Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Sites and Services I'm Using This Semester

Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Sites and Services I'm Using This Semester: "Every year in the course of writing this blog I look at and try out hundreds of new services that educators can use. So it's not surprising that usually after I give a "best of the web" presentation at a school or conference people ask me which services I'm actually using in my classroom. The answer changes from semester to semester, but here are the ones my students and I are currently using. This list is in no particular order other than how I thought of them as I wrote out the list."

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Publish Your Book

Google Accounts: "Books
Promote your books on Google for free
You'd sell a lot more books if a lot more people knew about them. We can help make that happen."

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Free Technology for Teachers: Aww App - A Collaborative Whiteboard that You Can Add to Your Site

Free Technology for Teachers: Aww App - A Collaborative Whiteboard that You Can Add to Your Site: "Aww App is a super simple browser-based application for creating drawings. To get started just go to AwwApp.com and click on "start drawing." To invite people to collaborate on your drawing just send them the link assigned to your drawing board and they can join in the drawing fun."

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Free Technology for Teachers: Vocalyze - Listen to the Web

Free Technology for Teachers: Vocalyze - Listen to the Web: "Vocalyze is a free service that reads the content of popular websites to you. You can subscribe to popular sites across twelve different categories. To build up your playlist just click on a category then click on a site. If you want to delete a website from your playlist just click the "x" next to it in your favorites list. Vocalyze works on your computer, Android device, and iOS device."

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Free Technology for Teachers: 12 Useful YouTube Accessories for Teachers and Students

Free Technology for Teachers: 12 Useful YouTube Accessories for Teachers and Students: "If you can access it in your school, YouTube has a ton of useful educational content. Here are ten tools that can make using YouTube in your classroom a better experience for everyone.
"

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American History Demographic Chart Book

Free Technology for Teachers: American History Demographic Chart Book: "The American History Demographic Chart Book is a website featuring dozens of graphics about US demographics from 1790 through 2010. The site is divided into seventeen chapters each containing multiple dynamic graphics. The chapters are labeled according to demographic categories such as age, marital status, education, and birthplace."

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Odosketch - A Simple Online Sketchpad

Free Technology for Teachers: Odosketch - A Simple Online Sketchpad: "Odosketch is a free online sketchpad that I learned about from Danny Nicholson's The Whiteboard Blog. Odosketch, like many similar sites, provides a blank canvas on which you can create drawings from scratch. You can save your work to a free Odosketch account, share it online, or download it. Odosketch's niche appears to be creating drawings with "charcoal pencil" effects. Odosketch is well suited to use on touch screen computers and interactive whiteboards."

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The Best MATH Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… - The Best MATH Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress: "The Best Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress is a “The Best…” list that can come in very handy for teachers and for students. It lists free sites where teachers can register their students, and both can keep track of their progress. They can be useful for reinforcing concepts and language learned in the classroom. Most, thought not all, of the sites on that list focus on English."

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Edmodo and Social Studies

Wikispaces Projects: A better way to work in classroom groups

Projects: A better way to work in classroom groups: "We’re calling this new feature Projects. Whenever you have a particular assignment or activity, you can create a project for it, then define teams of members, each with its own unique pages, files, and permissions. Team content (that is, pages and files) are grouped together, separate from the main area of the wiki. That way, students in teams can do their group work completely independently from other teams."

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Watch2gether - Watch Videos and Discuss Them at the Same Time

Free Technology for Teachers: Watch2gether - Watch Videos and Discuss Them at the Same Time: "Watch2gether is a neat site through which you can watch YouTube videos and host text chats about them at the same time. It is really quite easy to use Watch2gether. To get started enter a nickname for yourself (it could be your real first name) then search for a video or enter the url of a video that you have previously bookmarked. When you have found the video you want a chat column will be present on the right side of your browser. You can invite others to chat with you by sending them the url assigned to your chat. Together you can watch a video and discuss it."

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How To Do Research - An Interactive Map

Free Technology for Teachers: How To Do Research - An Interactive Map: "One of the challenges that every student faces at one time or another is conducting focused and efficient research. The folks at the Kentucky Virtual Library know this and put together an interactive map of the research process for students. The map, titled How To Do Research, walks students through the research process from start to finish with every step along the way. One of the things about this map that school librarians will like is that it is not focused solely on web research. How To Do Research includes a good section about using library catalogs, books, and magazines. "

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Kentucky Virtual Library

Kentucky Virtual Library:

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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Embed Videos into Microsoft Office Documents

Free Technology for Teachers: How to Embed Videos into Microsoft Office Documents: "I haven't created a document using a Microsoft product in years. Because of that, I did not know, and perhaps you didn't know either, that you can embed YouTube videos into your Microsoft Office documents. For readers who use Microsoft Office, the HP Teacher Experience Exchange has a short video tutorial on how to embed YouTube videos into Microsoft Office 2010 documents."

