Inforgraphic: Citizenship in the Digital Age

FROM HERE

The Evolution of Learning Technologies

Human beings have always been seekers of knowledge. The minute we discover something new, we want to share it with others and move onto the next achievement. Since the beginning of recorded history (and probably before) we have always strived to discover the mysteries of the planet, of Earth and of ourselves. How has learning evolved over the course of human history and what might the future hold for us? Follow our time traveller on his journey through time and space.

Have a look at the interactive website

Questions a Critical Thinker Asks

1- Application Questions:These questions ask students to apply essential knowledge to new settings and contexts. For example:

 How could you apply these grammar and usage principles to your essay?

 How could you demonstrate the use of this concept? 

How would you illustrate this process in action? 

What can we generalize from these facts?

2-Analytical Questions:These questions ask students to dissect key information and analyze essential concepts themes, and processes. For example:

 How are these characters alike and different? 

What is an analogy that might represent this situation? 

How would you classify these literary works? 

What are the major elements that comprise this sequence of events?

 What are the major causes of this situation?

3- Synthesis Questions:These questions require students to formulate a holistic summary of key ideas, make inferences, or create new scenarios. For example:

What would you hypothesize about these unusual events? 

What do you infer from her statements?

 Based upon these facts, what predictions would you make?

 How do you imagine the space ship would look? 

What do you estimate will be the costs for the project? 

How might you invent a solution to this ecological problem?

4- Interpretive Questions:These are open-ended questions that require students to formulate opinions in response to ideas presented in a print or non-print (e.g., art work, audio-visual) medium. Students must support their opinions with direct textual evidence. For example:

 What does Frost mean when he says: "I have miles to go before I sleep?" 

Why does the photographer emphasize only his subject's eyes?

5- Evaluative Questions:These questions require students to formulate and justify judgments and criticisms based upon clearly-articulated evaluative criteria. For example:

Why did you decide to choose that course of action? 

How would you rank these choices? 

How might you defend that character's actions? 

How would you verify that conclusion? 

What is your critique of that work of art?

From:

Anthony Salcito Interviews Sir Ken Robinson at Miami Global Forum!

One of the world's foremost experts on human potential, the amazing Sir Ken Robinson sat down to speak with Anthony after his keynote speech at our recent Global Forum in Miami. Find out what he has to say about the role tools play in creativity, how technology has the power to transform education, and the challenges that lie ahead for us in creating a better world. Read more on Daily Edventures- http://dailyedventures.com/?p=17729

SAMR: Interactive Visual on Integrating into the Classroom

Here's a great look at SAMR in context of the classroom - practical and useful... from HERE

PLUS

Here's a Diigo page on SAMR - was shared with me while on a recent webinar. Awesome!

SAMR: Moving Towards Education 3.0

READ more...

The Ultimate Guide to iPad for Speech

As educators we are seeing a need for this type of feature for our students that have accommodations. Very Good Resource.

Our free eBook will teach you the ins-and-outs of the iPad. If you’ve just received your iPad or you’re an iPad pro, we’ve got something for you. By the time you’re done reading the The Ultimate Guide to the iPad for Speech Pathology & Special Education you’ll be able to:

Understand Initial iPad Setup – What are all those features?
Navigate the App Store like a Pro
Discover New Apps by Taking Advantage of iPad Settings and Outside Resources
Take your Teaching to the Next Level Using Built In Accessibility Features for Vision, Hearing, Physical & Motor, and Learning
Start Teaching Right Away Using Our Favorite Apps for Communication, Language, and General Education

Free Copy HERE

Managing iPads in Class

Techchef4u.com

20 Tips for Putting Google's 20% time in your Classroom

Here's a How-To Resource Blog

20 Tips on Getting Started

from eSchool News

1. Dedicate One Day A Week

Dedicate every Friday to the project, instead of 20 percent of each class day

2. It’s Not Just for High School

Twenty percent projects can be used in any subject, and with any grade or skill level.

3. Set Your Own Parameters

For other subjects, they suggest setting parameters on a subject-by-subject basis. 

4. Start With Interests

 “Whether high school or middle school or elementary students, they don’t have passions, but they have interests.”

5. Inspire Students With Great Projects

Develop an eco-friendly dream home, started YouTube communities around teen fiction books, began an Instagram account, encouraging students to cook and have healthy relationships with food, created their own games using Java, and more.

6. Use 20 Time to Improve the Community

Use his 20 percent time to foster student engagement within their school and community. 

7. Find Projects That Pay

For students that struggled even to find an interest, challenge students to turn a profit. 

8. Get Students Thinking Like Entrepreneurs

 “Increasingly, no matter what position anyone takes, students who enter in the real world need to think of themselves as entrepreneurs, even if they end up working at an organization or a big corporation.”

9. Group Projects Work Well

10. …Solo Ones Do, Too

11. Let Students Pitch the Class

“They got four slides: what they were learning about, why they chose it, what they were going to do, and how they were going to measure success,” he says.

12. And Let Students Give Feedback

13. Think Practically About Projects

“As a teacher you’re going to have to become much more active to do two things: challenging the students to push themselves a little bit and then also reeling some students back in who are maybe going above and beyond,” says Juliani

14. Be Flexible

At some point, students will likely have to tweak their projects. 

15. Connect With Professionals

Local businesses and experts—like doctors and architects—via mentorships, where the professionals lend their expertise and their time to students. 

16. Create Something Tangible

 It could be a report or a presentation, or something more creative. 

