Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Visual.ly - Create Infographics

VISUAL.LY - DISCOVER,    CREATE.    SHARE .....
http://visual.ly/
INFOGRAPHICS!
We all look in the lower left hand corner of USAToday to see the daily graphic!  We are visual learners .....Now, with Visual.ly we can create our own infographic with ease or use ones that have already been created. 
Visual.ly is a wonderful new webtool/resource that lets users both explore and create beautifully organized infographics. These visualizations can easily illustrate a complex idea and show a large amount of data in a simple to understand way. Students and teachers can create and find excellent representations using this unique site.
Click here to see the Top 20 Infographics created in 2011:
For Educators - Use the infographics created for discussions, examples, information or have students research to see if the data is accurate.   Then have students research data on any topic and create their own infographic!  Please notice that on many of the infographics, at the bottom, a "Source" is listed.  Teach students to give credit for the information.
Note: For best results use Google Chrome or Firefox 

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

TAGUL - Create Tag Clouds

Tagul is similar to Wordle. Both create customisable word or tag clouds, the difference is that Tagul’s clouds are embeddable into other websites such as blogs or wikis.
Tagul is a web service that enables you to create gorgeous tag clouds. It is created by Alex, an entrepreneur and tech geek from Moscow, Russia. You can read more in the FAQ section, visit the Blog or explore the Forums. 
It requires signing up with either a new Tagul account, or via some OpenID provider,

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

EDUcreations - Teach what you know - Learn what you don't.



 

www.educreations.com


Educreations is a global community where anyone can teach what they know and learn what they don't!



Educreations is a recordable interactive whiteboard that captures your voice and handwriting to produce amazing video lessons that you can share online. Students and colleagues can replay your lessons in any web browser, or from within the  app on their iPads. Check out the "Showcase" on the homepage or the "Featured" tab in the iPad app to view some great lessons that other teachers have created with Educreations.
Only public lessons may be embedded for viewing outside of educreations.com, so make sure to choose the "public" option in your lesson's privacy settings. Then, visit the lesson playback page for the lesson you want to embed. On the right side of the page, you'll find a link that says, "embed on the web." Once you click this link, you'll be prompted to copy an embed code that you can use to post your lesson anywhere on the web.


There are sections on English, Math, Social Studies,Science, the Arts, and Languages.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Tumble Cloud

www.tumblecloud.com/


TumbleCloud is a place for collaborative digital storytelling, where users can easily arrange, display, co-create, share and manipulate multimedia content.

They call it collaborative digital storytelling. All that digital stuff you have. All that digital stuff everybody else has. Photos. Videos. Music. You name it. Mix it all up together and then re-arrange it any way you like. Just by dragging and dropping, Tumblecloud makes it easy for you to tell stories your way, whether by yourself, or with a whole bunch of other people.
See what happens when you get together on tumblecloud with people that matter to you. See what happens when you make stories together.
  • capture your special day
  • market your small business
  • give your digital stuff a home
  • collaborate on a project
 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

BookBub - Get Free and Bargain Bestsellers For Your eReader!

What is BookBub?
http://www.bookbub.com


BookBub is a free (daily) email newsletter that keeps you updated about deeply discounted and free digital books. You choose the types of books you'd like with categories ranging from mysteries to cookbooks, and they send the best deals in those genres to your inbox.

BookBub doesn't actually sell books -- they simply alert you by email to fantastic limited-time offers that can be purchased from retailers like Amazon's Kindle store, Barnes and Noble's Nook store, Apple's iBookstore, and others. When you sign up, you may choose from their list of retailers. Book publishers offer deals at these sites for promotional purposes, and the BookBub staff works with them to determine the best ones to send to members.  Each deal is available for a Limited Time!!  Sometimes for just that one day.

BookBub features works ranging from big-name authors like Michael Connelly, Debbie Macomber, and Jodi Picoult, to independent authors who might be lesser known but whose books are getting rave reviews. The team of book experts is working around the clock to bring you the best deals on quality books that you'll love.
 
Just enter your email and select you retailers and your reading interests:
 

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

PADLET (Formerly Wallwisher)


http://padlet.com/

(The old Wallwisher)


  • Put the wall on your blog or website. Make it more wonderful.  Embed it!

  • Paste link to a youtube video? Check!

  • Drag a word document from your computer? Check!

  • Take a picture from your iPad camera? Check!

