Voice Thread Blog

A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

Go to Voicethread

Celebrate Educational Blogging

WizIQ

WiZiQ brings students and teachers together regardless of the boundaries. With absolutely no cost to join or use its state-of-the-art virtual classroom, WiZiQ is becoming a vital tool in an online teacher’s or a student’s toolkit.

Go to WizIQ

Moodle and Gong

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a University with 200,000 students. This site itself is created using Moodle, so check out the Moodle Demonstration Courses or read the latest Moodle Buzz.

Go to Moodle

Gong is a free system for voice communication on the Web. It allows groups of people such as students and teachers to participate in discussion groups using their computers, using both synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous chat. It is commonly used by schools and universities for providing a 'voice board' for teaching purposes.

Go to Gong

Google Contest

Following on from the success of the Google Summer of Code program, Google is pleased to announce this new effort to get young people involved in open source development. We've teamed up with the open source projects listed here to give student contestants the opportunity to learn more about and contribute to all aspects of open source software development, from writing code and documentation to preparing training materials and conducting user experience research.

Go to Google Contest

Edublog

However, perhaps the most important thing about edublogs, to us, is also the most obvious… we’re just here for education. Because we’re not trying to keep everyone happy, we can make sure we keep you happy - respond to your requests, feedback and suggestions and provide a personal touch for each and every teacher that uses the service.

What’s more, we’ve always been committed to providing entirely free tools with no advertising, no fees and no limits on elements like bandwidth. We even give you 100MB of upload space, completely free of charge.

Go to Edublog

Glubble -- for kids under 12

Glubble is a fun new Internet experience for families with kids under 12!

Glubble is a free tool for the Mozilla Firefox Internet browser. It permits each member of the family to have their own custom environment, so that when kids use it they only see the very best parts of the Internet based on selections made by their parents or supplied by trusted family brands.

Glubble enhances Firefox to make sure kids can't see the whole World Wild Web instead they can only see family friendly parts of the web, its like their own little world on the web. We call it their Glubble World.

Go to Blubble

FREE Lectures

Free University Lectures
Physics, Chemistry, Math, Computer Science
Go to the Lectures

Free Lectures
Search Engine for Video Lectures
Go to Video Lectures

iPod Learning

The iPod can supercharge your learning. But it’s often a matter of finding the right software and content. Below, we’ve listed several new pieces of software that will let you suck more educational media (DVDs, web videos, audio files, etc.) into your iPod. And we’ve also listed some important pieces of content that will make your iPod a better learning gadget.

Go to iPod Programs

iQuiz Maker for iPod or PC

iQuiz Maker for your PC or iPod -- Free
iQuiz Maker is an easy way for you to create custom quizzes for the iQuiz game for the iPod. iQuiz Maker works seamlessly so you can write, create, package your very own quizzes. Download the free application today to begin putting the world to the test.

Go to iQuiz Maker

Yack Pack

YackPack can quickly improve educational communication. Motivate students, give quality feedback with ease and communicate clearly with students, parents and administrators.

YackPack's simple and convenient interface allows students and teachers to focus on content and not be distracted by the underlying technology.

Go to Yack Pack

Cyber School

Cyber School has further advanced its contributions to the education system by developing and launching "Online Teacher Learning Communities”. These 'Learning Communities' serve as a collection of useful resources for grade levels from kindergarten to grade 12 and encompass all subjects; from Physical Education to Aboriginal/First Nations Education. The resources are for both online uses as well as printable copies for classroom use.


Go to Cyber School

Free Online Courses

Universities With the Best Free Online Courses

No tuition money? No problem! There are many top universities that offer free courses online. This list ranks some of the best free university courses for people who want to enhance personal knowledge or advance in their current field.

Go to Educational Portal

DimensionM for Math

DimensionM™is an immersive video game world that engages students in the instruction and learning of mathematics. Pre-algebra and algebra objectives are covered through a series of missions that bring math into a world that today's students understand. Students become so captivated in solving problems that they forget they're learning but they don't forget what they've learned.


Go to DimensionM

Donations for Teacher Projects

What if there were a simple way to provide students with the books, technology, and supplies that they need to learn?

What if people from all walks of life could connect directly with public schools, learn about specific classroom needs, and choose how to help?

Governor Kaine recently made this site available to Virginia public school teachers.

DonorsChoose.org makes this possible.
(Thank You Wayne)

Writers Freeware & Online Tools

This is the first update/renovation of my master list of links to freeware, free trial software, tools and generators available online that may be useful to writers. It's not yet complete -- I have to check links, code and add about another hundred of them, and so forth -- but I thought you might like to see the list in progress.


Go to the Paperback Writer

Teachable Moment

TeachableMoment.Org provides educators with timely teaching ideas to encourage critical thinking on issues of the day and foster a positive classroom environment. It is a project of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility (formerly Educators for Social Responsibility Metropolitan Area). Site includes Teacher Lesson Plans!