17. Keep Track of Student Progress

Tell every student to blog about their projects as a means of keeping him in the loop. 

18. Some Sacrifice Is Necessary

 Give up some of the traditional literature, the trade off is well worth it. 

19. Tech Helps, But Isn’t Required

20. Share Your Success

For his final presentations, invite parents, younger students, community leaders, and media to attend.

Trends in Education for 2015

SEE BIG

Kelly Fitzgerald ~ EdTech Nut: Google Apps for Education - A Solution to Your Vi...

Kelly Fitzgerald ~ EdTech Nut: Google Apps for Education - A Solution to Your Vi...: There is a ton of video solution companies out there, such as Kaltura/Media Space, LifeSize/Video Center, Safari Montage, etc. They cost money; youtube and google are free!

Photomath

PhotoMath reads and solves mathematical expressions by using the camera of your mobile device in real time. It makes math easy and simple by educating users how to solve math problems.

https://photomath.net

Math Apps

Understanding Math 

 Teaches children fluency in multiplication and division from 1 to 100.­ Start working with this great tool today!

Numberphile 

 A whole lot of videos about numbers, from pi to googolplex to Graham's number.

MathGames 

 A whole lot of math games, organized by grades, skills, and Common Core State Standards.

Gizmos 

 Play with interactive math and science simulations to gain a visual understanding of these concepts.

Foldify 

Create and print cardboard templates that can be folded into figures and objects.

all from Ed Tech & ML

Inforgraphics: 10 on Social Media

We all know a picture speaks thousand words and for that reason infographics are being more popular due to its amazing information displayed in the form of images. It has the capability to capture everyone’s eye and tell them a story with engaging content and images.  It’s an all in one package with text, images and creative design that come all along. It holds a great marketing potential that has the ability to attract customers. 

 See more here...

Allow pupils to use Google in exams

Allow pupils to use Google in GCSE exams, says academic

A Harvard physics professor says schoolchildren must be allowed to access the internet and talk to friends in the exams hall to reflect the conditions seen in the workplace

Read more...

44 Productivity Apps - Infographic

From this great website

Finland's Educational System

1. School Starts Later

Children in Finland don’t begin school until age seven. That isn’t to say they aren’t being educated earlier in life. Finland heavily subsidizes daycare for children, and 97 percent of Finnish children attend preschool, which starts at age five, and emphasizes playing and socializing.

2. More Recess

In the United States, our imaginative learners get little playtime, averaging 27 minutes of recess a day. Finnish children get 75 minutes of recess a day, receiving a 15-minute break after every lesson. Outdoor physical activity is highly encouraged and some lessons are taught outside—even in winter.

3. No Testing

There are few, if any, mandatory tests in Finland until a single exam at the end of high school. There’s also little homework. Why you ask? Finnish school principal and former teacher Kari Louhivuori told Smithsonian “It’s nonsense. We know much more about the children than these tests can tell us.”

4. Extra Teachers for Struggling Students

The average class size in Finland is 20 students. There is no tracking or separation of students based on ability. They are all taught in the same class. To ensure that children with learning or behavior disabilities, or immigrants struggling to learn Finnish, don’t fall behind, schools hire teaching aides who undergo an extra year of education to supplement teachers’ efforts.

5. More Languages

Finnish language education begins on the first day of school. By age nine, students begin Swedish (Finland’s second official language), and at 11, they start learning a third language, usually English. Many students even take on a fourth language around age 13. Students are tested on their first two languages in a matriculation exam for university placement.

6. Instruction Guidelines, Not Prescriptions

Teachers are given guidelines for what they have to teach, but they are not given prescriptions for how to teach it. This allows the highly trained teachers to develop a curriculum geared toward teaching their unique group of students. For instance, Timo Heikkinen, principal of the Kallahti school, implemented a new environmental science program that revolves around the forest next to the school.

7. Less Teaching

A teacher in Finland might only teach for four hours of the school day, spending at least two hours on building curriculums and assessing student progress. (This is compared to at least five hours of instruction in a U.S. school.) With fewer teaching hours, students are not overwhelmed with class, and teachers are not struggling to prepare.

8. Professional Teachers

You need more than a bachelor’s degree and a teacher certification in Finland—you must have a master’s degree. Teachers can get their master’s degree at one of eight national colleges, the cost of which is completely subsidized by the government. Competition for these spots is fierce: Applicants must be in the top 10 percent of their college classes. In 2010 6,600 applicants applied for 600 slots.

9. Teachers Stick with Students

In the United States, students usually get a new teacher every year. In Finland, a teacher likely sticks with the same group of students for five years. By doing this not only do teachers have a better chance to form relationships with their students, but they also have a better opportunity to get to know students as learners.

10. 46% Attend Vocational School

At the age of 16, students can decide if they want to attend the Finnish equivalent of high school to prepare them for university or enter vocational training. Students who attend vocational school can attend a university provided they score high enough on the matriculation exam.

from mathcloud

Authentic Learning in the Digital Age: Engaging Students Through Inquiry

Pahomov outlines a framework for learning structured around five core values: inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection. 

For each value, she presents:

A detailed description of how the value can transform classroom practice and how a "digital connection" can enhance its application.

A step-by-step outline for how to implement the value, with examples from teachers in all subject areas.

Solutions to possible challenges and roadblocks that teachers may experience.

Suggestions for how to expand the value beyond the classroom to schoolwide practice.

Anecdotes from students, offering their perspectives on how they experienced the value in the classroom and after graduation.

