Thursday, January 31, 2013

Screenr's web-based screen recorder makes it easy to create and share a screencast.  Just click the record button, capture your screen and voice, and share the link.

http://www.screenr.com/
Grammarly is an automated proofreader and your personal grammar coach. Correct up to 10 times more mistakes than popular word processors.

http://www.grammarly.com/

iCivics has produced 16 educational video games as well as vibrant teaching materials that have been used in classrooms in all 50 states. Today we offer the nation’s most comprehensive, standards-aligned civics curriculum that is available freely on the Web.

http://www.icivics.org/
Edheads is an online educational resource that provides free science and math games and activities that promote critical thinking. Choose from Simple Machines, Virtual Knee Surgery or Stem Cell Heart Repair, among others. All activities meet state and national standards.

http://www.edheads.org/



DropItToMe is a free service that works with Drop Box to allow people to upload files to your Drop Box account without giving them access to the contents of your Drop Box. 
After connecting the two services DropItToMe provides a that you can give to your students.  This will enable them to upload files into your DropBox account.  You chooase a password for this file and only give it to the students you want to be able to upload files.

I use DropItToMe so that my students don't clutter my email box with the papers they are turning in.

http://www.dropitto.me



Quiz Revolution


Quiz Revolution is an easy way to make a multimedia quiz for your website or blog.  You can include video, audio, and image file in your quiz. Each question in your quiz can have a different media format. There are two options for answer format, multiple choice or open-ended response. Quizzes are easy to create and easy to embed into a website or blog. If your students register for a Quiz Revolution account before they take your quiz, you can monitor their quiz results. 
http://www.quizrevolution.com/

Chemical Educational Digital Library

The Chemical Educational Digital Library is a large collection of resources for teaching
and learning chemistry.  It contains tutorials for students, 3D models, lesson plans, and more.  It also features a periodic table that links each element to data and explanations about that element.


Wordle



Wordle is a tool 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 enhance your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.



http://www.wordle.net/


Paper Rater

Paper Rater is a web tool that offers a grammar checker to find mistakes and correct them. It can
also check to see if a students paper contains plagiarized text.  Most recently, the site has added a feature that will try to make suggestions so that students can actually improve their work.




The Learning Network

The Learning Network, a website that is run by the New York Times.  It is a wonderful resource for teachers and students. One feature is that current articles are made easier to understand by offering definitions of vocabulary words and also maps to areas discussed in articles. The Learning Network also offers daily lesson plans which are tied into articles from the newspaper. The site also contains themed activities and lessons based on school units.
 

Flipbook

Flipbook is a web tool that allows teachers and students to create a digitally animated flipbook and then share it with the world. It is easy to create and is lots of fun to work with. Flipbooks are a great creative way for students to animate a historical event, show the visual representation of how to do a math equation, show a scientific process, or even retell a scene from a book.

Glogster


Glogster is a great creativity site who’s 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. 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 website.
Glogster is a great way for your students to display knowledge. Students can create interactive content to display information in history, math, language arts, book reports, science, and social studies.
 





Edmodo

Edmodo is a private microblogging site that teachers and  students can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other. It is a great way to communicate in a safe and controlled environment while still keeping the immediacy and appeal of a social network.


Easy Bib

Easy Bib is a powerful tool that helps students properly cite in MLA and APA formats for formal reports.  THis site even allows you to enter a book's ISBN number and then automatically fills in the information for you.  It can print the information our, export it to Word, and even email it to you.  http://easybib.com/

Capzles


Capzles is a site that allows users to create engaging multimedia timeline presentations. Students can upload images, video files, and documents to create an animated timeline that can be shared and annotated. Great for making historical timelines and interactive multimedia presentations. Students can even embed moving images as a background for the whole page and music to accompany the viewing of the Capzle.  
http://www.capzles.com/

Bitstrips

Bitstrips is an easy to use comic building site. Students can use this webtool to create a comic cell, strip, or story and then share it with their peers or the world. The possibilities are endless with this simple to use website. You simply click on attributes of a character's build, pick the colors, the background, and add dialogue. It would be a fantastic tool to use with illustrating a scene from a novel, or even to help a student understand a complex theory such as gravity in science. Bitstrips is fun, free (although there are paid features available), and very useful as a teaching tool.