Group items tagged

"Best Free Online Applications and Services"

ToonDoo is a very user friendly web based application that allows you to create cartoon strips and even cartoon books. The site is designed to encourage participants to create new strips, share their work, and discuss cartooning. What a great way to get students involved in the writing / digital story telling process. The Toon Creator is full of backgrounds, character, props, and other useful tools to aid in creating your masterpieces. I would say that the site is certainly appropriate and easy enough to use for elementary students but is entirely appropriate for older students as well. What a find :)

Convert to PDF from any application by simply 'printing' to the PrimoPDF® printer - it couldn't be easier! Within minutes, you can create high-quality PDFs by converting from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and virtually any other printable file type.

Gliffy allows students to draw and share diagrams online. You get all of your basic functionality that you would in an offline diagram application but with a few extra bonuses like working online collaboratively and dynamic publishing of diagrams. Create flow charts, floor plans, technical diagrams, and more.

Portable Document Format (PDF) is the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world. CutePDF Writer (formerly CutePDF Printer) is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a "printer subsystem". This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button!\n \nFREE for commercial and non-commercial use! No watermarks! No Popup Web Ads!

The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available on the web. One of the things that I really like about Hot Potatoes is it's seemless integration with certain Learning Management Systems. I use Moodle quite a bit, and you can include a Hot Potatoes activity right in the Moodle course.

Includes tutorials on various Web 2.0 tools. The Collaborative Projects listed are most informative. This site also provides examples of using Google Earth for collaborative biology projects, although it is applicable for other disciplines as well.

Scratchpads are an easy to use, social networking application that enable communities of researchers to manage, share and publish taxonomic data online. Sites are hosted at the Natural History Museum London, and offered free to any scientist that completes an online registration form. Scratchpad users include societies, journals, scientists, students and amateurs. Any group with an interest in natural history is eligible for a site and you do not have to have an academic affiliation, or any professional qualification. All you need is a little time, some information you would like to share, and a little experience using the web. You don't need to even be a member of a group, although the best sites are usually those developed by a community who make regular contributions.

The Edusim application is a slimmed down version of the core Open Cobalt Metaverse Project. Edusim is a 3D multi-user virtual world platform and authoring toolkit intended for your classroom interactive whiteboard, but equally powerful on the students laptop or desktop computers. Cobalt - Edusim has been tested and works on the Smartboard, Activeboard, Interwriter, Polyvision, Mimio, eBeam, and even the Wiimote Whiteboard. Edusim is extendable allowing multiple classrooms to connect their interactive whiteboards for collaborative learning session.

Open Cobalt Alpha is the first step in a long term project to make available to all people a free and open source platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual workspaces for research and education. This 3D multimedia wiki technology makes it easy to create deeply collaborative and hyperlinked multi-user virtual workspaces, virtual exhibit spaces, and game-based learning and training environments that run on all major software operating systems. By using a peer-based messaging protocol to reduce reliance on server infrastructures for support of basic in world interactions across many participants, Open Cobalt makes it possible for people hyperlink their virtual worlds via 3D portals to form a large distributed network of interconnected collaboration spaces. It also makes it possible for schools and other organizations to freely set up their own networks of public and private 3D virtual workspaces that feature integrated web browsing, voice chat, text chat, and access to remote desktop applications and services.