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Getting By Without a Computer Printer - NYTimes.com

Getting By Without a Computer Printer - NYTimes.com

Get Your Google Toolkit

Get Your Google Toolkit: "Lessons, Webinars and Workbooks that provide exactly what you need right now so you can get the most out of Google Tools..."

Phoenix Dust Storm (Haboob) Timelapse July 5, 2011 on Vimeo

Phoenix Dust Storm (Haboob) Timelapse July 5, 2011 on Vimeo

Rethinking Schools - Just For Fun - Map Game

Rethinking Schools - Just For Fun - Map Game

Solar highways. [VIDEO]

Solar highways. [VIDEO]

Game 33...!!!

Game 33...!!!

Museum Box Homepage

Museum Box Homepage: "This site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie."

Create A Graph

Create A Graph: "Graphs and charts are great because they communicate information visually. For this reason, graphs are often used in newspapers, magazines and businesses around the world."

Geography Action! 2009 -- National Geographic

Geography Action! 2009 -- National Geographic: "Geography is a critical component of a 21st century education, and National Geographic is working to raise awareness so that all students have opportunities to know and understand their planet. Each year the Geography Action! program offers tools and resources for educators to bring geography to life through school and community events. You can participate and raise awareness by using these materials for a school or community event any time of the year, or during Geography Awareness Week, November 15-21, 2009."

Flash cards, vocabulary memorization, and study games | Quizlet

Flash cards, vocabulary memorization, and study games | Quizlet

Great Site!

Free Technology for Teachers: 7 Tools Students Can Use to Create Music Online

Free Technology for Teachers: 7 Tools Students Can Use to Create Music Online: "Yesterday, I gave a short presentation on digital storytelling to the folks in attendance at the Ed Tech Teacher Teaching History With Technology workshop. One of the points I made to participants is that when creating multimedia digital stories the best way to avoid any kind of copyright issues is to have students create their own sounds and images to include in their projects. Here are some tools that students can use to create their own sounds online."

Download details: SyncToy 2.1

Download details: SyncToy 2.1: "There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality."

Welcome to FolderBoy

Welcome to FolderBoy

Free Technology for Teachers

Free Technology for Teachers: "One of the parts of the Google Across the Curriculum workshop that I ran today was about using Google Bookmarks. For most of the participants in today's workshop using a web-based bookmarking service instead of a browser-based service was a new and welcome concept."

Les Paul's 96th Birthday

Les Paul's 96th Birthday Google Logo Music Maker!

Free Technology for Teachers: Wikihood - A Wikipedia and Google Maps Mashup

Free Technology for Teachers: Wikihood - A Wikipedia and Google Maps Mashup: "Wikihood is a neat way to explore the world in your web browser. Wikihood is one part Wikipedia and one part Google Maps."

Wikihood World Browser

Wikihood World Browser

Pegby: Peg it up, Move it Around, Get it Done.

Pegby: Peg it up, Move it Around, Get it Done.: "Come to the board with friends, family and/or coworkers and get stuff done. Make your plans by pegging up cards to your board or boards. It's simple and fun."

Students Making Video “Book Trailers” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Students Making Video “Book Trailers” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...: "I’ve previously posted about students making video book trailers. That post shares resources where you can see examples of, and get a lot of assistance, about making great, though fairly involved, book trailers."

Making Videos on the Web

Making Videos on the Web

Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Quickly Create Audio Messages for Your Blog

Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Quickly Create Audio Messages for Your Blog: "Adding an audio message to your classroom blog or website can be a good way to help deliver important messages to your students and their parents. Having an audio message, even if it's the same as a text announcement, increases the chances that a visitor to your blog will take notice of something important. Adding an audio message to your blog or website is not difficult to do. Here are three ways that you can add an audio message to your blog or website."

Google Gulp

Google Gulp: "At Google our mission is to organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible to our users. But any piece of information's usefulness derives, to a depressing degree, from the cognitive ability of the user who's using it. That's why we're pleased to announce Google Gulp (BETA)™ with Auto-Drink™ (LIMITED RELEASE), a line of 'smart drinks' designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty."

Seattle Guitar Lessons | Heartwood Guitar Instruction

Seattle Guitar Lessons | Heartwood Guitar Instruction

15 Ways to Use Google Search in Class – SimpleK12

15 Ways to Use Google Search in Class – SimpleK12: "Sure... you know about Google Search. But are you using it effectively and creatively in your classroom? I just completed a course called Search with Google inside of the Teacher Learning Community and it gave me some real-life, practical examples of how I might use this in a classroom setting.

