ECETECH

This would be a great resource to use when counseling children. In conjunction with Art Therapy, the child could create characters to express themselves and situations. These could be saved, shared, and used to analyze the child's progress.

children can create a character and add voice as a means of expressing themselves.

Thecolor.com is a website that has hundreds of online coloring pages available for children. The coloring pages are separated into different categories. Some of these categories include alphabet, animals, holidays, insects, and pets. After students finish their coloring creations, they can save them into their own personal gallery and also print them off of the computer.

Even though coloring sheets aren't generally the most creative activity, this could be a good site for children who need practice manipulating the mouse because they can use mouse clicks to color a picture.

Some good on-the-ground feedback from someone who has been using a SMART table. Make sure you read (and perhaps contribute to) the comments at the end.

create word clouds

Students could make word clouds to illustrated new vocabulary words or in preschool students could add words they have learned and make a poster.

Kids ask lots of questions, right? "Do fish sleep?" "Why do balls bounce?" Sometimes the answers are hard to explain! I came across this website called Whyzz.com. While the site describes it for parents, I think it would be a wonderful resource for teachers, especially when children are engaged in investigative studies. Try it out!

Photos Story 3 is a way to combine photos, voice recordings, music, and writing . Children can bring their favorite stories to life or create their own. By creating photo stories in the class or at home, these stories can be shared to many.

that is a really great idea. That is amazing. Thanks for sharing

I actually downloaded this software recently. It was extremely easy to use and fun to play with. I created a couple of slideshows involving my siblings, and shared with my family via the email and they enjoyed it. I like how easy it is to share and how creative you can get with it. I feel that children could use this with some assistance, but they will be thrilled with the end result. Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

Only useful if someone contacts you to edit a document, or if you upload a document and contact them. More person to person, then person to internet community.

Writeboard is a collaborative document creation tool that can be used between a number of people. This tool quick for anyone to start up. On the homepage you can create your document to be edited by naming the document, then provide your email address. Once the wrtieboard is created you can begin typing! Once the document is complete you can invite people to view and edit your document as well as leave comments. Once the document has been edited by another person, you will be able to compare your document with the newest edited document. One of the challenges I faced when using this tool is the format of the document when typing. In order to indent or make a word bold or italic, a special code needed to be entered. For example, to make the word "Introduction" bold, you would have to type *Introduction*. This actually slowed my typing down, but I feel if this is a tool that you use often, these are codes you could catch on to. The strength of this tool is the option to invite anyone to edit. I feel that this would be useful for teachers to communicate back and forth to share activities and edit them. Or it could be useful as an assignment for students to share a paper and to edit the others. This would help their editing skills. I also like the option to compare and contrast your original document with one that has been recently edited. I think this would be helpful in seeing what improvments were made and choose whether or not you'd like to accept them. I think that this tool would be better for high-school students, or any teacher. The tool would be difficult for anyone younger to use.

Although you can try the service for free, you will have to pay to continue this service for minimum of $44.99 a month for a group of 5 people. Can be pricy.

The ePals Global Learning Community is a network of interconnected classrooms around the world. It provides a safe environment for students and teachers for building and exchanging knowledge, using protected e-mail, blogs, translation tools, evidence-based curricula and authentic, collaborative learning experiences. ePals offers a range of services and features that are free for students in grades K through 12. One service is ePals SchoolMail. This is a multilingual electronic communications solution that offers schools and districts a protected, customized and collaborative environment. Another service is ePals SchoolBlog, an educational tool for creating unified Web-based platforms that administrators, teachers, parents and students use to achieve academic goals (hotchalk.com)

The ePals Global Learning community is a very useful networking, and collaborative tool. I found it very easy to use. It is easy to sign up and free to use. I have had no problems using this website.

reviews movies, games, TV, websites, books and music for all ages.

I used this during a preconference session on assessment at NAEYC. It is awesome! Participants are able to use their cellphones to respond to live polling questions. There are open-ended responses and multiple choice options. After messages are sent, the results appear immediately on the screen. The polls can be inserted into powerpoint slides. It's a great way to get participants engaged!

Storybird is an online story creator. It is a place where people can easily create their own stories and collaborate with others if desired. You can also read stories created by other users. This site is very easy to navigate and purposefully created to be child friendly, but is also appropriate for adults.

I really like Storybird as a website that offers story creation. Many websites that allow users to create a story are very complex and may take days and days of work. Storybird seems a bit more simplistic which would make it easier for young children to use. I think online story creating could be a great idea for teachers to incorporate into the classroom.

I stumbled upon this free digital storytelling site and think it's pretty cool. It's a service that uses collaborative storytelling to connect children and families. Two or more people create a Storybird by writing their own text and inserting artwork from an extensive library. The final storybook can be shared privately or publicly with an online community.

useful for tech ed educators

Free site to create wikis

Free web application for brainstorming online

Free visual mapping program

Free downloadable software to record podcasts. Compatible with both Windows and Mac.