect.

Research suggests that people learn abstract, new, and novel concepts more easily when they are presented in both verbal and visual form (Salomon, 1979). Other empirical research shows that visual media make concepts more accessible to a person than text media and help with later recall (Cowen, 1984). In Willingham's (2009) research he asks a simple question to make his point, "Why do students remember everything that's on television and forget what we lecture?" -- because visual media helps students retain concepts and ideas. Bransford, Browning, and Cocking (1999, p 194) also note the crucial role that technology plays for creating learning environments that extend the possibilities of one-way communication media, such as movies, documentaries, television shows and music into new areas that require interactive learning like visualizations and student-created content.

The Advantages of Using Media:

Many media sources (feature films, music videos, visualizations, news stories) have very high production quality capable of showcasing complex ideas in a short period of time. This helps develop quantitative reasoning. Learn more about this technique using the Teaching Quantitative Reasoning with the News module.

Media offers both cognitive and affective experiences. It can provoke discussion, an assessment of one's values, and an assessment of self if the scenes have strong emotional content.

The use of media sources help connect learners with events that are culturally relevant. As a result, a positive consequence of utilizing media is that instructors must keep their materials and examples up-to-date.

News stories can be used to connect theories taught in the classroom with real world events and policies.

The Advantages of Media for Students:

Popular media (films, music, YouTube) are a familiar medium to students that helps gain attention and maintain student interest in the theories and concepts under discussion. Students can see the theories and concepts in action. In more than a figurative sense, theories and concepts leap from the screen.

Students can hone their analytical skills by analyzing media using the theories and concepts they are studying.

The use of media in the classroom enables students to see concepts and new examples when they are watching television, listening to music, or are at the movies with friends.

Students can experience worlds beyond their own, especially if the media is sharply different from their local environment.

In addition to numerous advantages, there are also a number of cautions that faculty should keep in mind in utilizing media. Using media requires a complete understanding of copyright law, an appreciation of the workload involved, and some skill in recognizing content that will enhance learning, instead of becoming a distraction.

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Why Use Media to Enhance Teaching and Learning

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Media can be used in almost any discipline to enhance learning, both in class, and also for out-of-class assignments. Short film and television clips, written articles, and blog postings can be viewed to reinforce ...

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A digital audio editor is defined as a computer application for manipulating digital audio. As a multimedia creator, we normally use audio editor for recording audio, edit the duration and timeline, mix multiple sound tracks, apply simple effects for audio enhancement and create conversion between different audio file formats.

There are countless ways that digital audio editor can be used, and fortunately there are plenty of good and free digital audio editors out there to help you with your own implementation. So if you're thinking to purchase a license for Adobe Audition, Cool Edit or Soundforge, hold that thought first. Not to say they aren't cool, but it's always wiser to tryout free applications before going to the pay deal.

Here's our collection of 25 free digital audio editors. Full list after jump!

1. Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports many advanced and powerful operations with audio data.

You can use Power Sound Editor Free to record your own music, voice, or other audio files, edit it, mix it with other audio or musical parts, add effects like Reverb, Chorus, and Echo, and burn it on a CD, post it on the World Wide Web or e-mail it.

2. mp3DirectCut is a fast and extensive audio editor and recorder for compressed mp3. You can directly cut, copy, paste or change the volume with no need to decompress your files for audio editing. Using Cue sheets, pause detection or Auto cue you can easily divide long files.

3. Sound Engine

SoundEngine is the best tool for personal use, because it enables you to easily edit a wave data while it has many functions required for a mastering process.

4. Ecawave

Ecawave is a simple graphical audio file editor. The user-interface is based on Qt libraries, while almost all audio functionality is taken directly from ecasound libraries. As ecawave is designed for editing large audio files, all processing is done direct-to-disk. Simple waveform caching is used to speed-up file operations. Ecawave supports all audio file formats and effect algorithms provided by ecasound libraries. This includes JACK, ALSA, OSS, aRts, over 20 file formats, over 30 effect types, LADSPA plugins and multi-operator effect presets.

5. Jokosher

Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-track studio. With it you can create and record music, podcasts and more, all from an integrated simple environment.

