A free website and blog platform that is an easy-to-use platform for the first time user. Recently, Lifeyo has added a couple of features to make their platform even better. The new feature of most interest to educators is the addition of a multiple author capacity. Now you can add contributing editors to your website. You can add editors by selecting "add editors" from the "share" menu then typing in the email addresses of your new editors. The other new feature recently added is the addition of customizable fonts and design elements.
Aviary is now Flickr's default photo editor. (Click on Actions when you are looking at a Flickr photo.) Its image editor Phoenix, is a super-simple tool now designed to work with Google Drive
Citrify is a web-based photo editor. There's no bulky software to install or update. It's always available whenever you need it. There are no complicated layers or albums. Simply open your photo, touch-up and apply effects with a few clicks, and save. Citrify is a fresh little web app that can make your photos look better. We have easy to use one-click tools for removing pimples, reducing wrinkles, or applying funky effects.
Slatebox is a slick, new tool for collaboratively creating mind maps and organizational charts. Slatebox offers a variety of good-looking templates and intuitive tools for designing and editing mind maps and charts. Creating a mind map is a simple matter of selecting a template and using the visual editor to place text and images in boxes. Those boxes can be resized and rearranged using the drag and drop editor. If you need more text boxes, simply add more.
My Avatar Editor creates avatars based on the Mii™ characters found on the Nintendo® Wii™. With an extremely easy interface, avatars can be created either online or by using the download app available from the site. The on site guide has all you need to get started.
Cloud Canvas is a free online image editing and image creation tool. Cloud Canvas fits in a niche somewhere between a simple drawing tool and a full-blown image editor like Aviary. If all you need is a tool for drawing simple pictures and diagrams, Cloud Canvas has you covered
SoundBible.com offers free sound clips for download in either wav or mp3 format.
They offer free and royalty free sound effects and clips for video editors, movie scores, game designers, and weekend sound warriors.
The tool offers several features including the ability to add text watermark to video files, cut video at start and end points that you determine and crop video with few clicks.
"EzineArticles Editors have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every Expert Author should know to be more concise, descriptive, and engaging."
FontStruct is a free font-building tool brought to you by the world's leading retailer of digital type, FontShop.
FontStruct lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks.
You create 'FontStructions' using the 'FontStructor' font editor.
Once you're done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application.
SUMO Paint is a free image editing software that gives you the opportunity to create, edit and comment images online with powerful tools and layer support.
a list of lines from The Simpsons that we, your editors, have found to be particularly witty, often with their humor derived from subtleties of language, esoteric allusions, or just plain wit.
On Clipmarks.com, you can see clips of text, images or video about all sorts of topics that other people find while surfing the web.
The idea is that through each other, we can learn more, know more and enjoy more than we could possibly do alone. As you find people who post clips that interest you, make them a Guide. Think of your Guides as a team of web editors you choose to consistently deliver you clips of things they find on the web.
"What Makes a Great Teacher?
Image credit: Veronika Lukasova
Also in our Special Report:
National: "How America Can Rise Again"
Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke.
Video: "One Nation, On Edge"
James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths.
Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..."
... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown
Chart: "The Happiness Index"
Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller
On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math.
One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked.
The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so.
Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work
(Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org)
At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one).
After a year in Mr. Taylo