The framework is a guide, not a prescription, and middle and high school teachers—individually or as a team—can use it to structure whatever content and skills their current school or district requires. 

Get it here

RAT: The new SAMR model

R :: replacement | redundant | retrograde

A :: augmented | average | acceptable

T :: transformed | terrific | tremendous

SAMR is almost impossible to pronounce, in English anyway, and while it's simpler than most, it can be simpler, without, I believe, losing anything that is crucial. I don't need to wrestle with the distinction between Augmentation and Modification, seriously—is it that important? What I do see on a really bad day, is tech that is not just replacement, but worse; allow me to reiterate, people using computers in ways that are actually WORSE than not using tech at all—like the person who insists on printing out name labels for each kid, I mean, really? Just get a pen and a write the name on a sticker. I'll tell you what level of integration that is— Retrograde.

Technology as Transformation

The Technology as Transformation Category involves technology use that transforms the instructional method, the students' learning processes, and/or the actual subject matter.

1. The actual mental work is changed or expanded 
2. The number of variables involved in the mental processes are expanded
3. The tool changes the organisation in which it had been used 
4. New players become involved with the tool's use (or expanded use of the tool). 
5. New opportunities for different forms and types of learning through problem solving, unavailable in traditional approaches, are developed.

... it [transformative use of ICTs] improves the process of bringing thought into communicable expressions in such significant ways that, once the tool is understood and used regularly, the user feels wanting if it is not available because it has opened up new possibilities of thought and action without which one comes to feel at a disadvantage. It's become an indispensable instrument of mentality, and not merely a tool. (Pea, 1985, p 175)

Many of the innovations, particularly those that provide online content and learning materials, use basic pedagogy – most often in the form of introducing concepts by video instruction and following up with a series of progression exercises and tests. Other digital innovations are simply tools that allow teachers to do the same age-old practices but in a digital format. Examples include blog entries instead of written journals and worksheets in online form. While these innovations may be an incremental improvement such that there is less cost, minor classroom efficiency and general modernisation, they do not, by themselves, change the pedagogical practice of the teachers or the schools. (Fullan M & Donnelly K, 2013, p25)

From: Digital literacy blog

Facebook CV

Tips on making GREAT presentations

7 Quick Tips to Rock Your Next Presentation from Stinson Design

Over 200 Educational Resources for Kids

This collection provides a list of free educational resources for K-12 students (kindergarten through high school students) and their parents and teachers. It features free video lessons/tutorials; free mobile apps; free audiobooks, ebooks and textbooks; quality YouTube channels; free foreign language lessons; test prep materials; and free web resources in academic subjects like literature, history, science and computing. This newly-released list is a work in progress.

From open culture

Social Media Facts 2014

Some pretty interesting numbers on social media... 

From B2C

Scratch Jr. App - Teach Coding

on iTunes

There are tons of wonderful coding apps and here is another you’ll want to check if you work with younger students.  ScratchJr is designed for 5-7 year old children and combines foundational programming skills with storytelling.  It is a colorful, kid-friendly app that sets the stage for more complex computer science skills.  You may already be familiar with MIT’s Scratch programming language and now younger students can join in on the fun straight from their iPad. from classtechtips

Check out this totally free app today!

