EdTechWalden

This site features a video that allows participants to become familiar with the Moodle interface. It can be used for essential learning, as it provides an overview of the Moodle's features. This is a great pre-training site, as it features a short video that is well-organized and is effective at introducing users to Moodle.

Quizlet is a site that allows learners to create online flashcards. Teachers can create sets to share with their learners, or learners can create their own. Some of the best features of Quizlet are the cost (free), capability of adding images to flashcards, and the fun factor. Quizlet creates games using the flashcards creating by the user, allowing learners study vocabulary in a more engaging manner. It can be used for essential learning by providing learners with key terms prior to the lesson. This knowledge will allow learners to focus their attention and working memory on the content, rather than the new terms. This site is better than other similar sites I have found and used because it is easy to use and provides options that other sites do not have, like uploading images.

This site provides a simple way to create learning tools that let you study anything, for free. You can also share what you create or use resources others have shared.

Zunal web quest maker allows teachers to create web quests to present content to students. The web quest can serve as a guide while students explore content on their own. This allows them to delve more deeply into topics of interest. Each web quest has welcome, introduction, task, process, evaluation, and conclusion pages. Membership also allows teachers to search all web quests created on Zunal to use them in their classroom. With a Professional membership, users can copy and edit other user's web quests to personalize them for use in their classroom. Professional membership also allows access to other features, like the ability to embed additional pages, pre-test and post-test, rubric, quiz, map, and games. Using a web quest created by Zunal can help learners manage the information being presented. The evaluation page can be used to promote generative processing. This site is better than other similar sites because of all of the features available, including the ability to edit web quests made by other users and all of the pages that can be added into the web quest, like maps and games.

TagCrowd (http://tagcrowd.com/) takes the presentation that one is going to do in class and creates a word cloud of the words that are most important to the training topic. Students can see which words will be most relevant to what they are learning by the size of the words in the word cloud. TagCrowd allows its users the option to download the word cloud to a pdf file or it gives it the code to embed into a website of blog. TagCrowd does allow the user to change the fonts, style, color scheme but for a small onetime fee of $19. The ability to omit words, determine the number of vocabulary words that you want your word cloud to have and the embed codes given to you make it surpass some of their free counterparts like Wordle because what you can do with the word cloud once it is completed is limited.

Jing is a screencasting computer program which takes a picture of a computer screen and instantly provides it a URL and is uploaded to the web. It can then be shared instantly between collaborators. Jing offers capture, history, and more in the little transparent "sun" at the top of the screen. A free account can be set-up and software can be downloaded. This will provide the live presenter with opportunities for anytime essential screenshots for projection during the workshop. The screenshot will generate inquiry into the software programs.

WebspirationPRO is a productivity tool that builds visual thinking and cloud computing images. These images are easily sharable and collaborations can be facilitated. Elaborate concept maps can be created in a variety of ways and additional comments can be called-up on each essential topic which helps generate better understandings. There is a free trial account that you will eventually have to pay a very reasonable annual fee. It is well worth the dough for it is a breeze to learn and use.

Glogster EDU calls itself …"the leading global education platform for the creative expression of knowledge and skills in the classroom and beyond." It allows a presenter to overlay many different types of multimedia in a single presentation forum. It is good for essential and generative learning by keeping audience attention for a presentation in a modern capacity for viewing and listening. This site costs about 30 dollars per year for the single license package. It not for the cost, it could be the premier site for just about any presentation.

Wikispaces claims it "…makes managing your class a breeze, with tools to handle day-to-day work and features to tackle the special activities you've only dreamed of." It allows a presenter a venue for organizing, navigating through, and presenting multimedia in a learning management system (LMS) type environment. It is engaging and pace oriented while also being accessible and editable to anyone the creator allows to enlist. Wikispaces creates a presentation forum for learners to build knowledge at their own pace. It is free to users in education.