BV Middle School LMS

Bulb is a new service through which you can create, share, and browse through collections of educational materials. On Bulb you can create your own collections of text, images, and videos. You could create collections of materials about an academic topic or about a skill that you want to help others learn. As you create your collections on Bulb you can write text, upload or link to pictures, and upload or link to YouTube videos. All collections can be shared via email and through popular social networks like Twitter and Google+.

Narrable is a neat service for creating short narrated slideshows. To create an audio slideshow on Narrable start by uploading some pictures that you either want to talk about or have music played behind. After the pictures are uploaded you can record a narration for each picture through your computer's microphone or by calling into your Narrable's access phone number. You can also upload an audio recording that is stored on your computer. Narrable projects can be shared via email, Facebook, or by embedding them into a blog.

Narrable is a neat service for creating short narrated slideshows. To create an audio slideshow on Narrable start by uploading some pictures that you either want to talk about or have music played behind. After the pictures are uploaded you can record a narration for each picture through your computer's microphone or by calling into your Narrable's access phone number. You can also upload an audio recording that is stored on your computer. Narrable projects can be shared via email, Facebook, or by embedding them into a blog.

Here are the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2013 - the results of the 7th Annual Learning Tools Survey. The list was compiled by Jane Hart, Founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologie from the votes of over 500 learning professionals worldwide. (Released 30 September 2013). "A learning tool is a tool for your own personal or professional learning or one you use for teaching or training." Here is a summary presentation of the Top 100 Tools and beneath it the text list. Click the name of the tool to find out more about it, its cost, availability, its past rankings and to read some of the comments from those who voted for it. You will find an analysis of this year's list here.

Soo Meta is a new digital presentation tool from the same people that developed the YouTube remixing tool Dragon Tape. Soo Meta allows you to combine videos from YouTube, pictures from the web or from your desktop, text, and voice recordings to create a presentation. You can also pull content in from Pinterest and Twitter to use in your final product. The Soo Meta editor is fairly easy to use. Create a free account to get started then open your browser to SooMeta.com/create/ and title your first project. After titling your project add a background image from your computer or from the web. Next pull in a video from YouTube. The video can be yours or any other publicly shared video. You can trim the start and the end time of the video in the Soo Meta editor. To add text just click the text box in the editor and type. Finally, to narrate a frame (Soo Meta calls them chapters) in your project click the microphone icon in the editor and make your recording. Completed Soo Meta projects can be embedded into your blog or website.

"The primary goal is to inspire youth to explore their own interests through a series of online activities and related incentive badges. Many of these badges are integrated with content from online education conferences, which highlight a variety of different topics. Smithsonian Quests & BadgesThe second goal is to enhance students' cognitive capabilities by incorporating knowledge and skill-building into the quests. The online conferences and quests are interdisciplinary in nature, offering students the opportunity to choose what they care about most. All quests engage students in exploring a topic of interest either as part of a formal standards-aligned school curriculum or as a student-driven after school activity. An important secondary audience is you, the educator, whose support is vital in connecting with students. To this end, you also will be offered badges that will document their participation in Smithsonian online conferences, online professional development sessions, and the completion of class projects. All quests will be reviewed and badges awarded by a team of Smithsonian experts."

"Here be Fiction has been developed to support the discovery of fiction ebooks available from many of the same K-12 publishers that we are already working with for informational ebooks. These publishers have been producing high quality, award winning fiction books for years, but many school librarians are not familiar with the authors and titles. Here Be Fiction is working with the publishers to provide free access to selected ebooks to help school librarians discover the great fiction available right now. We need your help to read these books, write reviews, and discover the hidden gems. Some of our colleagues have already begun the exploration; Here be Fiction will help accelerate the efforts by creating a critical mass of readers and reviewers. The site will remain available throughout the year for anyone the explore the reviews. Registered users can create wishlists of books that look interesting. Participating publishers have agreed to the following terms: Publishers must provide either multi-user access or individual access with a discount for licensing multiple simultaneous readers so ebooks can be used for class novels, book clubs, reading groups, etc. Publishers must make ebooks must be available for offline access through a secure platform such as MackinVIA or a download using appropriate security to avoid digital divide issues and allow increased home access and reading in schools without wifi. Publishers must, when possible, allow the use of text-to-speech ability available through the reading platform to support struggling readers or those with special needs."

free and bargain ebooks for Kindle

Might be a good resource for PSAs

A great alternative to Picnik. You can do the basics - crop, rotate, sharpen, reshape and tweak the exposure & color. You can mess around with various special effects like soft focus, boost, cinerama, film grain, focal zoom and more. On photos with people, you can remove blemishes, white teeth, remove red-eye and lose weight. You can add text to your picture choosing from over 30 fonts. Finish your picture off with stickers, a picture frame and textures. This editing tool is user friendly and intuitive. It does not change the original on your computer, so if you don't like what you've created, then just start over. When you are finished, name your photo and save it to your computer.

