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Tikatok is where kids channel their imagination into stories - and publish those stories into books for you to share and treasure with friends and family. Tikatok also has a separate education site. Storytelling comes alive here! First, Tikatok has developed the StorySparks system, a database of hundreds of interactive story prompts that help a child get started in the writing process and get help when they need it. StorySparks help activate a child's natural motivation. Kids pick the topic, choose character names and genders, and always have the ability to modify or ignore any part of the prompt. Second, Tikatok connects kids to a community of passionate storytellers like themselves, but in a safe and parent-moderated environment. Here they can share their books with other kids, collaborate with their friends, get writing advice, and communicate their love of reading and writing in book clubs. Tikatok makes digital storytelling the social activity that kids are familiar with from the playground. Finally, Tikatok can turn a child's stories into real printed books. The physical books, just like the ones on the shelves at the bookstore, reinforce the child's perception that their contributions are valued by their parents and peers. They help create a sense of pride, and of confidence in one's writing abilities, and drive the child to continue writing and creating. The passion for reading and writing that children develop on Tikatok will serve them well as they face more and more advanced educational challenges at school.

Tikatok is a great site that allows the user to create and publish hardback or paperback books. The site is free and the printed books cost about $20.00. This site encourages students to use their creativity to write a story, draw illustrations and more!

This website is another site that allows children to author and illustrate a book online. The books can then be purchased in hardback, paperback, or PDF format. I really think that this site would appeal to students who like to use technology. It's an alternative to the paper and pencil writing that some students really seem to fear and avoid.

This is for anyone who spends anytime working on their family tree. It is very easy to use and you are able to add pictures. This would work great for a family tree project in class. It also has places to create timelines, which would be a great social studies project.

great for family tree project in Spanish class

With Geni, you can build your family tree, invite relatives to collaborate, preserve your family history, discover new relatives, share family photos and videos, and remember birthdays and anniversaries. Geni is private and secure. Only the people in your family can see your tree. I think this would be a wonderful tool to help teach research and organizational skills in a very secure and controlled environment.

WePapers helps students and others share and expand their knowledge for free. You can find and download papers and documents you need in a matter of seconds, discuss them with others, or just mess around. WePapers is where you find the kind of quality information you wouldn't find anywhere else on the web, the kind of papers you'd have to dig for in dusty library basements and still not find what you're looking for. WePapers is one big study group! Universities are even using it for class-notes and articles. I could see using this in a classroom situation for research papers and the such. Students would have the opportunity to connect with others around the world, get help, and feedback from others just like them.

This site let's you download, share and organize information. Sign up is free and if have a facebook account you do not have to sign up.

This is a great tool for holding group conversations. It is a "collaborative, multimedia slideshow." You can add images, documents and videos. The creator can leave comments and doodle on top of the media as they comment. The user can then share their voicethread with others. Those who view the voice thread can add comments too. There are numerous ways to use this tool in the classroom!

Transforming media into collaborative spaces with video, voice, and text commenting.

A VoiceThread is a free collaborative multimedia slideshow that can contain images, documents, and videos. Viewers can leave comments via voice, text, audio file, or video. There are many ways to use this site: post a picture and have students record their thoughts; create a digital story with images, text, and voice; upload pictures of American Revolutionary heroes and have students record their research.

Great Free Blogging website. Conect teachers, studetns and administrators. no email address required for students. Can even get a Teacher Website.

Teachers can host and manage blogs for your students, use a Class Homepage to communicate with students, review capabilities of entries, and it offers advanced privacy. Students get fully featured blogs to upload text, photos, or insert videos, fun learning experience, customizable visibility and comment settings, and no e-mail address required.

The directions are easy: Upload your files from your desktop, edit and view your docs from any computer or smart phone. This is a great resource for teachers and students as the students can work on an assignment from their computer at home and the teacher can access it and see how they are doing.

I have used this for my 5th graders. We have our own web page, and I can put links and assignments on it for them to access. I actually have it set as the home page on all of the desktops in my classroom.

Wiggio is a completely free, online toolkit that makes it easy to work in groups. With Wiggio you can: keep shared calendar (with text message reminders), poll group in real-time, send mass text messages, store files in one common folder,setup group conference call, and many others. When you need to work in groups at school, Wiggio helps you organize groups like: academic project groups, clubs, organizations, committees, and more.

Wiggio is a great website that offers many tools to promote collaboration amongst small groups. Wiggio can be used to set up a group chatroom, store files and documents and send messages. It also features a calendar tool to keep track of meetings and/or deadlines and allows group members to create a poll or survey. This site would be an asset to any group project!

faceinhole.com is a fun site with famous pictures of celebrities, movie scenes, music album covers, magazine covers, and more. Each picture has a hole where a face belongs. You can upload a digital photo of yourself and crop it to fit in the hole you chose. You can also post your creation to a blog. These can be done for fun or you can have students create one and tie it into subject matter. For example, they could create a picture of themselves and then use that picture and setting to write a story, using the particular writing elements in your classroom.