  • Keep your wall private between friends. If you like them, give them permissions like the ability to change what you write. If you are the social kind, make a public wall for the whole world to see.

  • Mobile:   Your phone, your tablet, your TV- Padlet works on everything.

  • Like flexibility? Use the free form layout. Like organization? Use streams.

EXAMPLES:



 

 I have used this as an "evaluation" tool.  After a presentation, I would ask participants to go the web address I give them and post a comment on the day's learning.  I am sure you can think of many other ways to use Padlet!!
How to use Padlet.com in the classroom?  from their Blog: http://tinyurl.com/awwy5ad   Click to see more ways to use!
"Teachers often write to us about how they use Padlet to pose a simple question to their class, or to collect exit tickets at the end of the class, or, sometimes, to collect assignments or projects from students."

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Live Minutes - Free Conferencing (Webinar)


http://liveminutes.com
LiveMinutes is a FREE service that lets you organize web meetings (webinars) to share and annotate documents with team members, students, clients, etc. You can use LiveMinutes for internal meetings, training, teaching...FREE.

First, sign up for an account - follow the tutorial when you sign in.  To get started just click "start sharing" and a meeting space is created for you. That meeting space is assigned a URL that you can share with the people you want to join you.
 
Live Minutes offers a good selection of tools that you can utilize to share ideas with others. You can talk to each other using either the Live Minutes audio or by connecting through Skype. Live Minutes offers a collaborative whiteboard for drawing. You may upload images and documents for others to see and comment. And in the future Live Minutes will allow you to share videos during your webinar.
This is a great way to quickly host a live online tutoring session with students or talk to you collegues wherever they may be. The drawing option on the whiteboard could be very handy for illustrating concepts that are difficult to type quickly on a keyboard or that lose meaning when someone is just explaining rather than showing.
Really Free Conferencing!
Hangout with your friends or colleagues, share videos (up to 9) and conference for free. Join the call with your browser, Skype or your phone directly. No long distance charges, the number is toll-free, really.
More? In the US, you can even get called by the conference on your landline or mobile directly !
Meeting is recorded : The recording of your call are saved to your reports or to your Dropbox account.


 



Tuesday, February 19, 2013

WatchKnowLearn - Educational Videos

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. WatchKnow--as in, "You watch, you know"--is a non-profit online community devoted to this goal.  Launched in October 2009 after a year-long development period, WatchKnow is a wiki-style portal that gathers and organizes educational videos for students ages 3 to 18. An age filter slider allows you to easily focus your search. 

The Vision behind WatchKnowLearn is simple:
To provide a world-class, online domain on which educators can store, categorize, and rate the best, K – 12 educational videos on the Internet today. And to make this service FREE so teachers, parents and students everywhere may have access to those videos.

WatchKnowLearn has indexed approximately 50,000 educational videos, placing them into a directory of over 5,000 categories. The videos are available without any registration or fees to teachers in the classroom, as well as parents and students at home 24/7.


Tuesday, February 5, 2013

ThingLink - Create video, music, text IN a picture!

http://www.thinglink.com

What is ThingLink?

ThingLink helps you create and discover rich images.

Be creative! Make your images come alive with music, video, text, images, shops and more!
Every image contains a story and ThingLink helps you tell your stories. Follow image channels from your favorite bands, bloggers and friends. Your ThingLink interactive images form a channel that other users can follow.
Share your channel with friends on Facebook and Twitter, and follow your friends. Touch and discover.


Here is a link to a picture for Valentines' Day
 
http://www.thinglink.com/scene/346325469999661056?buttonSource=searchPage
You may click on the hearts and get a history of Valentine's Day or a Beatles' song, "And I Love Her."
Click on the link above and see how this works...


You may search by a subject.  There are many pictures with Martin Luther King Jr. with clicking points for his "I have a dream" speech, facts about his life, and websites for additional information. 
 
Simple task:  Locate a picture that relates to your topic.  Attach videos, music, text, images, websites, etc.to create a "talking" picture.  I can see some very interesting presentations!!!

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

AuthorSTREAM - UPLoad Your Powerpoint for access anywhere!

www.authorstream.com
AuthorSTREAM is another one of many websites that allow you to upload a PowerPoint presentation and access it from any computer with an internet connection. It’s nice because you can select the privacy settings you want for your PowerPoint.
 

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

TagCrowd - WordCloud, TextCloud, or TagCloud

What is TagCrowd?    http://tagcrowd.com/

TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any text by creating what is popularly known as a word cloud, text cloud or tag cloud.

