Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"Classcraft, the first online educational role-playing game that teachers and students play together for free, recently announced the launch of a fully-updated version of their product for the new academic year. This revised version boasts new features such as free iOS apps for iPhone and iPad, interactive forums, student analytics and customisable characters, all of which will be useful for both teachers and students. Also included are French, Chinese, Dutch, German, and Spanish translations, which has made the game even more accessible to classrooms worldwide. To date, more than 30,000 students in 50 countries around the world are playing the game. "In order to keep students engaged, the Quebec-based team of education professionals are keen to inject the mechanisms of popular social games into learning. Playing in teams, students can become mages, warriors and healers, each with unique powers. The more a student excels, the more they gain points and real powers, like the ability to take notes into an exam. Teams can lose points by disrupting the classroom or submitting homework late; consequences can include detention and and less time to finish assignments."

"Presentation Tube is a service that teachers and students can use to record, share, and watch presentations. Presentation Tube provides a free desktop tool (Windows only) that you can use to record a video of yourself talking over and drawing on slides. The Presentation Tube recorder automatically synchronizes your PowerPoint slides with your voice. The free recording tool allows you to record for up to 15 minutes. Your completed recording can be uploaded directly to Presentation Tube."

A number of children's and young adult free books for your tablets. A good way to increase your school library with little expense. The online tool also lets your write, edit and publish books for free, and convert any doc to a book format.

Nice ideas, and a downloadable sheet to get a free teaching aid: "At one time or another, most of us suffer from writer's block and have a terrible time coming up with story ideas. We stare at a blank page, unable to come up with clever story starters or generate ideas for stories to write. In a way it traps us and keeps us from doing the one thing we want to do most when we sit down with a paper and pen in hand or in front of a computer: write. The more time we waste and are unable to come up with ideas for writing stories, the more we get discouraged. That's why we have something to help kick-start your muse.In this free online download, you get two weeks worth of top-notch writing prompts designed to spark your mind and help you flex your creative muscles. From fiction prompts to poem starters to short stories ideas, you'll be able to generate creative story ideas based on a sentence or two of direction."

"To start using Presentation.io upload a PPT or PDF to your free Presentation.io account. Presentation.io then gives you a URL to distribute to your audience. When the members of your audience open that URL they will be able to see and follow along with your presentation. When you're done with your presentation just click "stop presenting" and the synchronization stops. To use your phone as a remote just start your presentation and Presentation.io will send you a text with a link to make your phone a remote. Simply upload your presentation, click "Settings" and then "Use mobile phone as controller." "The free version of Presentation.io keeps your presentation on file for four hours before it expires. " This sounds like a great app to use at conferences. Other links in this blog mention Presefy, which also lets an audience follow your slides remotely.

"Creating animations can be a fun element to add to a creative writing project. Creating the animation could be the final piece of the project in which students bring their short stories to life. You could also have students create short animations to use as story starters for their written works. Here are five free tools that students can use to create animations."

"Improve Reading Speed and Comprehension Spreeder.com is free online speed reading software designed to improve your reading speed and comprehension. Spreeder is a free service provided by 7-Speed-ReadingTM. If you like this site, please have a look at our powerful 7 Speed Reading Software." This looks like an amazing tool-- You can paste in your own text and it will pop up in a timer box. When you click the Speeder button it will tell you how long it took to read the passage. But no comprehension questions!

"Thousands of Free Presentations in PowerPoint format & Free Interactive Games for Kids This is the themes and topics index all on one page. Please scroll down." Might be useful for some subject matter lessons, e.g., Ice Ages, Active Galaxies, Aesop's fables, Afghanistan, etc.

Terry Freedman is a British Educator who likes project-based learning, and this Free pdf file has doezens of projects for students and adult learners of all ages. Includes a great list of Websites and resources used, that is worth the donwload in itself.

A free version of Photoshop--loads of options and things it can do! "The volunteer developers of The GIMP have been working hard to develop a polished, user-friendly, and freely distributed image editor. Although the separated palette windows may disturb those users who are used to more traditional layouts, your comfort level should grow exponentially as you discover how pain-free the program is."

"Jumbled Sentences is a series of five free iPad apps designed to help students learn to construct sentences. The apps provide students with drag and drop activities in which they sort jumbled words into sentences. The sound can be turned off and on in each app. When the sound is turned on students can hear the words read them by the narrator. The narrator also reads the sentences that students construct. The app provides students with immediate feedback on each of the sentences that they build. When students correctly create sentences they earn virtual coins that they can then use to buy virtual stickers to mark their progress." These apps might be useful for EFL/ESL students, since they include sound/reading aloud of sentences. t/h R. Byrne

"Here are few tools which can be used to create tutorials. These screen casting tools are free alternative to some of the higher priced utilities. This list covers both PC and Mac utilities." But it doesn't specifiy which are Mac-only or PC-only, so it takes a little experimenting. I didn't realize there was a free, open source version of Camtasia. A good list, except Jing is apparently going to disappear -- get in now!

"Spark for Education is a free service that Adobe has launched to address the concerns that schools have had about Spark since it's launch a few years ago. The biggest of those concerns being use by students under the age of 13. Spark for Education is designed for school-wide deployment (much like G Suite for Education) in a manner that is COPPA compliant. The school will be able to manage student and teacher use of Spark including access to the service itself. Additionally, Spark for Education will provide students and teachers with free access to all of premium features of Adobe Spark." T/h to R. Byrne

"There is some good free content on BIE. The most notable of that free content being their rubrics for assessing critical thinking skills, collaboration, presentation, and creativity and innovation in project based learning assignments. The rubrics are available with or without Common Core alignment. You can download the rubrics as PDFs or Word documents."

"Discover free templates for Google Slides presentations" Download templates for presentations on Google Slides. GS is becoming more sophisticated. No guarantees on how long this will remain available, but it's free. Templates are categorized by type: "Formal, creative, simple," etc.

Nice video explaining how you can collaborate online with a large number of people or a team. 3 free whiteboards with free subscription.

"Webinars for English language teachers - Whether you are a relatively experienced English language teacher or very new to the game, log in for these FREE monthly webinars on a range of subjects. You can access the archive of past recordings, too." Although many of the courses are for pay, there are a number FREE Webinars for English language teachers as well (see right-side link).

This is a tool recommended by a Webhead for creating an eportfolio. Sign up is free and there is a special section for educators. Like many new online tools, this may eventually become not-free bu in the meantime it looks like a good place to collect and display student work. Allows for all types of media and you can organize in a variety of ways. Media can be uploaded from your computer or from various social media you use. A little slow and clunky, but usable.

A list of 49 free books. Not organized, so it will take some time to comb through, but there are some gems, such as great tools for e-learning, and "Don't get Trapped by Your E-learning Tools." A mix of tools and pedagogy. Direct links to those books that are published online, as is the case with most.

If you train other teachers, these templates -- free and downloadble as docs -- should help with the task of planning and preparing. Also a free Trainer's Kit is available. Haven't had a chance to try any of them out, so caveat emptor.