Here are 15 ways to use Google Search in your classroom..."

Extraordinary “What If?” Student Project | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Extraordinary “What If?” Student Project | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...: "This week, high school History teacher Carla Federman shared an extraordinary project she did with her students. You can read her complete lesson guide here, and here’ an excerpt:

You are to identify one specific point in American history for which you are interested in changing the outcome. Once you have identified your point of divergence, you will need to consider both the immediate changes and the long-term impacts that divergence would have on modern society. You will present your “revised history” through the creation of “new” primary sources and a multimedia project."

Compare Contrast Map

Compare Contrast Map - Very cool resource to help students when writing a compare and contrast essay.

Math Teaching Resources for K-5 Classrooms

Math Teaching Resources for K-5 Classrooms: "Welcome to K-5 Math Teaching Resources! This site provides a range of math teaching resources, math games, and hands-on math activities for K-5 teachers. All activities provide opportunities for students to communicate their reasoning and mathematical thinking and are correlated with the Common Core State Standards"

Classroom-Tested Tech Tools Used to Boost Literacy

Education Week's Digital Directions: Classroom-Tested Tech Tools Used to Boost Literacy: "Instead of investing in prepackaged software programs, many teachers are harnessing the technology they already have—such as webcams, audio recorders, blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools—to boost literacy in students.
“With schools being so cash-strapped, we can’t go around and buy a new program all the time,” says Adina Sullivan, a 4th grade teacher at the 720-student San Marcos Elementary School in California. “You can go with something that you can find a lot easier at no cost and make it work for what you need, rather than [using pre-packaged software.]"

Tools for Educators.com - Board Game Maker, printable board games, 100% customizable

Tools for Educators.com - Board Game Maker, printable board games, 100% customizable: "Tools for Educators offers free worksheets, a free board game maker, board game creator, and ready to print board games to use as resources for lessons, lesson plans and printable materials for English classes."

National Gallery of Art NGAkids Art Zone

National Gallery of Art NGAkids Art Zone

All a-board! Create a personalized board game - Microsoft Home Magazine

All a-board! Create a personalized board game - Microsoft Home Magazine: "Wherever people are found, board games aren’t far behind. In the Egyptian game of Mehan or the ancient Chinese game of Go (Wei-Ch’i in Chinese), the basic premise is always the same: get together with family and friends, show off skills of strategy and intelligence and, sometimes, put your faith in the fate of a roll."

The Authentic History Center

The Authentic History Center: "The Authentic History Center is comprised of artifacts and sounds from American popular culture. It was created to teach that the everyday objects in society have authentic historical value and reflect the social consciousness of the era that produced them. Authentic also means conforming to fact, and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief. To meet this definition by presenting an authentic interpretation of American history is our ultimate goal. When a collection is whole enough to be considered an authentic representation of the sources produced about an historical event, they are presented via interpretive essay."

Live Video Chat and Video Conferencing - FREE & Simple | FaceFlow

Live Video Chat and Video Conferencing - FREE & Simple | FaceFlow: "FREE Group Video Chat
Share precious moments and have fun in video chat with many of your friends and loved ones. Video chat live with up to 4 people, for FREE! No download required!"

Battleships - General Quarters II Headquarters v2.8.1

Battleships - General Quarters II Headquarters v2.8.1: "Welcome to the BSGQ Naval Base!
Battleships General Quarters II is a human versus computer strategic naval battle game. You can play the game for free at our servers."

Google moms share tech tips for your family

Official Google Blog: Google moms share tech tips for your family: "As a Googler I often take my work home with me—in a good way. With two young boys at home, life is always busy, so my husband and I are always looking for ways to save time, get organized and enrich our lives in simple ways. Because the products I beta test and use in the office have become an integral part of my own family life, for Mother’s Day this weekend I’d like to share some favorite tips, including a few from other Googler parents."

Official Google Blog: Sort by subject in Google Images

Official Google Blog: Sort by subject in Google Images: "When you’re searching for images, sometimes it can be hard to come up with exactly the right words to describe what you have in mind. For example, when you think of London, you might picture the iconic clock tower or the big Ferris wheel. You may not always remember the names of those landmarks, but you can visualize them in your mind. To make it easier for you to find images in situations like these, you can now use Google Images with sorting.

When you search for [london], by default you’ll see image results ranked by relevance. Click on “Sort by subject” in the left-hand panel and you’ll see images organized into categories that will narrow down your search and help you find the exact image of London that you want."