How Many of Me begins by stating that there are 305,818,604 people in the United States. It then asks, "How many have your name?" You type in your first and last name and it will tell you how many others in the U.S. have the same name. It will also tell you how many people in the U.S. have the same first name alone and how many have the same last name alone. There are links for statistics and data on famous people's names. This site would mostly be for fun, but you could tie it into ancestry and immigration lessons in the classroom.

Blogging for teachers and students made easy. Edublogs allows you to easily create and manage student blogs. It includes several useful features and customizable themes, plus, it is ready made for podcasting, videos, photos and more. Edublogs also gives great tips on how to use blogs to revolutionize the way you teach and how your students learn.

Edublogs is an easy to use blogging program created specifically for teachers and students. You can manage your students involvement and participation at any time. I have created an eudcation blog, but in a math classroom, it doesn't get used very often. I do know teachers who use a blog consistently.

Freecycle is an online community to help reduce waste. Members can post items they'd like to get rid of and others who contact them can come and get those items for free. You can search your local city or state to find items you're looking for and all you have to do (after discussing it online with the owner) is pick it up. This helps reduce waste and relieves owners from having to dispose of items on their own. Students can use this site when studying about the environment and recycling issues. They can also contribute a donation or participate by offering their own items to recycle to another member.

You can use this tool for digital storytelling. The site has a Mixbook for Educators Program which offers: free collaborative classroom tools for creating and sharing personalized Mixbooks, secure online environment for students and teachers to share and edit privately, and an education discount on printed products - (up to 40% off printed Mixbooks for your classroom.) Students can use this to create their own stories or younger elementary classrooms could use it to collaborate and create a class book.

Create personalized Photo Books, Photo Albums and Scrapbooks in seconds with our easy, online Photo Book software. Create and share online for FREE." />http://feeds.feedburner.com/mixbook

Shelfari is a social networking site to share a collection of the books you have read, the books you want to read, and your favorite books. The books are displayed on a bookshelf for you to share with others. Students could display their choices for others to view. This could also be added to a library media website so others could see what the media specialist is reading.

This is a great site that allows you to compile your own personal booklist. It is set up like a bookshelf and you can add titles of the books that you are reading, have read, or want to read. It also allows members to see what other members have on their book shelf. You may also create a group to which members of the group may add books to the book shelf. I have set up a book shelf of my personal books and also one for the Washington High School Library. This is exciting because I have invited the entire staff to be members and hopefully they will add books that they have read or ones that they want students to read. As soon as it is up and running I am going to add a link to our interactive grading system called, Schoolloop for the students to view. Maybe this will spark some interest in reading some great books.\n\n

Skype has the potential to improve class participation and collaboration. It can also help cut costs by providing free voice and video calling to other Skype users worldwide. Some uses of the platform include multi-class and cross-district collaboration, professional development, and virtual field trips.

aMap is short for 'argument map'. The idea's very simple - to get more people arguing by mapping out complex debates in a simple visual format. At its heart, aMap is about helping people get to grips with complex (or otherwise) issues and get people thinking. aMaps come in two different formats: Printed pocket-sized aMaps, which you can buy on the eMaps website Interactive personalised aMaps, which you can make on the eMaps website The underlying structuring of aMaps is based around "informal logic" - this is the logic people use to argue in everyday life. Informal logic has a four-tiered structure: - Your position (I think . . .) - what you think over all - Propositions (Because . . .) - reasons that support your position - Arguments (As . . .) - supporting arguments that back up each of your propositions - Evidence (Supported by . . .) - supporting evidence to back up your arguments Although aMaps can be used just for fun, to help students improve and/or develop their reasoning and critical thinking in their essay writing and verbal communication.

Fatburgr provides nutrition information for many of your favorite restaurants. Calories, fat grams, carbs, and fiber are all listed for menu items from restaurants such as Schlotzsky's, Chili's, McDonald's, Panera Bread, Krispy Kreme, and many more. With the focus on childhood obesity, this is a great site for kids (and adults) to compare menu items and learn how to make better choices when eating out. This site could be a fun resource for a health, or maybe even a math, activity.

As more and more students are required to use the web for homework and projects this website becomes more and more useful. It allows the user to design a logo that they could put on their web page or even add to the top a paper or presentation. Free to design a logo and download in a zip file to allow for their own personal use.

This site can be used to make a video out of your music and pictures. What a great way for students to take photographs of their work or assignments and make them into a video. \n\nFor example, in a science lab pictures could be taken of the lab and directions to make a video of how the lab should or should not work. \n\nAnother idea might be to take photographs of a two hour game every ten minutes or at pertinent times and then a video could be made of the event to show \n\n

Animoto is a great program that allows you to upload pictures, choose music, and wait as a finished product is produced in minutes. You can do a short video for free or get a full subscription and have access to longer videos.

Everyone is familiar with youtube and the material that can be found there. As school districts block more and more sites, the options for teachers becomes more limited. Teachertube is geared for educators and students and many of the videos are posted by other teachers.