Top Language Learning Apps 2014

The Best Language Learning Apps For 2015

View more lists from Terry Heick

Cyberbullying Infographic

From best education degrees blog

Digital Games for Students

From edweek blog

101 Teaching Tips - 2014

101 Teaching Tips, Half-Truths, And Random Musings

1. It’s okay to close your door sometimes.
2. If the students aren’t responding, do something different.
3. Resist generalizations, e.g., “they’re just not getting it,” or “they’re doing great.” There is no “they”—they are 25 unique students and unique levels of performance.
4. Do not focus on standards. Focus on the thinking habits of your students.
5. Students will remember little of what you taught them, but will never forget the way you make them feel.
6. Curiosity and questioning are the roots of all learning.
7. You are a professional. Strive to project that image at all times, even when you think no one is looking.
8. Be reachable to students after they leave your classroom. (Start a facebook teacher page, Google+ community, twitter account, etc.)
9. Doggedly pursue uncovering what students actually understand through unique assessment forms, rather than focusing on their performance on “the” assessment.
10. Pick three or four students per class as general “signposts,” and use them to guide your teaching.
11. Worry less about teacher actions, more about learner actions.
12. Help your students publish.
13. Differentiation is not about learning styles, but about different learning experiences for different students with different needs.
14. It’s okay to teach differently than the teacher down the hall.
15. Smile because of what you do, not how your day is going.
16. There is a degree of showmanship to teaching.
17. Eat lunch with students, and sit (or stand) with them at rallies.
18. Strive for diversity in everything–instructional strategies, digital platforms, media forms, grouping strategies, etc.
19. Don’t try to change too many things at one time.
20. No matter their appearance, actions, or behavior, talk to parents as equitable partners in the learning of their children.
21. Know that it’s okay to be a crazy teacher.
22. In all but the most obvious situations, resist trying to change a team, department, grade level, or other pocket of school culture. Lead by example, not words or directly challenging.
23. Learn to listen to others—really listen instead of thinking of whether or not you agree, or waiting for your turn to talk.
24. Thank others constantly. You never know what they’re going through. Also, no matter how bad it gets, someone somewhere would do anything for your job. Be humble and gracious.
25. Find a mentor.
26. You’re never as good as you think you are; you’re never as bad as you think you are either.
27. Value team-building activities.
28. Don’t stereotype 21st century learners. They’re nothing as a group, only revealing themselves as individuals.
29. Know your own biases.
30. Help students see their own potential.
31. Realize that students are growing up in a world decidedly different from the one you were educated in.
32. Visualize the way a lesson or activity will go before teaching it.
33. Wait for quiet before you begin speaking. Have a simple, polite and consistent method of gathering students’ attention before speaking—something other than counting backwards from 5.
34. If you’re planning formal learning sequences, use backwards planning.
35. If you’re planning formal learning sequences, become fluent in curriculum mapping, scope-and-sequencing, etc.
36. Learn your students’ names as quickly as possible, and then make sure you’re calling them what they want to be called.
37. Don’t take behavior problems personally no matter their appearance. They never are.
38. It’s not about you. Don’t force your way.
39. You are not there to teach, you are there so that students may learn. This is an important paradigm shift, but doesn’t mean you’re not accountable when they’re not learning.
40. Don’t be afraid to switch content areas, grade levels, schools, or districts.
41. Teaching a content area that you don’t consider yourself super knowledgeable about can better help you understand teaching itself.
42. Focus on reading and writing no matter what you teach.
43. Be early to meetings. Everyone is as busy as you are.
44. Learn how to compliment without sounding patronizing.
45. What students go through at home is light years more important to them than today’s lesson. And that’s okay.
46. Teach tolerance by modeling it.
47. Intentionally brand your classroom. 
48. Focus as much on learning spaces as you do on processes.
49. Know the difference between declarative and procedural knowledge.
50. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy, 6 Facets of Understanding, or our own Understanding Taxonomy to measure understanding.
51. Each day you have a finite amount of emotional energy. Use it wisely.
52. Never raise your voice.
53. Everyone is charismatic somehow. Know how you are and use it.
54. Use “wait time” creatively.
55. If you use sarcasm, be careful.
56. Don’t compete with other teachers.
57. Actively participate in staff meetings no matter your mood or personal feelings.
58. Try blended learning, but start small.
59. Use analogies—or better yet, have students create analogies.
60. Concept maps are your friends—for assessment, struggling writers, pre-writing, tracking narrative structures, or simple navigating complex ideas.
61. Use technology to make the classroom walls transparent.
62. Use a wide variety of physical and digital media.
63. Believe in yourself and your students equally.
64. It’s hard for students to learn from teachers they don’t like no matter how much you’d think this shouldn’t be true.
65. Have a great classroom library—especially in math, science, social studies, etc.
66. Be vulnerable.
67. Teach in the moment. When you leave school each day, that day is gone. Don’t constantly teach for some nebulous future or foreboding exam. Live and learn in the now.
68. Create reference sheets of commonly-used practices, formulas, graphic organizers, terms, etc., and have students keep those in their binders, or digitally.
69. Use write-arounds across all content areas to allow students to quietly build on one another’s thinking.
70. Assume the best.
71. Do all that you can to not take work home. (It’s possible.)
72. Be aware of how you look to others—students, staff, parents, etc.
73. Help your students outgrow you.
74. Focus on learning habits and Habits of Mind.
75. Become a master at asking questions. Then help your students become even better.
76. Focus on macro thinking patterns—cause-effect, compare-contrast, analogous situations, patterns, systems, etc., so that you can help students do the same.
77. Pay attention if students never, ever seem to want to be around you.
78. If your ideas on teaching and learning aren’t evolving over time, something may be missing from your workflow.
79. Use the walls of your classroom to reach out to students with words and images that resonate, and then change it more than once a year. It’s their learning space, not yours.
80. Have multiple, go-to methods of grouping students based on different needs—reading level, readiness, interest, etc.
81. Make sure your students are working harder than you do. If they aren’t, change that immediately.
82. Change lessons and units annually.
83. Allow the students to know you as a person.
84. Create and use a YouTube channel for something. It’s an incredible distribution tool.
85. Use twitter, blogging, or some other persistent method of staying in touch with teachers outside your building.
86. Take chances in professional development.
87. Learn to tell stories, jokes, and riddles. Also use puzzles, paradoxes, moving music, and startling images.
88. You often have to reach students emotionally before you do intellectually.
89. Model making mistakes.
90. Help students learn to play with content and ideas.
91. Get learner’s attention early—early in the year, in a lesson, in a unit.
92. Model not knowing.
93. Use positive presuppositions without patronizing.
94. Prove to students that you believe in them.
95. The most basic teaching pattern of all is show me, help me, let me. Consider using it.
96. Have students curate their own digital portfolios.
97. Anticipate misunderstandings.
98. Have multiple, easy-to-access data sources from inside and beyond your classroom.
99. Don’t grade everything.
100. If you’re not using some form of project-based learning, have a good reason.
101. Blend the physical and the digital; offline and online spaces.

—Via TeachThought

Digital Footprint - Tips to Getting Started

Here are five steps to get started.

1. Google it. Ask students to Google themselves to see what and who comes up when they type their name into a search engine. It should be clear that anyone—from parents to teachers can do this and find the same information

2. Select a “safe” educational-focused social platform for students to learn responsible behavior in the classroom. Understanding digital citizenship on an educational platform will translate to their other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

3. Help students create an online “portfolio” to showcase their work, best accomplishments, and the things that they are most proud of. A portfolio will help students curate their own identity and show the things that are appropriate for sharing.

