Want students (or teachers) to create online concept maps? Want them to be able to collaborate on these maps? Try Bubbl.us. (You will need to sign up for this.) You can easily create concept maps, color coordinate them, save it and then export it as a jpeg. Feel free to go back anytime and edit, revise, and save again.
Wikimedia Commons: Free media repository from the folks who brought you Wikipedia. It is a collection of reusable media for educational purposes created by individuals uploading their own media; you can also upload your own images.
EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI): 7 Things You Should Know About...Fact Sheet
A series from EDUCAUSE that offers you a brief summary (pdf) of different technologies: what it is, how it works, who is using it, why it is significant, what are the downsides, and what are the implications for teaching and learning? Previous examples include: Ning, Twitter, e-Readers, VoiceThread, Flip Camcorders, Wii, and Second Life.
Are you the type of person that needs a place to store notes, track your brilliant ideas, capture cool stuff you see on the web, and even add notes to images? Evernote might be the app for you. (You will have to sign up for an Evernote account.) You can download it to your desktop and/or also smart phone (and they will sync automatically). Take clips of the web and add notes to it. Jot down notes when you are in a meeting or at a conference. Take clips of text or emails or pdfs you want to save. You can even make your own voice recordings. And, it is free (up to a certain point).
Want to use photos/images in your classroom? Flickr is for you. (You do need to create a Yahoo!.com email account though). Flickr allows you to upload your own photos or organize other users' photos to create photo sets and photo galleries. You can also tag (label) photos by its theme or highlight aspects of photos and add your notes and insights. You can also add captions to photos if you are interested in adding information. There is a geotagging option if you are interested in the location of the image or want to chronicle photos from a fieldtrip or field site.
Frontline's Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier
A follow-up to Growing Up Online, this documentary looks at multitasking, relationships, virtual worlds (internet addiction, second lives, health and healing), learning (literacy, school, games), and waging war in a digital era. You can watch the hour program online or skim through the raw, unedited footage. There are interviews with Sherry Turkle, Henry Jenkins, Sec. Duncan, James Gee, and Todd Oppenheimer. There is also a Your Stories section where everyday folks talk about their experiences living in a digital age.
But students aren't reading books! Learn more about how "the printed page is giving way to the networked screen." Could be a great discussion topic in class. Visit the site
Search tip: Add "source:life" to any Google image search and it will search only the LIFE photo archive for your content. E.g. "surfing source:life" will find surfing photos from the LIFE archive
LiveScribe: Smart Pen
The Smart Pen has a "brain". It captures everything you write as a digital file (you can also audio record at the same time). It has an infrared camera and a built-in microphone and speaker.
Want to see the front page of newspapers from around the world? Check out Newseum with 851 front pages from 76 countries. Just click on the map and up comes the headline.
Want to poll your students but don't have clickers in your class? Want to get real-time feedback from students on a chapter or a concept? Polleverywhere.com allows your students (and you) to use cell phone texts, Twitter, or the web to answer multiple choice and short answer questions. Ask a question and watch as the real-time answers appear! (And get the data instantly sent to your computer).
The self-proclaimed "largest book club on the planet" devoted to social reading and publishing on topics of all kinds. Learn more about Scribd and it's democratized publishing process.
What's all this talk about tweeting? And why is it limited to 140 characters per tweet? Twitter is a type of micro-blogging where folks update their friends (known as followers) with tidbits: a cool link, their current status in life, or a discussion about pretty much anything.
Visuwords
Need a creative way to discuss and analyze vocabulary words? Want something better than a text-based online dictionary? Visuwords is an online graphical dictionary/thesaurus.Great for English Language Learners.
VoiceThread
Take the power of powerpoint, the audio of a podcast, and the commenting features of social network sites and you get VoiceThread.
WeeMee Avatar
Tired of looking at an old you online? Make your own avatar!
Create fun word clouds. Don't know what they are. Don't worry. Wordle can help. Word clouds allow you to see common words from a text like the U.S. Constitution, a dissertation chapter, or newspaper article. You put in your text and it will display the most commonly used words in large letters (e.g. frequency of use) and give an overview of important words/phrases in the text. Use them in class or share with students as a creative resource.
WordSift
Teachers can use this cool tool to "manage the demands of vocabulary and academic language in text material." WordSift combines a dictionary, thesaurus, image search, and a word cloud to help students sift through texts. Great for English Language Learners. Created by folks at Stanford.
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