Webheads

R. Stannard shows how to use Bubblr to make cartoon strips or anime novella with your students for writing activities that can be embedded in a blog or website and shared by email.

Insert a URL on this page and it will render a readability score using Flesch, SMOG, etc., plus statistics such as number of words, sentences, etc. This could be helpful to determine readable authentic materials for ESL/EFL learners. However, I suspect most webpages all run pretty close to the same level. This would be interesting to experiment with, and especially useful for electronic books and content materials.

This is a smart little app to create and edit your own apps for Apple and Android, and both Mac and Windows PCs and tablets. Be forewarned that it has to leave cookies on your machine, but you can supposedly develop and run your edits in your own web browser. Clever students will figure out ways to use it constructively.

True grit may be the most important thing students can learn from you, according to this TED talk. Darwin thought that hard work was not only the most important thing in intellecutual endeavor, but the only thing. To see how to inspire grit, check out Larry Ferlazzo's inks and other resources, including free excerpts from his books, at this blog post.

"A movie trailer is a perfect summarizing activity. It can also act as a "teaser" as an introduction to a presentation or student paper. A movie trailer can readily showcase the acquisition of knowledge of a lesson or unit." A good description of how to use iMovie on the iPad/tablet.

A neat tool to mind-map, show related features of pro and con in a debate, etc. Versatile and free. Over 12K maps already available on many topics.

This blog entry describes what a rubric is and how to create rubrics for your own purposes. "Authentic assessments typically are criterion-referenced measures. That is, a student's aptitude on a task is determined by matching the student's performance against a set of criteria to determine the degree to which the student's performance meets the criteria for the task. To measure student performance against a pre-determined set of criteria, a rubric, or scoring scale, is typically created which contains the essential criteria for the task and appropriate levels of performance for each criterion. "

This is BBC's short science videos page. You can find all kinds of topics on physicas, the brain, biology, genetics, etc. Very helpful stuff for use in classes or flipped classrooms. Thanks to R.Byrne's blog.

This is a collection of texts and accompanying images created by users that you can use for ESL/EFL activities. Have students create and add their own digital stories connected to a theme or short story they have searched for and read. You can also search by a key word, such as a grammatical term they are studying (e.g., "used to"). Thanks to C. Arena.

Phone to Mac copies music, photos, video, and more from iPod, iPad and iPhone to your desktop. This transfer software will help you get your older Mac (up to 10.6) or Windows PC in touch with your mobile life. Download the app to your desktop computer, install, and plug in your mobile device.

You can put a question up on the website and then students reply with their webcam. It's a nice tool for oral language practice, digital storytelling, debates, etc. R. Stannard shows how to use the tool and suggestions for lesson plans. He notes that you will need a fairly fast internet connection. The site allows you to keep statistics on who answered.

This is a series of low-cost ($1 U.S.) podcasts about various topics in multimedia uses for teaching. The topics include narrated slideshows, telling a digital story, using smartphones, quick edit videos on the iPad, and creating multimedia ebooks. W. Fryer is the author of Playing with Media, also relatively low-cost for ebooks.

This site creates several kinds of activities and games: interactive map, riddles, fill-in, crossword puzzles, dialogue with audio prompts, dictation, jumbled word or sentence, matching, word search, and quizzzes. You can store your creations for repeated use. Thanks to D. Gonzalez for sharing this.