Group items tagged

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

This site enables you to create a speaking avatar. It can be used to teach characterization or for presenting information in which students need to use oral language. The avatar can speak from recording your voice over a phone or typing in text.

A great way to give a daily message to the students. Can have the students record lunch menu for the class to hear each morning.

Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog, profile, and in email messages. I personally have two of them on my teacher website. Sometimes you have to spell phonetically in order to get the Avatar to pronounce things correctly, but other than that, it is a blast creating them.

This is an awesome site for book lovers! It allows you to browse through popular books, which I love to do, just to see what people are reading for an idea of what to read next. Then you can put books that you own on your "shelf". You can then have friends and share actual books with each other, if you live nearby. It is also a great place to read ratings on books. It then links you to Amazon and other libraries where you could check our or buy the books! You can also put your "bookshelf" on a blog to show off your interests to all your friends.

This is a great site if you are a pet lover like me! This site is a good tool for people wanting to find a safe, reliable home for their pet or for people wanting to find a certain type of pet. You can search for any type of pet, even insects!! You can search by country, location, age, etc. It makes it very easy to find any pet you may be wanting, without wanting to contribute to puppy mills or other breeders. It is also great for people wanting to find a good home for a pet for people, for whatever the reason, can no longer care for it. There are photos to browse through as well. It is a great tool for keeping pets in good, loving homes.

Smilebox is a fun web site where you can upload your digital photos to create slideshows, ecards, photoalbums, and postcards. You can also add music to them. Then you can email your creations or add them to a blog. It can be used for personal use or you can have students create photo albums or slideshows relating to a particular area of study, to show what they have learned or to teach a concept to others.

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.

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!

PollDaddy allows you to create your own poll or survey on any topic for free. You can then add your creation to your web site, blog, or social networking page. You can use them for fun or as an educational tool. Teachers can create polls or surveys for their students to answer, regarding current subject matter or students can use their math skills to create their own poll/survey. They can create polls and surverys related to specific objectives and they can incorporate their technology skills by adding their poll/survey to a web page, blog, powerpoint, or other media forms.

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.

Wordle is a great Web 2.0 tool to motivate students to look at word choice in their writing. The words that are used frequently, are displayed larger in the word cloud.

Wordle helps create word clouds. You enter words and the more often a word is entered, the larger the word will appear in the word cloud. It's a fun way to make posters that are fun and informative. It would be a good way to have students create posters over books they've read, end of the unit displays, etc. One tip that I received for Wordle is that it is helpful to type your words in a Word document first so that you can edit them and make sure they are all spelled correctly. If you have a typo in your Wordle, you can't edit it. You have to retype all of the words.

Great for listing words to a related topic. Have used it to make Mother's Day card with the students.

This tool allows the user to download a book to your IPod for students or kids to listen to. This would be great for the reluntant readers or ones who struggle with reading. This site would be a great addition to the classroom.

AudibleKids allows you to purchase an audible version of books. They are fairly expense but would be worth the money if it was a download you knew you would use repeatedly. This could be especially helpful when making adaptations and modifications for lower level readers. The other thing I really liked is that you can listen to a short samples for free.

I use this to buy audio books for both personal and school use. If you buy a lot of audio books, they have membership packages which can allow you to buy books for about $7. That's a great price!

This is a kid-friendly site that allows students to publish their own podcasts concerning subjects that matter to them. Each podcast is rated in a way that is similar to the rating system used for video games This is to ensure the age-appropriateness of each podcast. This would be a great tool to use in the classroom for a variety of projects. Students could share their thoughts on classroom topics, current events, or book reviews.

Kid-cast.com is a website for that allows kids to publish their own Podcasts to share with other kids. The website is designed to be kid safe.

This is an online notice board maker where you can post announcements, greetings, jokes; just about anything you would want to put on a Post It. I think this would be a great tool for students to use in a note taking assignment. This would be fun to collaborate multiple students' posts and try to combine them randomly to create a funny poem or short story.

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.

Lookybook is a wonderful website that allows the user to read through a variety of picture books. After reading a book, the site also offers the opportunity to purchase the book through several different companies. The user can also create a "bookshelf" of favorite books to share with other users. This site could be used to do an author or illustrator study and is very helpful when deciding to read or purchase a book.

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.

Myplick is a free service that lets you share, embed and discover presentations and slide shows online. You can upload your presentation documents in a variety of formats such as powerpoint, pdf, etc. If you want to add narration or sound effect to your presentation, you can upload an audio file and have the option to synchronize the audio with your slides. After you create a presentation you will have the choice to either publicly share with everyone or only share it within a private group. You can also find out how users are viewing your plick, for example, how much time people stayed on each slide. This would be a good way for students to share their presentations with others.

Teachade is a social networking site for teachers to access helpful teacher Internet sites, educational resources, and websites for classroom teachers. There is a way to join the site so that it becomes a social networking site. There is also a workspace for you to add information that you want to keep track of, Blogs, and a way to make a group. It only has 35 members so if you like smaller more imitate sites then this is one for you.

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.

Glogster lets you create a glog or an "interactive poster," that is, in effect, a personal Web page complete with embedded media links, sound, and video capabilities. Students can work with Glogster individually or as a group to create presentations, share information, and interact with their peers. Glogster now provides master-accounts for teachers integrating all student accounts. This is a very cool classroom tool.

Glogster is a site that allows you to mix movies, pictures, graphics and words to create a collage for others to view. This site is also perfect for your WIKIs. This link takes you to the educator's version of glogster. This site has educator's master virtual classrooms for using all the tools offered on this website.