6. Mp3Splt-project is a utility to split mp3 and ogg files selecting a begin and an end time position, without decoding. It's very useful to split large mp3/ogg to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain original tracks. If you want to split an album, you can select split points and filenames manually or you can get them automatically from CDDB (internet or a local file) or from .cue files. Supports also automatic silence split, that can be used also to adjust cddb/cue splitpoints. You can extract tracks from Mp3Wrap or AlbumWrap files in few seconds.

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25 Free Digital Audio Editors You Should Know

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A digital audio editor is defined as a computer application for manipulating digital audio. As a multimedia creator, we normally use audio editor for recording audio, edit the duration and timeline, mix multiple sound tracks, apply simple effects for audio enhancement and create conversion between different audio file formats.

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Summary: Screen casting is a very helpful technique in eLearning. It can be used by teachers or instructors who want to create video tutorials or presentations. This is why I created a list of the best free video tools for teachers.

The Best Free Video Tools For Teachers

Beginners might ask what screencasting is. Well, basically you just record a video of your screen and produce an output in video format. Yes, if you want to share something on your screen you could simply do some screenshots or still photos of it, but if you want to go beyond that and make learning more fun and efficient, then try screencasting. You could find so many screencast tools on the web but some of them are quite expensive. This is why I compiled a list of the best free screencast tools that will help you create wonderful video tutorials without spending a cent.

1. Ezvid
Ezvid is a 100%free video creation tool that allows you to capture everything that appears on your computer screen. It also allows you to edit your recorded videos by splitting your recordings, inserting text and audio, controlling the speed and even drawing directly on your screen. There's also a Gaming Mode specially designed for gamers to avoid black screen problems when recording games such as Diablo III and Call of Duty which are full screen games. You can save your edited videos for later use or you may directly upload them on YouTube.

2. BlueBerry Flashback Express Recorder
This recorder just, like other screencast tools, enables you tocapture your screen while recording yourself through a webcam. It introduces quite a long list of features that will let you edit videos like a pro. BB Flashback Express Recorder also has a very easy user interface that allows you to decide what area of your screen you would like to capture and whether to record sound and web activity or not. Another good thing about it is that you can have scheduled recordings so you wouldn't have to miss online events. It also includes a player which works like a VCR and allows you to review your recording frame-by-frame.

3. Screenr
Screenr is aweb-based screen recorder. Yes, you read it right. It's web-based so that means, you wouldn't have to install it on your computer but it requires Java to run. Screenr allows you to easily capture your screen by logging on to their website, clicking on the record button and keeping it open while you are capturing your screen activity. Keep in mind that you only have a maximum of 5 minutes per recording. Files are saved on the site. When you're finished, you'll be given a link that can be easily shared by email or can be embedded on websites. It's absolutely free, works on both MAC and PC and will work even on your iPhone.

4. Rylstim Screen Recorder
Rylstim is a verysimple and easy to use Screen Recorder which, aside from capturing your screen, also allows you to record events happening on the monitor including right and left clicks. It has a minimalistic and intuitive interface but supports multiple CODECs. You can also customize the video frame rates. Rylstim Screen Recorder works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows

5. Krut
Krut is ascreencast tool that works in almost any Operating system and requires Java to run. It's a very simple program with only 3 basic controls: Record, Snap for still pictures, and the Arrow button used to adjust the borders of your recording area. It's very minimalist without all those complicated features that other screencast tools offer, but it can be powerful too because of some additional features such as timer-controlled recording. You can also use it for recording streaming video and audio.

6. CamStudio
CamStudio is a pretty straightforward program that lets yourecord your screen and audio and produce outputs in AVI or SWF format. It enables annotation such as text and call out inserts and even provides you some cursor options such as default, hidden or highlighted, which should be carefully laid out prior to recording. You have some video options too which lets you control compression, frame rates , quality and time lapse but aside from that, you can't really do much with the video because it doesn't include editing capabilities.

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7. Webineria
Webineria is anopen-source easy-to-use screencast tool which lets you capture your screen activity and do "picture-in-picture" video by adding your webcam stream. It provides you 3 frame rate options: 5, 10 and 15 frames per second and outputs can be produced in either AVI or FLV format. It has built in features too that let you adjust the boundaries of your record area, use hotkeys to pause and resume recording. Outputs are saved on the site and can be shared via email links or embedding on websites.