4. Establish a “Golden Rule.” Ask students to ask themselves, “Is this something I’d be embarrassed about if my parents, teacher, or principal saw it?” before posting online. Students should know that everything they put into the “digital world” is public, and people that they don’t even know can see it.

5. Help students learn that their online persona should reflect their offline persona. Ask students to create a short video, blog or slideshow about who they are—something that reflects their good qualities and the things they want the public to know about them.

If social media platforms are embraced in the classroom rather than ignored, students will learn responsible online behavior from the start, which will carry with them through their educational and professional careers. And as the world becomes more digitally focused, they will be better prepared for what’s to come, and pass this behavior on to future generations.

—Via Edutopia

Terry Heick's top iPad Apps

30 Of The Best Apps For Project-Based Learning

View more lists from Terry Heick

Learnist Educational Apps - 2014

Education Apps

This is one of the biggest collaboration boards on Learnist, consisting of teachers from all over the globe. This is my dream collaboration–where one topic morphs into a dialog of people putting forward their best practices.

What my PLN Learned at ISTE 2013 #EdtechRI Resources

Many teachers wanted to go to ISTE 2013 and couldn’t make the trip. Alicia Sullivan put together this collaborative board to help assemble learnings from ISTE for her professional learning network #EdTechRI. EdTechRI is a group of Rhode Island educators that is heavily involved in spreading best tech practices in the region.

LSD Used In War

This board is a student board that started as an optional project and ended up as a featured board on Learnist’s homepage. Hali and Mel researched the ways LSD and other drugs were used in warfare, bringing up critical ethical questions about about warfare R&D.

The Must-Have Guide To Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning, or PBL engages students. This board, designed by several teachers, will help you start out in that direction, getting the basic skills in areas that may seem a bit more difficult.

A Love Affair With The New York Yankees

You might think this is not really an education board, but as someone who has spent a lot of time researching the impact of sports on American culture, history, mill villages, and other areas, I argue that sports are connected to many academic fields. I use sports in my classroom as a vehicle for teaching social history, economics, math, physics–anything I can integrate into the main objective. This is the first board on which I collaborated, and the Yankees are my favorite team.

Exactly What Video Games Teach Us

Video games aren’t always a waste of time. This board shows how they teach resource management, allocation, spatial skills, and a host of other things kids need to develop. They’re fun, too. Students can practice Common Core based skills through video games.

Causes Of The Civil War

This is a collaboration I did with a fellow social studies teacher, Dawn Clemens. She created the board, and I was able to add on. Collaborating on basic material allows us to bounce ideas off one another, and ultimately frees us up to spend time on other things.

Educational Apps That Actually Work

Ten educators created this board, endorsing their favorite apps for education. This is critical because there are many apps out there but they don’t do much unless people use them.

Cooking Tips And Tricks

I’ve suggested to our culinary students that they collaborate on food and culinary boards. This is not a student board, but as a Career and Technical Educator, this would be a great board to use for students in the culinary arts, and better yet, an idea for collaboration. I’m envisioning students creating boards together for recipes, cooking techniques and many other areas.

Great Classroom Blogs

This collaboration is a collection of classroom boards. Please add your classroom blog on there. We’d love to see what you’re up to and exchange ideas, connecting through this board and our blogs.

How To Use Learnist On The Web

This collaboration shows how to use Learnist for new learners. If you have an idea for an innovative use of Learnist comment on this board.

—via Edudemic

This article appeared on Edudemic in September 2013 and was written by Dawn Casey-Rowe.

Passion Projects

Google iPad Apps

The change all our schools need

This was taken from ditch that textbook... Excellent points, and seems common sense, yet teachers cling to an industrial model for education like it is the be all of humanity... Why?

1. “Why does school stink? Because most of what students do is based on compliance.”

For decades, schools have adopted and pushed a culture of “do exactly as the teacher says.” It was a very desirable trait in employees for many, many years. But the world has changed, and so have the needs for the workforce. Employers are looking for communicators, creative thinkers and problem solvers. A culture of compliance won’t produce those attributes.

2. “Schools should be democratic, messy, loud places where kids are everywhere.”

Lehmann speaks of his joy in walking around the Science Leadership Academy armed with his iPhone taking pictures. There’s a lot to photograph because students are everywhere — creating, testing, tinkering and trying. He’s right. Schools should be democratic: students should have a voice and input in what the school looks like, stands for and teaches them. They should be messy: taking risks and giving up control are messy but can be very fruitful. They should be loud: team work and collaboration doesn’t happen in silent rows.

3. “Classes should be bridges, not silos.”

Learning doesn’t have to happen inside the four walls of the classroom anymore. Collaborative tools let students share ideas in blogs, publish their work in websites, connect with other countries through video chats and work with others around the world in shared documents. We can break down the walls and broaden our students’ horizons, or we can keep the walls up and fence them in.

4. “Technology should be ubiquitous, necessary and invisible.”

Technology can’t be a class or a special day in class. If we use it that way, it becomes the focal point instead of a tool to help us achieve more. It should be ubiquitous — everywhere — especially where it can make what we do more efficient or empower us to do more. It should be necessary, because so many things we can do with technology can’t be done without it. It should also be invisible; when schools work with technology and don’t think about it anymore, it is truly integrated.

5. “Data-driven requires good data — and good data ain’t cheap.”

So many schools base so many decisions on results of standardized tests. They can provide some solid data, but it’s not always the best, and it’s not always what schools really need. Many of them don’t give any indication of how students will perform on those critical skills mentioned earlier: communication, problem solving and creative thinking. Schools should invest — and by invest, I mean time and effort as much as money — in good data.

