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Inspiration® encourages deeper, more critical thinking and improves students' creativity, comprehension and retention. The software helps students create webs, idea maps, mind maps, concept maps, graphic organizers, process flows, and other diagrams for thinking, organizing and writing.

Teacher, writer and speaker, Richard Byrne writes about all things ed tech, providing a wealth of new information as well as FREE resources using technology!

Blog by Richard Byrne with tools and how-tos on implementing free web based technology tools. Big emphasis on Google.

Here are eight free resources for your classroom-some for you, some for your students-that will help you increase students' understanding of proper grammar and sentence structure and aid in improving their vocabulary and writing skills.

Article explains each approach and identifies the merits

Takes text and lays it out in spiral, valentine, rebus, etc. Good for language arts visuals as Web 2.0 tool.

This site offered great information on media ratings. I have used this in middle school open house as a closing to remind parents that the ratings are on the box for a reason. I also let them know that what their students "play" at home shows up in school in there writing assignments, art work and converstaions. I was able to request bookmarks on year at a very low cost.

Open Office is an open software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

I used open office before and was so grateful for it! Very comparable to Microsoft.

A very useful tool for middle school and high school teachers, and maybe even later elementary grades.  Not very useful to me as a first grade teacher, but when students are asked to do research papers, and they start citing Wikipedia as a reliable source, teachers should utilize this.  :)

For any middle/high school teachers who plan on having their students write research papers - to avoid Wikipedia and other unreliable sources students may find via simple Google searches. :)

This is an interesting site that could be used for students to do self-journal assignments. There would no longer be a need for bulky notebooks or binders, as the journal site would replace such. Teachers can set up a class and have administrative access to grade/comment on the student journal entries. I have not used this, but it looks like it could be a great tool.

I thought this may help some who are teaching students how to write research papers. It has some great outlining examples.

This brief article is an early work by Dr. Ian Bogost related to what he would later refer to as "procedural rhetoric." In this piece Dr. Bogost draws parallels between various processes essential to being "literate" at different points in history. With what "processes" do we need to become literate as educators in the 21st century? How can we help others become literate?

This sounds a lot like learning by doing. If students can't experience battle re-enactments, or visit musuems and historical sites, or travel to parks, or act out a story, technology might afford those luxuries. Computers, iPads, even smart phones can provide virtual field trips and experiences. Students can further share these experiences through social networking. As an older generation, I feel it necessary to keep learning how today's youth are communicating so I will be able to connect with them and bridge that gap in their education.

Not a fan of Diamond, but I did like Guns, Germs, and Steel. As it relates to learning, I do agree that there is great benefit in constructing your learning. I imagine a day when we will be able to choose from a vast assortment of resources that will allow us to illustrate specific terms or concepts and from those resources we can build knowledge, sort of like a Lego model.

great tool to have students in grades 3-9th use as a way to improve their language, reading, and creative skills

Make your own comic in several different languages

Ten great story starter activities for elementary school students.

This site automatically converts text from one language to another language. This site is easy for the student to identify all the languages by just typing the text to be converted into another language. A student can write and paste up to 1800 in the text box. This is very useful to use to learn a foreign language in classroom.

research-based classroom strategies to help build and strengthen literacy skills in the following areas: print awareness, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing.

Publish your own book! Great for students to practice using their vocabulary words, etc... Love this! Cool way to incorporate publishing too!

A collection of rubrics for assessing cooperative learning, research process/ report, PowerPoint, oral presentation, web page, blog, wiki, and other social media projects.