8. Screen-O-Matic
Screencast-O-Matic is a screencast tool which has both web-based and desktop versions. It's very easy to use and will run so long as you have Java installed on your computer. It hasfree video hosting and allows you to record your screen or both your screen and webcam. You may also publish your output directly to YouTube. The free versions of Screencast-O-Matic has limited features though. For instance, there's a 15-minute recording time limit, there's a small watermark when recording, it doesn't allow webcam-only recording and it doesn't allow you to zoom and annotate while recording.

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The 8 Best Free Video Tools For Teachers

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Summary: Screen casting is a very helpful technique in eLearning. It can be used by teachers or instructors who want to create video tutorials or presentations. This is why I created a list of the best free video tools for teachers. Beginners might ask what screencasting is .

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Apps for Making Videos

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Shooting and sharing videos has never been so easy, with a wide selection of mobile apps available to capture, edit and distribute your footage. Some are squeezed-down smartphone versions of powerful, desktop, video-editing software, while others are inventive new tools for the Instagram generation of social sharers. There are specialist video-making apps for special effects, stop-motion and even virtual reality film-making, and novelty apps to raise a smile with face swapping or retro filters. Here are 20 of the best apps to try in 2016, whatever your level of expertise.

If you're looking to edit video on an iPhone or iPad, Apple's own app continues to be one of the most accessible options. Simple touch controls belie powerful tools for editing your clips together, before sharing them with friends.
All free unless otherwise stated

Twitter's Vine app started off as a way to make looping six-second videos, but it recently announced plans to up the limit to 140 seconds. Vine's one-touch system for shooting clips that then flow together remains very clever.

FxGuru: Movie FX Director (Android/iOS)

From werewolves and zombies to earthquakes and meteor strikes, FxGuru is a fun app for adding Hollywood-style special effects to your own clips. Filming your child playing with a giant, menacing mech-robot was never so easy.

PowerDirector Mobile (Android)

Android users looking for a direct equivalent to Apple's iMovie should check out this. It's easy for whipping up quick films with your footage, but its more powerful features are worth tinkering with for even better results.

Minecraft Stop-Motion Movie Creator (Android/iOS)

This app from Mattel is for Minecraft-mad children who want to make stop-motion movies with their favourite characters, from pigs to creepers, which are sold separately. Kids will get the hang of shooting quickly, and have lots of fun.

Wherever you're planning to edit your footage, FiLMiC Pro is one of the best apps to shoot it. Perfect for everyone from beginners to videography pros, it has bags of features - slo-mo, time-lapse, all manner of aspect-ratio options and even a vertical-orientation mode.

Virtual reality headsets, from Oculus Rift to Google Cardboard, are growing in popularity. Splash is one of the first apps that helps you shoot 360-degree video to be watched on them, as well as shared with friends who can watch them without a headset.

A mobile craze in 2015, but Dubsmash has legs well into 2016. It's an app for creating "lip dub" videos, where you mime along to famous songs and film/TV quotes, then share the results with friends - on social networks or (a recent addition) by messaging them within the app.

Pinnacle Studio Pro (iOS)

Another powerful video-editing app which, like iMovie, has its roots on desktop computers. It's been updated smartly for touchscreen devices though: editing together your videos, soundtracks and photos is a cinch.
£9.99

Boomerang from Instagram (Android/iOS)

Instagram has a number of spin-off apps, including Hyperlapse and Layout. But Boomerang is very inventive: it shoots 10 photos quickly from your front or rear camera, then turns them into a GIF-like looping clip.

Originally focused on capturing video, MoviePro added editing features to make it a good all-round option for budding mobile film directors. Shooting, editing and sharing are easy, but it has some surprisingly professional depths to explore too.
£4.49

Watching live streams of other people playing games has become one of the hottest forms of online TV. Mobcrush is a way to broadcast your own mobile gaming skills direct from your device (on Android) or via a companion Mac app (on iOS).

Adobe Premiere Clip (Android/iOS)

Adobe is one of the most experienced companies making professional video-editing software. That's reflected even in its mobile app for more casual users, although pros will like the way it can transfer clips to their desktops.

Facebook liked this face-swapping app so much that it bought the company, although MSQRD remains available on the app stores. You can shoot and share unsettling videos, swapping your face with a friend, even broadcasting live on Facebook.

PocketVideo (Android/iOS)

PocketVideo is one of the video apps aimed specifically at "creators" - vloggers pushing videos out to YouTube, Snapchat and other social networks. Its mix of filters, titles, stickers and GIFs is a recipe for entertaining vids.

