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Are you searching for a way to share documents, presentations, slideshows, or a series of photos or images with your students? Then Voice Thread is the free Web 2.0 tool for you and your students (teachers can register for a free education account). Voice Thread allows you and your students to add audio, video, and text as part of conversations concerning science or math content. Comments can be added using a pre-recorded audio file, microphone, call from a phone, or webcam and microphone. A Voice Thread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world. This is great when your class is collaborating on a project with students in another time zone or other locations around the world.

Possible collaboration opportunity for students

"Welcome to the Books Go Global space! We will use this space to share and post our multimedia book reviews so that everyone can enjoy them! We will be using VoiceThread to create our reviews, but are open to using different tools as the year progresses and new tools are developed. Right now, this project is being conducted in English with fourth grade classes around the world, but we would love to open it up to other age ranges and languages over the course of the year. We are actively looking for more partners, so please feel free to sign up here! Once you've signed up, check out the teacher planning page to see how to get started."

4th grade Welcome to the Books Go Global space! We will use this space to share and post our multimedia book reviews so that everyone can enjoy them! We will be using VoiceThread to create our reviews, but are open to using different tools as the year progresses and new tools are developed. Right now, this project is being conducted in English with fourth grade classes around the world, but we would love to open it up to other age ranges and languages over the course of the year. We are actively looking for more partners, so please feel free to sign up here! Once you've signed up, check out the teacher planning page to see how to get started.

Icebreaker activities for teachers.

So, what is Wallwisher? Well, Wallwisher is "an online notice board maker." Kind of a bleak description so to spice it up a little, Wallwisher is an online collaboration tool to share ideas, resources, and thoughts on a particular topic. Ahhh yes, much better…and pretty cool, huh?

Skype is a free downloadable software that lets you do voice and video calls combined with instant messaging for free. The possibilities of Skype to flatten your classroom are endless.

Now that you and/or your students are using wikis and blogs, are you curious what could be added to them? From animated slideshows to collaborative documents to interactive review games, many great (and free) tools are available. As a follow up to my previous post "What Teachers Should and Should Not Be Posting on their Classroom Webpages", I've pulled a master list of embedding options that will hopefully spark your imagination.

"Join us on 10.10.10 for an unprecedented event. Every Nation, 24 hours, and You. On October 10, 2010 (10.10.10), across the planet, documentary filmmakers, students, and inspired citizens will record the human experience over a 24-hour period and contribute their voice to the largest participatory media event in history. Founded in 2008, ONE DAY ON EARTH is creating an online community, shared archive, and film. Together, we will showcase the amazing diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that occur in one day. We invite you to join our international community of thousands of filmmakers, hundreds of schools, and dozens of non-profits, and contribute to this unique global mosaic. Through the One Day on Earth platform, we will establish a community that not only watches, but participates."

The possibilities for social media tools in the classroom are vast. In the hands of the right teacher, they can be used to engage students in creative ways, encourage collaboration and inspire discussion among even soft-spoken students. But we've already made our case for why teachers should consider using social media in their classrooms. What about the how?

KEWL!! Have a list of website you want kids/parents to go to? This will join them into a slideshow they can look through and visit when they want. Nice!

Revision is a critical piece of the writing process-and of your classroom curriculum. Now, Google Docs has partnered with Weekly Reader's Writing for Teens magazine to help you teach it in a meaningful and practical way. The sharing features of Google Docs enable you and your students to decide exactly who can access and edit documents. You'll find that Google Docs helps promote group work and peer editing skills, and that it helps to fulfill the stated goal of The National Council of Teachers of English, which espouses writing as a process and encourages multiple revisions and peer editing. On this page, you will find several reproducible PDF articles from Writing magazine filled with student-friendly tips and techniques for revision. You'll also find a teacher's guide that provides you with ideas for how to use these materials with Google Docs to create innovative lesson plans about revision for your classroom.

"An online library of free videos for learners everywhere - our goal is to gather a set of resources to help you learn just about anything, meet people who make a difference in their communities, and even discover new parts of the world. Next Vista for Learning wants to post your educational videos online, too. Everyone has an insight to share and yours may be just what some student or teacher somewhere needs!"

Wow, some great starter videos to help intro new topics, or find out a little more about almost everything! They are free to download as well!.

CarrotSticks is an online multiplayer game that improves math skills for 1st - 5th graders as they practice and compete with peers around the world!

"Day one of introducing Google Docs to a class is always an exciting one, I have been fortunate to be able to see three cohorts experience the fun ways to use it. Today we made a start with our Year 5s and had a great afternoon."

For Mandy...

"The mission of MY HERO is to use media and technology to celebrate the best of humanity and to empower young people to realize their own potential to effect positive change in the world. Our freely accessible, not-for-profit project is supported by visitors of all ages who share stories, art, and short films on our award-winning multimedia journal and digital library. "

Mark, for your unit on role models

This weekend I had the great pleasure of participating in my first webinar: The 3rd Virtual Round Table Online Conference. It was an amazing experience, I had the pleasure of "running" into many friends from my PLN and loved the sessions I was able to attend. During the Unconference we all decided on some topics of interest and then each went to a virtual conference room to discuss the theme we had chosen. In the room I went to we talked about error correction - ways we do it, when we do it, etc. We shared ideas, our experiences. There were some great ideas, and I chipped in with an activity I really enjoy doing and the students have the greatest time with it. But most importantly, I believe it to be one of the most effective ways of error correction, because the correction is made by the students; they correct sentences they've written. (By the way, for those of you who were in the room, I am sorry if I stumbled or did something wrong - I was extremely nervous about speaking there!)

What a cool way to have fun with language, use the projector and have kids work in teams collaboratively. :)

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you. OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth. Use with Dusty

"At Key To School (KTS), we believe that Moodle is indeed a gift to all educators. However, it was observed that setting up and maintaining a Moodle server was an uphill task for many educators, not made easy by the restrictions imposed by many non-managed hosting providers. On the other end of the spectrum, the managed Moodle hosting was too costly for a first time Moodler who wanted to get acquainted for Moodle. We strive to ease both the learning curves well as provide the most affordable price - free, for all Moodlers. "

Moodle options for the high school?

Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow - Today (ACOT2) is a collaborative project to help high schools get closer to creating the kind of learning environment this generation of students needs, wants, and expects so they will stay in school.

15 ways to use wallwisher in the classroom.