6. “We’ve got to build caring institutions. We teach kids, not subjects.”

Lehmann suggests that math teachers quit saying they teach math, and that first grade teachers quit saying they teach first grade. Teachers teach kids. He contends that the relationship between student and teacher is more important than the relationship between teacher and subject.

321 Free Tools for Teachers

Would you be interested in the ultimate list of free tools for teachers? At the following post you will found 321 Free Tools for Teachers separated in 18 educational technology categories. Enjoy! 

from GDCF

18 Free Tools To Create Infographics For Teachers

1. amCharts Visual Editor This editor allows you to use amCharts as a web service. This means that all you need to do is to configure the chart and paste the generated HTML code to your HTML page.
2. ChartsBin Create your own interactive map. It’s free for now.
3. Dipity Create an interactive, visually engaging timeline in minutes. Use dynamic visualization tools to display photos, videos, news and blogs in chronological order.
4. Easel.ly Create and share visual ideas online. Vhemes are visual themes. Drag and drop a vheme onto your canvas for easy creation of your visual idea!
5. Gapminder Gapminder is used in classrooms around the world to build a fact-based world view.
6. Gliffy Gliffy.com is a free web-based diagram editor. Create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans, user interface designs and other drawings online.
7. Google Chart Tools Provides several tools for making data more comprehensible. Special URLs can be used to embed graph and chart images in users’ own web.
8. Hohli Charts Online Charts Builder
9. infogr.am Create infographics and interactive online charts. It’s free and super-easy! Follow other users and discover amazing data stories!
10. Inkscape An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
11. Piktochart Piktochart- Make Information Beautiful. Create infographics. Engaging presentation app.
12. PixlrWelcome to the most popular online photo editor in the world!
13. Stat Planet StatPlanet (formerly StatPlanet Map Maker) is free, award-winning software for creating interactive maps which are fully customizable. In addition to maps, the software also has the option of including interactive graphs and charts to create feature-rich infographics.
14. Tableau Public Tableau Public is a free tool that brings data to life. Easy to use. Spectacularly powerful. Data In. Brilliance Out.
15. Venngage Venngage is built for people who work with data. From analysts who want to communicate their data better, to the executives who want to understand insights faster and everyone else who uses data to make their decisions, Venngage has been made to make insights easier.
16. visual.ly Like infographics and data visualization? Visual.ly is the world’s largest community of infographics and data visualization. Come explore, share, and create.
17. What About Me? Create an infographic of your digital life and become inspired by the people you know, the things you see, and the experiences you have online.
18. Wordle Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

19 Free Text To Speech Tools For Teachers

1. Announcify Listen to your web. After Announcify conquered Android™ phones, it’s now here to announcify your life at Google Chrome. Announcify reads out loud every website you want. For example, if you’re too tired but still need to study one more Wikipedia entry, Announcify can help your tired eyes relax.
2. Balabolka Balabolka is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV, MP3, MP4, OGG or WMA file. The program can read the clipboard content, view the text from AZW, CHM, DjVu, DOC, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, MOBI, ODT, PRC, PDF and RTF files, customize font and background color, control reading from the system tray or by the global hotkeys.
3. Chrome Speak Chrome Speak (App Version), select the text and right-click to speak with offline tts engine, TTS (text to speech). Chrome speak provides native support for speech on Windows (using SAPI 5), Mac OS X, and Chrome OS, using speech synthesis capabilities provided by the operating system. On all platforms, the user can install extensions that register themselves as alternative speech engines.
4. DSpeech DSpeech is a TTS (Text To Speech) program with functionality of ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) integrated. It is able to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced based upon the vocal answers of the user. It is specifically designed to quickly and directly provide the functions and improved practical usefulness that are requested by this kind of program. In the meantime, the evasiveness and resource consumption is minimal.
5. FoxVox FoxVox will speak any text you highlight in a web page. FoxVox can also create audiobooks in mp3, ogg, and wav formats. You can now easily turn your blogs and articles into podcasts.
6. Free Natural Reader It can convert any written text such as Microsoft Word, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails into spoken words.
7. Odiogo Odiogo’s media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device.
8. PediaPhon Learning during jogging and driving! E-learning and m-learning with MP3 players and mobile phones! A podcast and a winamp play list will be generated too. MP3 files, play lists and podcast automatically generated from Wikipedia! Let your computer read out the Wikipedia for you!
9. PowerTalk PowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic ‘Text To Speech’ programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.
10. QR voice QR Code allows users to converts text-to-speech, generates QR Code for speech URL and Simplifies share text-to-speech files.
11. Select and Speak Select and Speak uses iSpeech’s human sounding text to speech (TTS) to let you select text from almost any website and make it talk.
12. SpeakingFox Converts text to audible speech on Mac OS X.
13. SpeakIt!Select text you want to read and listen to it. SpeakIt converts text into speech so you no longer need to read. SpeakIt reads selected text using Text-to-Speech technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages.
14. SpokenText SpokenText lets you easily convert text into speech. Record (English, French, Spanish or German) PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, and web pages, and convert them to speech automatically. Download your recordings as .mp3 or .m4b (Audio Book) files (in English, French, Spanish and German) of any text content on your computer or mobile phone.
15. Text to Voice TTS gives Firefox the power of speech. Select text, click the button on the bottom right of Firefox window and this add-on speaks the selected text for you. Isn’t it brilliant? Audio is downloadable.
16. text2speech Free online text to speech converter. Just enter your text, select one of the voices and download the resulting mp3 file to your computer. This service is free and you are allowed to use the speech files for any purpose, including commercial uses.
17. Voki Voki is a FREE service that lets you create customized avatars, add voice to your Voki avatars, post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile, and take advantage of Voki’s learning resources.
18. vozMe Vozme is an online text to speech program that lets you type-in any English or Spanish text and then play it as an audio stream.
19. WordTalk A free Windows text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word. It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary and a text-to-mp3 converter.