One of the newest apps on this list, Videorama is a jack of all trades: clip-editing, animated text titles, soundtracks, visual filters and even special effects (explosions included) are part of the package, as well as simple social-sharing options.

This app used to be called Replay before it was bought by wearable cameras firm GoPro earlier this year. It's one of the most user-friendly apps for editing together video clips, photos and soundtracks, especially with its automatic mode to do the hard work for you.

It's oh so 2016 to pitch an app by promising it'll "get more likes on Instagram and Facebook", but Vue isn't just for social show-offs. It's an accessible app for creating montage videos, complete with digital stickers and filters.

VHS Camcorder (Android/iOS)

An app for anyone old (sorry, experienced) enough to remember wielding a camcorder in the 1980s. This shoots video on your smartphone and makes it look like 30-year-old crackly home videos, with faithful zoom, date and dodgy audio features.
£2.29

Kinomatic Video Camera (iOS)

Finally, an app targeted at talented film-makers and broadcasters rather than casual users. Kinomatic is stuffed with pro features, including keeping your lighting settings between shooting sessions.
£2.99
Topics

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Shooting and sharing videos has never been so easy, with a wide selection of mobile apps available to capture, edit and distribute your footage. Some are squeezed-down smartphone versions of powerful, desktop, video-editing software, while others are inventive new tools for the Instagram generation of social sharers.

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Why Should You Use Multimedia in the Classroom?

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Why Should You Use Multimedia in the Classroom?

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Why should you use multimedia in the classroom?

Multimedia has permeated every part of our society. As the 21st century progresses further, it will be even more important that students understand multimedia and transition from passive consumers to active, thinking users. As a teacher, you have the opportunity to engage your students like never before. Through interactive games, video clips, and podcasts, you can help meet the needs of your students.

So what are some reasons for using multimedia resources in the classroom? If you have any ideas, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to add to the list in the comments section.

Mobility: We are a world on the go. Cell phones, iPads, and laptops are in the hands of the vast majority of adults and are increasingly in the hands of most students. It's becoming apparent that these devices are quickly becoming the primary means by which we communicate. In fact, for cell phones, most of the communication among students happens not with the actual phone but rather with text messaging. Learning can happen anytime and anywhere with these devices. For homework, rather than having your students complete a worksheet, have them watch a video revolving around a specific lesson and come prepared to discuss it the next day in class.

Individualized: Multimedia resources can help you meet the needs of your students. Your visual learners may learn best with a short video, while your auditory learners may prefer an audio clip or podcast, and your bodily-kinesthetic learner may succeed with an online interactive. In each case, the same topic could be covered, but each student would work with his or her strengths to maximize learning.

Collaborative: Blogs, social networking sites, and wikis allow students to interact with and teach each other, not only within their own school but with learners across the country and the world, as well. On top of that, sites like Twitter can be an invaluable professional development tool. Follow other teachers and experts to gain insights into the latest trends, lesson plans, and ways to integrate technology into your curriculum.

Flexibility: Back in the day, you were married to your textbook, and if there was something you thought would help elaborate a specific concept or lesson, it could be extremely difficult to find a way to implement it into your class. Today, the world is at your fingertips: you can have your students research online; bring experts into your classroom with podcasts or ICN sessions; display interactive models; find apps relevant to your lesson on a smart phone; and have your students design something that is real and meaningful.

Global: Making schools globally competitive was a theme that was explored in great detail at the Iowa Education Summit this past July. By connecting your students to a global community, they can learn about new cultures and countries in authentic ways. Additionally, multimedia will help broaden your students' view of the world, preparing them to interact with a broader community in an increasingly collaborative global market.

How and why do you use multimedia in your classroom?

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Why Should You Use Multimedia in the Classroom?

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Why should you use multimedia in the classroom? Multimedia has permeated every part of our society. As the 21st century progresses further, it will be even more important that students understand multimedia and transition from passive consumers to active, thinking users. As a teacher, you have the opportunity to engage your students like never before.

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Many regard Twitter as quite a useless social media sharing portal. Some have this negative opinion, mainly because of the fact Twitter allows you to "tweet" or post only 140 characters in length. This length equals the text of a regular SMS, and for some this is simply not enough. However, Twitter proves to be an extremely helpful little educational tool. By using Twitter in education, you can post only a few short sentences, but that is exactly enough to transmit the essence of your message.

