MEd Program Diigo Group

"AutoCAD for Education Design and shape the world around you with the powerful, connected design tools in AutoCAD software." This software is free for students and has a three year licence. This would be a great tool for theatre students to download and use to create set and prop designs.

ABCmouse.com helps kids learn to read through phonics, and teaches lessons in math, social studies, art, music, and much more. For kids age 2 to Kindergarten.

Animated Science, Health, Technology, Math, Social Studies, Arts & Music and English movies, quizzes, activity pages and school homework help for K-12 kids, aligned with state standards

Secret Millionaires Club ©2010 A Squared Entertainment LLC

A teacher could use this in their classroom for students to brainstorm in a group, identify key parts of a website, practice reading strategies on actual websites by marking them up, or discuss ideas and take notes. This site is quite interesting and I feel worthwhile. It does somewhat remind me of googledocs and other similar apps, but is unique in many ways. It could be used in a multitude of ways, and definitely lends itself to discussions and critiques of things as vast as articles and websites to paintings and art.

"Twiddla is a free, no-setup, web-based meeting playground. Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Voice and Text chat too!" This might be a great way to have students evaluate websites or documents collaboratively.

Ha! Oops..I already shared this link.

RubiStar is a tool to help the teacher who wants to use rubrics, but does not have the time to develop them from scratch.

Why reinvent the wheel when making PowerPoint presentations? This online tool is used to upload and download PowerPoint presentations and visuals on all sorts of topics. Users may search for an already created PowerPoint on a subject they may teach and download it for their own teaching purposes. Although this online source is open to anyone, it can be used in any classroom content or subject area under discussion; however, a teacher may need to customize sample PowerPoint presentations to fit their classroom needs. For example, if a language arts teacher needed to give notes on grammar and parts of speech, they may search for a PowerPoint already made including that information. This tool saves teacher time and helps spark ideas!

The tool I posted is Slideshare, a presentation platform where users can post PowerPoint presentations they have created for their classrooms or even businesses. I have used this tool in the past in order to find ready made notes presentations I could present to my 6th grade language arts students. The great thing about about Slideshare is that I can use already created PPTs and customize them to fit my students needs. I definitely recommend this site for the teacher who just doesn't seem to have extra time to create all new notes presentations. Don't reinvent the wheel!

Samantha- Are the PPTs all Creative Commons then? You are free to use, and alter?

As an "online work platform with a new take on how everyday work gets done," students could use Podio as a school social network devoted to thier studies. Much like a Facebook account, students would use Podio to complete assignments and discuss classroom content. This collaborative tool can also be used as a place students could use to complete projects and group work assignments. This sort of experience would be effective for teachers looking to have students working with other students from different schools/districts on a common project. This could be useful with Project Based Learning assignments as well.

I see that Podio is targeting higher ed students, and wonder whether it would be to risky to use it in k12. See: http://blog.podio.com/2011/11/16/podios-free-university-program-supports-students-the-real-future-of-work/ There's no teacher control board as there is in Diigo, for example.

I am eager to test out Slide Rocket. Seems like it surpasses PowerPoint and allows users to share and collaborate.

I just tried to use Slide Rocket and see that they are not accepting new users. They appear to have shifted to a company called clear view that is more for corporate use.

Bring the past to life and turn your students into historians with the DocsTeach program from the U.S. National Archives. - Click on Activities to create activities you customize for use in the classroom. - Click on Documents to select from thousands of primary source documents from the billions preserved at the National Archives.

I'm trying this again . . . Docs Teach is digital "warehouse" of primary source documents that include interactive activities, such as evaluating evidence to make a case for a particular argument. This is very useful resource for a social studies class.

I have been exhausting this website for resources since I first discovered her through Twitter. I apologize that it's another language resource, but she has great activities for all different levels of proficiency and languages. The presentation and units with resources are aligned with ACTFL standards.

This site provides great, authentic resources in varying levels of proficiency for languages. The students can listen, decide how much guidance they need and complete a game like activity to practice vocabulary covered. I have used it as an audio resource in the classroom for incorporating cultural viewpoints and reinforcement of vocabulary. It does have a fee to become a member and students cost more.

I have used this in my personal life to get together with busy friends. Can be a great way to coordinate meetings, especially when a "meet every Tuesday" strategy doesn't work well for you.

This is an amazing classroom management system to promote positive behavior. Each student in the class is given an avatar. Simply click on the student's name and give/take dojo points for the behaviors you've programmed in. All of the data is logged into the site and saved for the duration of the year. Use the class feature daily or weekly to identify classroom strengths and areas for improvement. Individual student reports are also available and serve as a powerful tool for parent conferences and grade level meetings. Teachers can choose to reward students based on their positive behaviors by points or percentage. I have used the site extensively in my classroom (5th grade) and have found it to be the most effective positive behavior strategy I've ever tried.

A great free online tool for tracking student behavior. This site allows teachers to instantly record student behavior and participation in class. It also graphs students weekly behaviors and allows students to set goals. Teachers can link class dojo up to parents' email and cell phones so parents can recieve daily updates on their childs behaviors and choices in school.

I have a few teachers who have used this tool in their own classrooms and absolutely love this technology. In order to stay organized, Class Dojo allows teachers to keep track of students behavior. Then, teachers could have a simple way of tracking data in order to allow for positive incentives. Displaying data for the class shows how behavior is effecting classroom lessons and keeps students accountable for their actions. Behavior reports are also good printouts to bring to parent-teacher conferences.

A great Web 2.0 tool for creative writing. This would be useful in a Social Studies class for students to work together to create a story based on the time period being studied. I have found this very easy to use.

Web 2.0 tool that allows you to add content, links, pictures, etc. to primary sources and other written works. This would be especially useful in a Social Studies class to add biographies and links to background information for primary documents. It would also be a good activity to have the students work together to create a cirriculet on a primary source of the time period being studied. I have found this to be very user-friendly.

As a goal for the next school year, I have decided to include a blog that would accompany my teaching and assignments my students would complete throughout the year. Through my searching, I discovered Kidblog. According to the site, "Kidblog is designed for K-12 teachers who want to provide each student with an individual blog. Students publish posts and participate in academic discussions within a secure classroom blogging community." For my language arts students, they would use this tool by completing and discussing discussion questions relating to a novel study (we complete at least 4 throughout the year). In regards to writing, their personal blog would be a great place to stay organized with their process of writing. I also like how this platform allows students to start an e-portfolio, especially for their writing and composition samples.

For teachers looking to keep students learning even outside of the classroom, creating a blog platform for each classroom would be key. Edublogs can be used for e-portfolios and class sites. By uploading videos, pod-casts and notes, my language art students could have an interactive classroom to complete novel study discussions and assignments. In the past, I have used Edmodo and Edublogs is a similar platform. I would recommend for teachers.

Great blog and ideas for language teachers who want to ditch grammar and run a communicative language program.

Great audio, video and reading resources for Spanish speaking countries.