The Summer is over and it's time to put away the camping gear, sunhats, flip flops and bathing suits. You might think that I would be sad putting way all the "fun stuff". However, like most teachers, I am excited and ready to begin the new school year. I love the end on the Summer because it gives me an opportunity to be creative and re-think, or even re-invent myself as a teacher.
This year I an going over a list of digital resources that could be helpful to any teacher (list below). I am planning on playing with many of them. However, I will only select those tools that will enhance my teaching and truly going facilitate and improve student learning. Lets not fall in the trap of using technology only because it's cool or everyone is using it. Whatever resources we decide to use should have a real and meaningful purpose.
Have fun exploring!
TEACHING TOOLS & SCREENCASTING:
- Jing => App for Free Screencasting (Video screen capture)
- Camtasia ($) => Applications for creating video tutorials and presentations (screen video capture)
- Explain Everything ($) => It's an easy-to-use design tool that lets you annotate, animate, and narrate explanations and presentations. Screencasting and video whiteboard.
- Educreations ($) => Whiteboard that lets you record voice. Educreations is a community where anyone can teach what they know and learn what they don't. Our software turns any iPad or web browser into a recordable.
- Corkboard.me => Corkboard.me is a simple and handy webapp that creates a virtual corkboard of sticky notes. Changes are saved to your personal, auto-generated URL, letting you share your cork-board with anyone.
- Epals => ePals is the social network optimized for K-12 learning.
- Cool-Tools-for-Schools => TONS of resources for Presentation Tools · Collaborative Tools · Research Tools · Video Tools · Slideshow Tools · Audio Tools · Image Tools · Drawing Tools · Writing Tools.
- Rubistar => is a tool to help the teacher who wants to use rubrics, but does not have the time to develop them from scratch.
- Blogger => Is Google's free tool for creating blogs. Blogs, short for web-logs, are a form of online journal.
- Pinterest => Virtual Pinboard x people to come together and share their interests.
- Diigo => Diigo is a free social bookmarking,research, and knowledge sharing tool created to mimic the ease of taking notes while providing a network for sharing and discovering information.
- Padlet - great way to share resources.
- Screencast-O-matic - Is an easy and handy tool for recording screenshots and sharing them with friends or colleagues for a number of different purposes.
BOOKS
- iBooks Author => allows you to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book. Use iBooks publisher to publish.
- iBooks => iBooks is an amazing way to download and read books.
- Look into Book Creator - Can add to Thinglink or Google drive.
LANGUAGE TOOLS:
- Vocaroo
- Duolingo
- Sugarcane
- Rice
- Abc Mouse.com - great x my ELD class because of word recognition
MEDIA & VIDEOS:
- GoAnimate => Do-it-yourslef animated video website
- Storybird => Create, read, and share visual stories. Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you can make and share on any device
- Adobe Voice
- Biteable: The simplest video maker!
- Snag-it is a screenshot program that captures video display and audio output.
- Animoto: Slideshow. A great way to animate audio recordings.
- Tellagami is a mobile app that lets you create and share a quick video. Great way to do a quick story!
OTHER COOL TECH TOOLS:
- Bit.ly.com
- Weebly => Weebly is an online, free, widget-based Web site creator. It uses a widget style format, allowing users to create pages with only a few clicks by dragging and dropping different page elements.
- MyMaps to create my own, measure distances, write notes, etc.
- Lucidpress is a web-based desktop publishing software application.
- Classcraft is a fantasy-themed, game-based classroom-behavior-management tool (available on the web and as a Chrome app).
- GoFormative.com check-out for math.
- Androdify is an App to create your own Android character.