Leading such busy lives, people do not have the time or the mood to read long walls of text. They prefer to capture only the essence, and using Twitter in education helps you with that. This social media portal is widely used among the academia all across the world. Students, journalists, actors, politicians, important leaders, and sports people... they all use Twitter. So how can such a tool really prove helpful in the educational field?

1. Tweet homework and assignments.

Both teachers and students can easily and quickly tweet details of homework and assignments using Twitter in education. You can also include links to important online sources/pages, and don't forget to mention the due dates in your tweet. This way, everyone with an account will receive a notification, and they can share, forward or respond to the tweet.

2. Get important educational resources.

Many times teachers are simply out of ideas regarding interactive and creative methods of teaching. Now, by searching for " Twitter for Teachers" resources, you can get instant access to hundreds of important links. Get insightful ideas from other teachers around the world, follow the good examples or share your own efficient teaching methods. Twitter is a good tool for professional development.

3. Student collaboration.

The email seems to become an old fashioned tool for collaboration. Now teachers can motivate students to use Twitter in order to work on collaborative assignments. This way, you can also intervene at any point by giving a good advice, sharing an interesting link with your students, or helping them with important resources for research.

4. Announcing field trips.

Students love surprises. Therefore, write a creative 140 characters long description of the great field trip you will all take together... if the classroom results are good for everyone. Within minutes, you will see dozens of messages congratulating you for the idea. Plus, by advertising the field trip through Twitter, everyone will get a real time notification.

5. Subscribe to relevant hashtags.

Discuss with students in the classroom what issues they would like to follow on Twitter. Have a talk on the relevant issues for your class, and then decide together what hashtags you should all follow. By getting regular news updates through following, there will always be an interesting topic to debate in class. Using Twitter in education provides a great way of socialization and encourages students to speak up for the issues they believe in, and become opinionated.

6. Tweet about changes in the program.

If there is any change your students should know about, you can use Twitter to inform them. For example, if the class will be held in another classroom or if the class will be skipped the next day. Students receive instant notifications, and they can share with fellow students. If there is any last minute change regarding the school program, just send out a short tweet.

7. Organizing contests.

Have students prepare for your next class by writing a nice essay, or by solving a tough math problem. Give them incentives, and motivate them to enter the contest. Students love to interact through social media, and you will get a great number of participants in your school related contest.

8. Syncing Twitter with relevant blogs.

It is very useful for teachers, parents and students. Twitter allows you to sync with WordPress blogs, and all update notifications will be received through Twitter. This way, everyone can tune in and check out the fresh updates of different logs, without actually entering separately each address. Teachers can check the posts of their students by clicking on the link, while students can follow the posts and updates of their peers.

9. Research tool for students.

Any student can quickly and easily find high authority research material using Twitter in education. All they need to do is type in the search bar relevant keywords, and they will receive a list with dozens of relevant websites and blogs. There is also the option to search for specific phrases, key figures, discussion topics, relevant discussion forums, etc.

10. Network through hashtag chats.

Search for any topic that you are highly interested in, and join other great groups available on Twitter. Make new friends, express your opinion on an academic matter, and ask your fellow students or teachers to join. You will form one huge and powerful army of experts and debaters on topics that are of high interest to you.

11. Share interesting topics.

Help your fellow students get a better understanding of a tough topic for class. If you found an interesting article, a website or even someone worth following on Twitter, share it with other students. The same goes for teachers, who should definitely share educational materials and links with students using Twitter as the main platform.

12. Create a unique classroom hashtag.

With so many hashtags available out there, it is quite difficult to find a unique one. However, find such a relevant word and use it for your classroom hashtag. Then ask all students and teachers to join, and this will be your little virtual online classroom. Hashtags are used to find groups of interest and then connect with them, so make sure you give away your hashtag only to those you want to join the respective group.

13. Write mini reviews.

Both teachers and students can use Twitter to write very short and concise reviews of a movie or a book. This way, you will make a recommendation to watch or not to watch a certain movie. Connect with your teachers and fellow students even for entertainment through Twitter. The reviews should be short, but they may contain links to the full article or review you posted on a website for example.

14. Surveying students.

Now and then it is worth engaging students into a poll. As a teacher you can now inform your students about the new survey through Twitter. Find out what they like/dislike about your class, what changes they would want to make, what books they prefer to read, or what recreational activities they would prefer more. It is amazing how many essential things you will learn about your students by having them complete such a survey (Twitter link to Survey Monkey for example).