Go to Teachable Moment

Open Disc

We’re pleased to announce the latest release of the award winning OpenEducation project, OpenEducationDisc 07.10, an official branch of OpenDisc. This is a modification of OpenDisc by Teachers and Computer Specialists with a passion for education. It provides students with quick, easy and powerful tools specially selected to solve their educational needs. Commercial software licenses can be expensive, especially if you don’t have a full time job, like most students. It doesn’t have to be this way - grab a copy of the OpenEducationDisc today and help make education accessible for all.

Go to Open Disc

Kindle

Electronic Books

• Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
• Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
• Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
• Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
• More than 90,000 books available, including more than 95 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.
• New York Times® Best Sellers and all New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise.
• Free book samples. Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
• Top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
• Top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland; Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and The Irish Times—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
• More than 250 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN's Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post—all updated wirelessly throughout the day.
• Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
• Holds over 200 titles.
• Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours.
• Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones—so you never have to locate a hotspot.
• No monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitments—we take care of the wireless delivery so you can simply click, buy, and read.
• Includes free wireless access to the planet's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia—Wikipedia.org.
• Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing.
• Included in the box: Kindle wireless reader, Book cover, Power adapter, USB 2.0 cable

Kindle

Kindle at Amazon

BitNami - Open Source

It refers to the new wave of open source software that will be changing the world of business applications, the same way Linux changed the world of operating systems or MySQL disrupted the proprietary database market.


BitNami

Moodle

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a University with 200,000 students. This site itself is created using Moodle, so check out the Moodle Demonstration Courses or read the latest Moodle Buzz.


Go to Moodle

Google - Chart Generator

Google is offering a new API to dynamically generate charts in PNG files, and it’s easy to use. So you may come back here in a week and find I’ve randomly generated charts and stuck them in everywhere. The documentation for the chart tool is available at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/ .

Google API Chart

Search - Get Results

The following are examples of search techniques that I have found effective for getting results.
These search techniques are used with Google search engine, however other sites may be involved as well.

1. Use the http://del.icio.us bookmarking site add on in firefox browser to keep the best bookmarks you have found for your project.

2. Use the "related" command in Google i.e. related:http://www.website as well as the "similiar pages" command found at the end of your found search string results.

3. Use the "timeline" and "info" command in the Google search engine. i.e. view:timeline yoursearchterm or view:info yoursearchterm or view:map yoursearchterm.

4. Install the "right directional mouse" program (a download program for "Internet Explorer Browser or an add on for other browsers like "Firefox") into the browser and use the "Intelways" search engine. (the default search engine is Google). If you use the"Intelways" search engine, be aware that it does not (in the search bar at the top of the page) give you the address of the site you click on. You may need this to save as a bookmark (del.icio.us) or to return to the site you have found. One way to get around this is hold the "shift" key down as you click on the Internet link, and the site will open into another window. Copy the Internet address and close this new window by using the mouse. Hold the right mouse down, and draw the mouse down and to the right to close your new window, and you will be back to "Intelways" search engine. The wh0le purpose of this is to get the Internet address and speed. This may seem like a lot, but in the long run it will give you a faster way to search the Internet

5. Try some unknown search engines to get results from a different perspective.
Find:Design
How to Study Search Engine
Quintura
Sort Fix
Search Trail
Kartoo
Search 22
Carrot (new - 6 different clusters - check out the options)

6. Use the Google "*" sign to find something like a fact an example of htis is "there are * planets in our solar system". Place this into the Google search box and the answer will appear in the search results. ( This is a great way for students to find answers to their homework.)

More Google Stuff

Google Labs

Read more >> Options >>

Technology Integration Matrix

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells as illustrated below.

Technology Integration Matrix

Scratch - Software from MIT

A new programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab turns kids from media consumers into media producers, enabling them to create their own interactive stories, games, music, and animation for the Web.

With this new software, called Scratch, kids can program interactive creations by simply snapping together graphical blocks, much like LEGO® bricks, without any of the obscure punctuation and syntax of traditional programming languages. Children can then share their interactive stories and games on the Web, the same way they share videos on YouTube, engaging with other kids in an online community that provides inspiration and feedback.

Go to Scratch

Learning Technology by video

Wikivid creates video-courses made up of links to free video tutorials from
around the web. During our "alpha" stage, content is limited to software
tutorials only, but the vision is to add video uploads and more. Add your
own video links, edit existing pages, learn, & enjoy! Use this link to test your video settings.

Go to Wikivid

Knol by Google - a new project

The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.

from Google Blog

Ted World's Greatest Thinkers

Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers. Ted Ideas worth Spreading

The Ten Videos to Change How You View the World

from Lifehack.org

The right to learn for FREE

tteach is all about... combining the finest media sharing tools with the best of the world’s knowledge along with…user friendly, interactive & innovative tools to make teaching & learning fun, free, simple & most importantly open to anyone with a desire to learn!