21 Free Digital Storytelling Tools For Teachers

1. Animoto Unlimited Videos For Educators. Enhance your digital classroom with Animoto, an ideal tool for creating videos and presentations. It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life. Educators can apply for a free Animoto Plus account for use in the classroom. Its powerful features can be used to create stunning presentations incorporating images, video clips, music and text.
2. Bubblr Bubblr is a tool to create comic strips using photos from flickr.com Begin searching images and add bubble to them.
3. Capzles All of your media, your life, your stories together like never before. Create rich multimedia experiences with videos, photos, music, blogs and documents.
4. Cartoonist Cartoonists is an online tool to create cartoons or personal digital stories, consisting of professional backgrounds, characters, props, images and text. With Cartoonist, you can create multimedia stories. You can use the tool to create comic strips or more personal digital narratives.
5. Comic Master Comic Master allow you to create your own short graphic novel. With Comic Master you can decide how you want the page or your graphic novel to look, to add backgrounds, choose characters and props to appear in your scenes, to add dialogue and captions, and much more
6. Domo animate Import your pictures, select a nice song to accompany the slideshow and you are done! Your pictures will be the hero of your own personalized Domo adventure. You can create your own Domo adventures in minutes with their easy-to-use animation studio.
7. Generator Generator is a creative studio space, a space where you can explore the moving image, be inspired, create your own moving image works and share your creations with the Generator community.Gain a deeper understanding of the context of these inspiring stories through their Education Themes section. Try the Storyboard Generator and either choose a script or build your own storyboard and share it with your friends.
8. MakeBeliefsComix At MakeBeliefsComix you can create your own comic strip with an easy and fun way. You have to choose a character and emotion. Then you have to add talk or thought balloons and start your character talking. You can add other characters and more conversation. Also, you can add colored backgrounds, objects and panel prompts to keep your viewers interested. Least but not last, you can continue to edit and make more changes, and when you are done you can print or email your comic!
9. MapSkip The purpose of MapSkip.com is to create a weave of stories about the places in our lives. Users are invited to create a free account and to mark up places in Google Maps with their own stories and photos. Users can browse each other’s stories and can rate and discuss them. MapSkip is free to use and free of ads.
10. PicLits PicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.
11. Pixton Pixton empowers the world to communicate graphically with comics. Pixton introduces the world to Click-n-Drag Comics™, a revolutionary new patented technology that gives anyone the power to create amazing comics on the web. From fully posable characters to dynamic panels, props, and speech bubbles, every aspect of a comic can be controlled in an intuitive click-n-drag motion. Pixton is free for fun but has paid version for Schools and Businesses.
12. Slidestory Combine sharing pictures and narration and what do you get? Slidestory! Slidestory is a new, exciting and FREE way to make presentations and share them on the Internet.
13. Smilebox Smilebox lets you quickly and easily create slideshows, invitations, greetings, collages, scrapbooks and photo albums right on your computer. To get started, download and install the Smilebox application. Then simply, select the photos you want to use, choose a template add comments and music and voila, you’ve made a Smilebox! With more than 1000 customizable templates to choose from, you’ll find inspiration around every corner.
14. Smories.com Smories are original stories for kids, read by kids. The idea behind Smories is to publishes stories for kids read by kids. Also, you will find a lot of stories in various subjects submitted by teachers and authors.
15. Storybird Storybird lets anyone make visual stories in seconds. They curate artwork from illustrators and animators around the world and inspire writers of any age to turn those images into fresh stories.
16. Zimmer Twins The Zimmer Twins is a site devoted to kids and creative storytelling. Since 2005, the Zimmer Twins has invited children to create and share their own animated stories. It is free for Kids & Families to join, make and watch a movie and paid for Educators and Schools.
17. ZooBurst ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life. ZooBurst books “live” online and can be experienced on your desktop or laptop computer, or on your iPad via the free ZooBurst mobile app. Authors can arrange characters and props within a 3D world that can be customized using uploaded artwork or items found in a built-in database of over 10,000 free images and materials. Basic accounts are 100% free and let you get started using ZooBurst right away.Free apps for digital storytelling
18. Puppet Pals Create your own unique shows with animation and audio in real time! Simply pick out your actors and backdrops, drag them on to the stage, and tap record. Your movements and audio will be recorded in real time for playback later.This app is as fun as your own creativity. Act out a story of Pirates on the high seas, fight as scary monsters, or play the part of a Wild West bandit on the loose. You can even combine any characters however you want!
19. ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard Turn your iPad into your personal interactive whiteboard! ShowMe allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online. It’s an amazingly simple app that anyone can use, no matter how young or old!
20. Sock Puppets Sock Puppets lets you create your own lip-synched videos and share them on Facebook and YouTube. Add Puppets, props, scenery, and backgrounds and start creating. Hit the record button and the puppets automatically lip-synch to your voice.
21. Toontastic: FREE Toontastic is a storytelling and creative learning tool that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family around the world through simple and fun imaginative play! With over 2 million cartoons created in over 150 countries, parents and teachers rave about the app… and kids can’t stop creating!