15. Teach through play.

You could invite students to write collaboratively a nice poem. You suggest the first two lines on Twitter, and then everyone else will try to come up with a new rhyming and relevant line. This is particularly useful for creative writing or English class, and students will love your ingeniousness. Instead of a poem, you could ask them to write a letter, with each student adding a few lines until they create a nice story. Then, you will read the entire work of art in class and analyze it together.

Conclusion

These are only a few ideas on how to successfully use Twitter in education. This micro-blogging portal is not only for entertainment, but it can have a very important role in academia as well. Students, teachers and parents will all benefit of being active on Twitter. The portal also helps forming very united and compact groups, and it helps increase the productivity and responsiveness of students. Now the entire classroom can join Twitter, and everyone can start using all the amazing features offered by the portal: Advertise, inform, share, respond, create a buzz, invite... and anything else you can imagine!

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15 Ways To Use Twitter In Education (For Students And Teachers Alike) - eLearning Industry

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Many regard Twitter as quite a useless social media sharing portal. Some have this negative opinion, mainly because of the fact Twitter allows you to "tweet" or post only 140 characters in length. This length equals the text of a regular SMS, and for some this is simply not enough.

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Share this.....
By Carolina Santarossa & Josefina Castillo
Over the last decade, research into second language learning and teaching has focused increasingly on the use of technology in the classroom. The interactive features of multi-media can entice teachers to explore novel ways to engage students more creatively. In this sense, the technological device that is closest to learners is the cell phone. Most language teachers agree on the advantages of implementing mobile learning in their classes. However, many of them complain that what they need is not to be told about the benefits of its inclusion, but practical ways of doing so. Although there are many useful applications that help teachers include cell phones in their classes, not all of them would completely fit our Argentinean context. The simplest, and most widely spread application among students nowadays is Whatsapp, and it's free!

We decided to present the workshop "What is up in the classroom? Whatsapp!" at FAAPI 2016 so as to give teachers ideas and insights that worked in our language classrooms, providing specific activities for the development of all the skills.
Our Theoretical Basis - or lack thereof?
As mentioned above, the content of this article was to be presented at FAAPI 2016, so we thought that our first task was to look for similar ideas coming from names of greater importance, so as to provide some kind of theoretical background to our practices. The reality was, however, that we had started applying this method of working long before we even considered FAAPI 2016. When we finally started our research, we found that there was, in fact, not much theory that dealt specifically with Whatsapp. Surely, there was plenty about mobile learning, blended learning and the use of technology, but there was little research as specific as our topic.

We did come across the findings provided by Dan Bouhnik and Mor Deshen, who carried out research concerned with the social and academic advantages of different types of social media - including Whatsapp. They concluded that, in these respects, Whatsapp was the most integrative of all, mainly because of its multiplicity of options, simplicity, accessibility and efficiency. They were succinctly expressing what we had thought all along. That's exactly what we had set out to demonstrate in our classroom practice.
Our Way of Making it Work Setting the rules
The first essential step to take into account is establishing the guidelines. We went over all our rules with the students, so that they knew exactly what was expected from them. In a similar way to how classroom rules are introduced the first day of class, the way in which you present the Whatsapp project to your students is going to set the pace for the rest of the activities. It is vital that students are aware of both what they are supposed to do, and how they are going to be assessed. As regards this last point, it is also important that you are clear on the rubrics that are going to be taken into account to correct students' productions - and if and when they are going to be graded.

It is also advisable to ask parents for their permission to use Whatsapp in the classroom (in the case of younger learners), or to let them know that some assignments were going to be carried out using this app (in the case of older learners). The following screenshots were given to our students in printed format in order to introduce our project rules and assessment criteria. Needless to say, such rules and criteria have to be designed in such a way that they match your own classroom reality.

Screenshot 1: rules.