A word cloud is a beautiful, informative image that communicates much in a single glance. TagCrowd specializes in making word clouds easy to read, analyze and compare, for a variety of useful purposes:

  • Topic summaries for Speeches and written works.
  • Blog tool or website analysis for search engine optimization.
  • Help writers and students reflect on their work.
  • Name tags
  • Resumes
  • Visual poetry
  • The list goes on and continues to grow.
There are three ways of entering text into TagCrowd to generate a word cloud:
  1. Enter the URL for a web page you wish to visualize,
  2. Paste (or type) the text you wish to visualize into the text box,
  3. Upload a plain text file to visualize.

 

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

TimeGlider - Create an interactive Timeline



Timeglider is a data-driven interactive timeline application. You can "grab" the timeline and drag it left and right, and zoom in and out — much as you would with a mapping app — to view centuries at a time or just hours. You can create create event spans so that you can see durations and how they overlap. Being web-based, Timeglider lets you collaborate and share easily.
 
You can create timelines about the last year of your family, the last century of world events, or about pre-historical (bce/bc) times. You can zoom in to see ten minutes, or zoom out to see billions of years.

Here is how TimeGlider Works:  http://timeglider.com/how_it_works

Check out this 5-page "How To:"  http://tinyurl.com/c9o65wb  If you are working with a class, this may be a handy guide to share.
The FREE version allows for 3 timelines for 1 user with 16 images.  Might be enough for a project...each student would create their own account.
And finally, a 2-minute YouTube on creating timelines with TimeGlider:            

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

TitanPad - Collaboration Tool


TitanPad

Allows multiple people to work on one document at the same time. Great collaborative tool. After creating your TitanPad you then share the link with those you want to use it and everyone can collaborate at the same time on the document. Once it is complete you can save, share, import/export, or continue to edit.



Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Poll Everywhere

What is Poll Everywhere?

The fastest way to create stylish real-time experiences for events using mobile devices.

Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere. And because it works internationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.

How much does it cost?

Plans for small classrooms to giant stadiums  Poll Everywhere is free for audiences of 40 people or less and they offer paid plans for larger audiences. K-12 and Higher Education semester-long plans are also available.



 
 
 

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Stixy

Stixy helps users organize their world on flexible, shareable web-based bulletin boards called Stixyboards. Users can add tasks, appointments, files, photos, notes, and bookmarks to their Stixyboards and organize them in whatever way makes sense to them. They can also share Stixyboards with friends, family, and colleagues.

How does the registration process work?
Simply provide an email address and choose a password. No further information is required. A welcome email is sent, but no activation is necessary. Users may begin to create Stixyboards immediately. Inviting others to the board is easily accomplished and an email invite is instantly sent to each person.
What does it cost to use the application?
Stixy is free and members can create as many Stixyboards as they want.
Who would you recommend the application to?
This application is aimed at the everyday user who is looking for a way to share information with others online. The bulletin board inspired look is designed to be user friendly and fun. The flexibility of sharing tasks, notes, pictures, and more makes this a useful tool for families and classrooms.

This is similar to WallWisher!!!

YouTube on "How to" create a stixy.
 

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

YouTube Time Machine

YouTube Time Machine
You have to try this!  Super cool! A great resource for history/social studies classes to show what was occuring in a particular year or use this in English Language Arts/Reading classes to put a book's time period into perspective for students.
Select a year and view videos from that year. There is a handy little search box.  Type in a year or something you remember from any time period, such as 9-11-2001.  You can select sports, video games, commercials, current events, television, movies, and music from that specific year. Amazing tool!!!

There is also a tab for MOST LOVED videos.  Shows you the most popular videos for today, this week, this month, and all time.

Hope you have time to give this a look....Try looking at all the videos, commercials, television, etc.  for your birth year!

 

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

FODEY - The Newspaper Clipping Generator



Fodey is a neat Web 2.0 tool that allows users to generate their own authentic newspaper clipping or one of the other "talking choices." Simply enter the name of a fictitious newspaper, date, headline, and story—and Fodey does the rest!

Besides being super easy to use, Fodey requires no log-in or registration. It also creates a pretty neat bulletin board worthy product!

To download your newspaper, use the link at the bottom of the generated image. You can use the images as you wish, ie. put them on your own website or blog. Please note, that direct linking to the newspaper clippings doesn't work; the images are deleted from the server after a short time span.