Our goal is straight forward …to truly allow the world to learn for free.

tteach

Wii Remoter "white board"

Johnny Lee's description of "Low-Cost Multi-point Interactive Whiteboards Using the Wiimote" may sound boring, but it's actually a very cool and very innovative use of the Wiimote. Since you can hook the controller up to your computer and accept inputs using the Wiimote library interface, you can use its infrared sensors to detect and track infrared light on any kind of surface. With Johnny's app, you can in turn use a cheap DIY IR pen as an input device and make your own whiteboard/input tablet. You should watch the video to see more, but this thing looks really exciting.

Wii Whiteboard --using the remote

Wii Remote Finger Tracking Hack

Go to Johnny Chung Lee's site

Yahoo for Teachers

This is being created by teachers, for teachers. Use the "gobbler" to drag and drop resources on a web page for your lesson plan or student individualized learning. Create your own projects or find projects and lessons already created by other teachers. You can modify and enhance referenced works to fit your needs. State standards are built right into all projects! Build your own portfolio by adding other teachers work to your own. It is for teachers helping and connecting with each other.


Yahoo for Teachers - Coming Soon

Zotero - Bookmark for Research

Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications.

Video Intro (Zotero does not work in "Internet Explorer Browser")

Taking Notes in Class

Copying class notes after the fact is a time-consuming way to study for an exam, but it was the only thing that truly worked for me back in college. But next week I'll be in a classroom again for the first time in 8 years, pen poised over notebook, and this time I'm going to perfect a strategy that gets my notes right the first time: the Cornell Note-taking method.

Lifehacker- Study Notes

PDF Page Generator for notes

Free Screen Writing Software

Plotbot is web-based screenwriting software. You can write your script with as many or as few people as you want—there's nothing to install, it's free, and it's easy to use! Try our demo:

Plotbot

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Free Rice - Improve Vocabulary

FreeRice has a custom database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors. In between are thousands of words for students, business people, homemakers, doctors, truck drivers, retired people… everyone!

FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.

Free Rice

...

Google Docs

Revision is a critical piece of the writing process—and of your classroom curriculum. Now, Google Docs has partnered with Weekly Reader’s Writing for Teens magazine to help you teach it in a meaningful and practical way.

The sharing features of Google Docs enable you and your students to decide exactly who can access and edit documents. You’ll find that Google Docs helps promote group work and peer editing skills, and that it helps to fulfill the stated goal of The National Council of Teachers of English, which espouses writing as a process and encourages multiple revisions and peer editing.
________________________________________________

Videos: Introduction Docs Setup Collaboration Power Point Charts Spread Sheets iPod Foreign Language Homework(uses email) { Queue Collaboration }

Del.icio.us - my links to Google Videos for Docs

Go to Google Docs
...

The Flat Classroom

One of the main goals of the project is to 'flatten' or lower the classroom walls so that instead of each class working isolated and alone, 2 or more classes are joined virtually to become one large classroom. This will be done through the Internet through Wikispaces and Ning.

Eluminate

Keynote address video
...

Blogmeister - Create A Blog

Terms of Use

This blogging service is intended for classroom use. Blog accounts are established and maintained by the classroom teacher. Teachers may use this service for professional blog publishing functions, and to manage and publish student writings intended for assignment-based instructional activities. The teacher is responsible for observing any and all school and district policies regarding student publications and management of student work.Audio Podcast - Blogs - Good/Bad between Alan November and Will Richardson

Blogmeister Site Main site: Landmarks for Schools

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Drawing with Google SketchUp

SketchUp is Google's free 3D drawing program. It's easy to use, but it's even easier when you watch someone with a lot of SketchUp experience use the application and explain what they're doing... from Boing Boing

Blip TV

Sketch Up YouTube Videos

Download SketchUp by Google from Google SketchUp for free.

Google Experiments

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.

Google Experiments

Join these Experiments

TED Ideas Worth Spreading

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. Almost 150 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.

TED

Controversial Issues

These are sites that contain controversial issues. This is great for term papers and interesting class discussions. Class projects and Bloggs and Wiki's can also be used effectively with these sites.
Here is the list:
Hot Paper Topics
Frontline
Project Vote Smart
Public Agenda
ODU Site for Issues and Controversies
Social Issues
Controversial Topics
Teachable Moment (teacher lesson plans)
Controversial Issues
Speak Out
Global Issues


These are the best

Using Delicious-Bookmarking

Del.icio.us is a bookmarking site that can be used for both students and Teachers.
Excellent use of the "Del.icio.us" site for teaching. Emily's Blog

Bookmarking in plain English

Google for Educators

At Google, we support teachers in their efforts to empower students and expand the frontiers of human knowledge. That’s why we’ve assembled the information and tools you’ll find on this site. Learn more about Google for Educators.

Web Tools for College Students

This is a great article for links to sites that can be used for students, college or high school.

Top Web Tools