Screenshot 2: assessment.
Creating the group
The next step, as expected, was creating the Whatsapp groups. At the beginning, we created one group for each class, in which all the students from said class were included, and we performed a "trial" activity for students to fully understand how the process would work. Then, we considered it was sometimes necessary to create groups of 4 or 5 students (we were included in all the groups although we didn't participate in all the chats). Creating smaller groups facilitated our follow-up work, fostered more personal assessment and improved the integration of all the learners since we kept on changing the members of the groups for each of the tasks. This methodology was also useful when some students didn't have their phones with them - or simply didn't have a cell phone at all - since it allowed for them to work in pairs or trios and send their answers to the smaller groups.
Implementing the activities
Taking into account the context and characteristics of each group, we implemented the Whatsapp activities in different ways: as compulsory assignments to practice topics dealt with in class, as homework, as extra activities for fast learners (with the benefit of having them in silence), as entertaining and relaxing activities at the end of the class or as rewards for good behavior. What is important to highlight is that the first message for each specific activity must be clearly organized, since that was the chat initiation point and the instructions needed to be fully understood by all the students.

Screenshot 3: example of activity.
Designing the Activities Reading
Developing reading skills is one of the easiest tasks on Whatsapp since we can provide plenty of activities to improve reading comprehension by simply having a text on our mobile phones. However, we should bear in mind that the texts must be short as students may not have big screens to be able to read comfortably.

The idea of practicing reading comprehension through Whatsapp is not to replace the extensive reading done in the classroom. These short texts are meant to reinforce the skills they have already learnt in class, and to provide real life material - such as jokes, short articles on trendy topics, pieces of ad, etc.

One major advantage of these tasks is that they can be done anytime, anywhere: at home as homework, or in the classroom for fast finishers - and it helps keep them quiet!
Writing
Writing is another useful skill we can easily make students practice via Whatsapp... and it's more fun! Just remember that the assigned writings should be shorter than the assignments on paper format. We suggest that this type of activity be used to foster purely communicative and informal writing. Students feel really motivated doing these tasks since it's something they usually do: they use Whatsapp to communicate on a variety of topics via written language. These activities can be adapted to fit even the lowest levels, as shown in the beginners' activity portrayed in Screenshot 4, in which students uploaded pictures and made comments on them.

Screenshot 4: writing task.
Listening
This skill is probably one of the hardest to practice in the language classroom, mainly due to lack of equipment, background noise in the case of large classrooms and time constraints. Whenever these obstacles fail to appear and the listening activity goes fine, we always have that one student who finishes first and "spoils" the answers for the rest. It is common knowledge among teachers that most students find listening comprehension difficult. For these reasons, we consider Whatsapp a useful tool to give all students the opportunity to do the task at their own pace. We recommend doing these exercises as homework, when they can get the most out of the activity. However, it can also be done in the classroom, as long as they have their own earphones.
Speaking
Oral practice in the classroom is another complicated issue. More often than not, language classrooms are large in numbers, have little class time and many topics to cover. This is when Whatsapp becomes really handy. Just by sending an audio message, students can complete a task. It offers teachers the opportunity to check on pronunciation and fluency, and it gives pupils the chance to be assessed personally. Furthermore, these audio files may become records of students' progress.

Screenshot 5 shows an example of a speaking activity by a group of Literature students who had to explain the plots of different plays by Shakespeare.

Screenshot 5: speaking task.
Some conclusions
Once our project was in motion, we noticed that most students were enthusiastic about using Whatsapp in class and got involved in the activities. The tasks became more significant to them and those students who did not like speaking in class found a way of expressing themselves by means of a message or even an audio file. It amazed us how an app as simple and everyday life as Whatsapp could change so much our classroom reality and bring some of the outside, real world into our classes. But actually, the final message we would like to give all those teachers out there who might be reading us right now is to try. Simply that, try. It's not as complicated as it seems, and we promise it's worth it.
REFERENCES:
Bouhnik, D., & Deshen, M. (2014). WhatsApp goes to school: Mobile instant messaging between teachers and students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research. http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol13/JITEv13ResearchP217-231Bouhnik0601.pdf
BIODATA: Carolina Santarossa is a University Teacher of English and a Spanish-English Sworn Translator (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo). She experienced teaching English at a school in the USA during 5 months and she has worked with adolescents and adults for 9 years.
Josefina Castillo is a University Teacher of English (Universidad Nacional de San Juan). She was student assistant and in charge of the Color guard of said University, and graduated with Honors. She is currently working in both private and public institutions.

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Share this..... By Carolina Santarossa & Josefina Castillo Over the last decade, research into second language learning and teaching has focused increasingly on the use of technology in the classroom. The interactive features of multi-media can entice teachers to explore novel ways to engage students more creatively.