PicMonkey is a free online photo editor that says Booyah! to whatever your creative heart desires. Basic editing all the way to advanced stuff like cloning, touch-up and eye-gasmic effects. Groovy overlays, textures, and frames. All the photo editing magic of Picnik, with 78% more monkey.

"The Days of Poster and Flyer Making Are Changing! If you would like to find out how to make online flyers and simple web pages, please plan to attend WOW Wednesday this week. No HTML Coding Required!!!! "

Limited free use educators $45/yr personal $19/mo

an ipad app that lets you explain anything and everything Not free but cheap

"The lottery of birth is responsible for much of who we are. If you were not born in the country you were, what would your life be like? Would you be the same person? IfItWereMyHome.com is your gateway to understanding life outside your home. Use our country comparison tool to compare living conditions in your own country to those of another. Start by selecting a region to compare on the map to the right, and begin your exploration. You can also use our visualization tool to help understand the impact of a disaster."

Interactive Almanac of Statistics that allows visitors to compare 2 countries in terms of population, healthcare, economy, and energy compiled from the CIA World Factbook and World Health Organization.

Wideo is a service that allows anyone to create animated videos and Common Craft-style videos online. You can create an animated video on Wideo by dragging and dropping elements into place in the Wideo editor then setting the sequence of animations. Each element can be re-used as many times as you like and the timing of the animation of each image can individually adjusted. Wideo's stock elements include text, cartoons, and drawings. You can also upload your own images to use in your videos. Wideo could be used by students to animate the highlights of a book that they've read.

an iPad app for quickly creating simple narrated photostories. To create a story using Pixntell all that you need to do is start a new project, select some images, place them in order, and then start talking about each of your pictures. You control the timing for each image. If you want to talk about your first picture for twenty seconds, your second picture for just three seconds, and your third picture for fifteen seconds, you can do that. When your project is complete you can upload it directly to YouTube, share it on Facebook, or send to friends via email.

The Global Bookshelf is a book search and recommendation engine. The purpose of The Global Bookshelf is to help people find travel stories. The books you'll find aren't travel guides, they're travel stories that could inspire you to visit a new place and experience a new culture. You can browse The Global Bookshelf by region, genre, and book format (Kindle, PDF, physical book). Students can add their book reviews to The Global Bookshelf. If you have students who have read some travel narratives, consider having them write a review to share on The Global Bookshelf. This is a great way to provide an authentic audience for your students' work. The Global Bookshelf is good place for your students to find books that they may enjoy reading. Maybe they'll read a story that sets them off to explore the world.

With Tellagami, begin by creating and customizing a character. Although there is not a great deal of variety in virtual appearance, just enough options exist to personalize your character. From there, you choose a background either from a few in the app itself or your camera roll. I love to take a picture at the front of the classroom and have my character introduce me to the class. I have worked with teachers where they introduce the classroom to students or parents with their character in different spots around the room, even on a bookshelf. After you customize your character and background, you can choose how you want your character to talk, either by recording your voice or typing in text. If you record your voice, you have 30 seconds. If you choose text to speech, there are male and female voices with a few different accents. Some quick ideas you might try: * Have your character tell a story. * Pick a person in history and have them introduce themselves * Use a plant cell as the background and have the avatar name and discuss the function of each part of the cell. * Recite a famous poem or speech * Read a poem they wrote * Take a trip or go back in time and describe where the location/time period * Speak in Spanish, French, Mandarin or any language When you are all done, Gamis can be emailed, posted to Facebook, or Tweeted, which also generates a link to share. You can also view your movie online and get the embed code. I could see embedding a whole bunch of these on a class wiki or blog. You can also save them to your iPad Photos, which is what I like to do. From there, Gamis can be combined together in iMovie or incorporated into other apps like Explain Everything. (Greg Kulowic has some great examples of this, as "appsmashes.") Your only limit is your imagination! Using animation with your students can have a profound effect on how they participate in a project. Their work can be liberated when they have the opportunity to separate