EdTech Tools and Sites

Scratch is a fantastic, FREE, creative program from MIT which can be used to create art, animations, games, music, simulations, stories and more.

Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of people sharing their knowledge through university-level courses. Experts volunteer their time and resources to create and facilitate courses in their areas of expertise. The courses and their associated materials are free. However, enrollment in each course is limited in order to provide an environment in which the course facilitator and their students can interact in meaningful ways. A new semester begins on January 26 and enrollment in courses is now open. Some of the courses on the course list that should be of interest to educators are Adopting and Authoring Open Textbooks, Collaborative Lesson Planning, Creative Commons 4 Educators, Introduction to Math Art, Mathematics Curriculum Development, and Psychology of Math Learning.

a free technology tool that can be used by teachers and their students. myBrainshark lets users add their voice to PowerPoint presentations to create online videos for free. Attachments, interactivity (such as survey and quiz questions), background audio, photos and more can be incorporated, too. On top of that, it's easy to track who viewed your presentation. With myBrainshark.com, users can recap a lecture (using voice to give additional context to slides), provide supplementary information, administer a lesson and quiz, and even create a school project.

Nabber is a new service for learning a new language with the help of others online. Think of Nabber as part vocabulary studying tool, part social network. Here's how Nabber works; you can browse for vocabulary words and phrases translated by other members of the Nabber network. Likewise you can contribute your own translations to the network. Nabber provides space to not only give a translation, but also to provide an explanation of the translation. If you come across a Nabber member who is making a lot of good contributions, you can follow that person to keep up with all of the translations they contribute.

Icebreakers.ws is an online catalog of dozens of fun icebreaker and team builder activities. The activities are categorized by group size and activity type. To find an activity appropriate for your group just select your group's size then use the activity type key to find "get-to-know-you games," "team building games," or "active (break a sweat) games."

Teachers from around the world share their inspiring ideas for using technology in the classroom.  These are pulled together as a presentation that teachers everywhere can benefit from.

is a free program for creating stop motion movies.

 is a new service for recording, sharing, and organizing ideas with a team.

Culture NOW is a New York City based organization that works to promote diversity through arts education and cultural tourism. One of Culture NOW's efforts toward that goal is the creation of a Google Map featuring museums and culturally significant sites across North America. The Museum Without Walls map features thousands of placemarks representing museums. Click on a placemark to learn a little about s museum, get a link to that museum, and in some cases listen to a podcast about that museum and its collections.