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"AXMA Story Maker is a tool for creating interactive stories where parts of the story (called passages) are represented as blocks and links between passages are shown as lines connecting the blocks. Passages that contain broken links are highlighted and can be easily indentified. " Download. Uses an "intuitive graphic" interface to create an interactive story. Might be useful for students. You can also publish completed stories to the online user library.

A library of books and periodical for many different ages, for people with print disabilities. Free to educators, students, and schools.

These each render a different type of word cloud. Students can use them for project logos, or you can drop in text and see what the word frequency is. Tagul is one of the most interesting, as you can use a library of templates of different shapes.

Create ejournals and ebooks for free; explore the YUDU library of free books and magazines to see how it would look to self-publish. A great way to have your students publish their own works.

"Geeky teachers have brought Minecraft to subjects ranging from history to biology to probability. The game is being rolled out to every secondary school in Northern Ireland this month. If you're a parent, you've noticed Minecraft offerings spawning in your local summer camp listings. The Chicago Architecture Foundation offers a Minecraft camp for budding builders. Ninety-two libraries participated in the International Games Day Minecraft Hunger Games tournament, andcrowned a 13-year-old girl as its champion. And, I've helped launch Connected Camps' Summer of Minecraft, a new in-game online camp. "Progressive educators have been advocating for games-based learning ever since Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, and Reader Rabbit opened up a new market for consumer children's software in the '80s. SimCity demonstrated how a building and tinkering game could be embraced by parents, kids, and educators. And, Scratch shows how kid-centered learning communities can thrive online. "Minecraft is part of this lineage of learning games, but it fundamentally rewrites the playbook." This blog talks about why Minecraft is so popular with kids and with educators alike, referring back to Papert's experiments with "turtles." My 9-yr-old granddaughter is totally absorbed by the game and the games within the game she can play. She's even venturing into the "survival" mode where exploration includes fighting zombies. What's not to like?

"The UK is a rich landscape of regional accents and dialects, each evidence of our society' s continuity and change, our local history and our day-to-day lives. This site captures and celebrates the diversity of spoken English in the second half of the twentieth century." Includes 76 sound recordings and over 600 audio clips from the British Library archive o English Dialects.

If you are an iMac user and have been frustrated by not being able to access the iPhoto or iMovie databases directly, this Browser is helpful. In addition to the iLife media, you can browse bookmarks from Safari, et al., and drag and drop any folder to the source list to add it to your library. Works with a small window, so it is fine for smaller size monitors.

"The Taxonomy of Effective Teaching Practices, described in the book Teach Like a Champion, is a collection of instructional techniques gleaned from years of observations of outstanding teachers in some of the highest-performing urban classrooms in the country. Developed by Uncommon Schools Managing Director Doug Lemov and Uncommon teachers, this set of specific and concrete actions, paired with a library of over 700 video clips of highly-effective teachers in action, has provided teachers nationwide with actionable tools to drive greater student achievement and a shared language to discuss and support teacher effectiveness." This particular page has a set of videos demonstrating the small, but crucial techniques that make a good, effective teacher int he classroom.

This site has animated libraries of English, German, and Spanish, with animated articulatory diagrams, words in context, etc. Might be more useful for advanced students of phonology and teachers than for students.

An online speed reading training tool, this site really helps you improve reading speed. Contains a very limited library for practice, but you can also highlight text in a browser and open the Eyercize tool from an icon on your browser toolbar. Should be quite useful.

Truly free and non-commercial, the collections M. Sheehan lists include the Federal Registry (FREE, and non-commercial) with animations, primary docs, maps, etc.; Graphic Organizers from Vermilion Parish; The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, with primary sources and online exhibits to explore history; Chonicling America from the Library of Congress, which contains a database of newspapers from 100 years ago. These sites would be great for authentic materials and content-based tasks for teens/adults.

"Shadow Puppet Edu is a free iPad app that students can use to create audio slideshow videos. The app offers an integrated search tool that students can use to find pictures from the Library of Congress, to search for images from NASA, and to find Creative Commons licensed images from Flickr. Students can also import pictures and videos from the camera roll on their iPads. " R. Byrne's blog also gives directions on how students can use this image search tool integrated with audio-slideshow.

Build a video library by importing videos from YouTube, G-Drive, or Dropbox. Then control the video with the MoocNote interface to take notes that link back to the appropriate places in the videos. Access notes from anywhere and share. You can also ask questions of the community. This looks like an excellent resource and tool.

" YouTube Audio Library Compared to finding copyright-friendly images and video clips, finding free background music for video editing can be pretty discouraging. I've featured some free background music sites previously, but I often find the choices limited. I typically associate YouTube with video, but I was surprised to stumble across this resource." T/h to Nick LaFave

3. Google Tour Creator "A lot of teachers are already familiar with Google Expeditions, a virtual reality platform that lets users experience hundreds of places in the world in 3D. But what you might not know is that you can now create your own tours using Tour Creator. This tool enables us to create our own tours, using imagery from Google Street View or our own 360 photos, then publish them right into Poly, Google's library of free VR and AR objects. "Students can create tours as part of a research project, use them as a way to reflect after a field trip, or even as a supplement to a creative writing project. They can be used to create tours of your school, your classroom, or your town. If your school doesn't currently have much VR technology, start with an affordable Google Cardboard-just pop a smartphone into one of these and you now have one VR headset that can be used by a small group of students." T/h to Jennifer Gonzalez

Themeefy allows students to create their own content sites and display them in a magazine-like format. Less cluttered-looking than ScoopIt or PaperLi. Thanks to C. Arena for this site.

"Kim Preshoff is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of science teachers in her community. With more than 25 years of classroom experience, she's an expert at how to use the force of curiosity to keep kids engaged and learning. For her TED-Ed Innovation Project, Preshoff created a classroom-ready digital collection of 100+ great videos and learning resources about core topics in art, history, science, and beyond. [To add a video to your school's learning library, use the TED-Ed Lesson Creator.] Below, check out Preshoff's curated collection of school-friendly videos and learning resources:"

Over 600 audio clips from the British Library Sound Archive collection. Would be useful for hearing how modern dialects actually sound; includes Minority/Ethnic accents.

Yet another place to draw cartoons and animations. A large library of free cartoons to view.

"I love genius hour, I love Innovation Day, I love the idea of learning and creating something. But I felt we were starting to focus too much on the creation part rather than just the learning part. That too much time was spent creating the imagery of their learning rather than the learning itself. So instead I asked the kids to do what we have called project time, 30 minutes once a week where they just get to learn. Sure, they can create, sure they can make things, but they can also use the entire time to just read, study, ask questions, whatever they want to do. I decided on a big category to help them focus their curiosity, geography, and with held breath I sat back. "The last two weeks have been incredible. Students have read library books on countries, they have studied maps, they have created impromptu map quizzes, and yes, they have even created presentations. The learning that has happened has been tangible as kids ask questions about the broader world, about their place in it. When I asked them what they thought, the response was overwhelming; "We love it, Mrs. Ripp. Please don't change it. What will we focus on next?" (History for those who wonder)." T/h P. Ripp