15 Free Podcast Tools For Teachers

1. Ardour Ardour is a free, fully-featured digital audio workstation, similar to other software like ProTools, Nuendo, Sonar and Logic, and capable of replacing analog or digital tape systems. Available for Mac OS X, Linux.
2. Audacity Audacity is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. Audacity is available for Windows, Mac, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.
3. BlogAmp Blogamp is a web-based audiocasting solution that combines a rich media on-demand experience with podcasting. Blogamp’s robust administration utility and content manager allows site owners and bloggers the ability to customize the on demand presentation as well as utilize the many add-on features depending on who the target audience is.
4. Easypodcast Easypodcast is a GUI tool for easy podcast publication. Easypodcast is multi-language (english and spanish) and cross-platform: tested on Windows and Linux (kde). This is possible thanks to wxPython.
5. Evoca Create and Share Digital Voice Recordings Using mobile, landline, Skype & smartphones, tablets and computers.
6. HuffDuffer Create your own podcast. Find links to audio files on the Web. Huffduff the links—add them to your podcast. Subscribe to podcasts of other found sounds.
7. MP3myMP3 Recorder Saves any audio you hear on your computer straight to mp3 or wav.
8. Odiogo Odiogo’s media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device.
9. Podbean Podbean.com is an easy and powerful way to start podcasting. Easy to publish your podcast in 3 steps. No tech to learn. Powerful promoting tools, iTunes Preview, Statistics. Wonderful income chances with ads, paid subscriptions.
10. PodOmatic Record video and audio podcasts. Receive in-line calls from listeners.
11. SoundCloud Share Your Sounds. Capture a voice, moment or music in seconds or upload audio you’ve already created. Everyone has sounds to share. Now you can share yours. Publish to social networks or embed your sounds on your site.
12. StudioRack StudioRack is a modular live audio and video production system for the Windows O.S., intended for the more demanding podcaster, audio and video producers, DJ’s, radio stations, tv stations etc.
13. TalkShoe Create, schedule and run a live show. Integrate the recording on your website.
14. VozMe Convert text to MP3.
15. YAKiToMe! Uses the world’s best text to speech (TTS) software.  Upload documents, cut and paste text or link to feeds. Text reader converts text to speech automatically.

27 Free Survey, Polls, and Quizzes Tools For Teachers

1. add poll The easiest way to create polls, surveys and html forms… on the web. Find out why we’re the greatest online survey and poll software in the world with integrated form builder.
2. AnswerGarden AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic feedback tool. Use it as a tool for online brainstorming or embed it on your website or blog as a poll or guestbook.
3. Boo roo Create online polls in minutes with our free polling tool. Use our comprehensive poll builder in order to create beautiful polling solutions in your browser, for free.
4. Doculicious Easily create embeddable web forms that generate PDF documents.
5. FluidSurveys Online Survey Software & Form Tools at their best! Create forms & questionnaires with the best online survey software. Get started in seconds!
6. Forms on the Fly Amazing online forms made simple. Quickly create quizzes, tests, surveys, diagnostics & assessments for your website.
7. form site Our Drag & Drop editor, combined with over 40 question types, enables you to easily create almost any type of form or survey. Once you begin collecting results, we provide the functionality to email, analyze, share, and download your data.
8. Formspring Formspring is the place where you can share your perspective on anything. Members express their point of view and personality through engaging conversations and interact with friends, followers, and people they just find cool.
9. FoSpace The ability to publish self-calculating order forms, online surveys, contact forms, employment applications, rental applications or any type of online form imaginable, without having to hire a programmer, has finally been realized.
10. Freeonlinesurveys.com Create your own Free Online Survey. Over 1 million users!
11. GFXPOLL.com The best website to create free graphical polls for your website, forum or even email.
12. Google Forms (part of Google Drive)Collect RSVPs, run a survey, or quickly create a team roster with a simple online form. Then check out the results, neatly organized in a spreadsheet.
13. Kwik Surveys Kwik Surveys makes your job easy. Design surveys,forms, polls and feedback forms. It’s free!
14. MySurveyLab Professional online surveys. Fastest online survey tool on the market. Beautiful yet simple color themes.
15. Orbeon Forms Orbeon Forms is your solution to build and deploy web forms. It handles complex forms typical of the enterprise or government, implements the W3C XForms standard, and is available in a free open source Community Edition, as well as a commercially supported Professional Edition.
16. PollDaddy The most powerful and easy-to-use survey software around. Create stunning surveys, polls, and quizzes in minutes. Collect responses via your website, e-mail, iPad, Facebook, and Twitter. Generate and share easy-to-read reports.
17. Pollhost In a hurry? Create a free poll as a guest at Pollcode.com … No need to sign up, quick free and easy!
18. Scattervox Scattervox is a new kind of poll! When you create a poll, you ask users to show how they feel about different people, places, or things by plotting them on a two-dimensional graph. It’s like an interactive infographic!
19. SISsurvey—Create free online surveys and polls using SiS Survey. With SiS Survey you can now create surveys and polls for your website, blog and social network profiles.
20. Sonar If you need to feel the pulse of your community, or to get feedback on anything, SonarHQ is the easy and cost-effective way to get answers to your questions. The smarter, faster and easier way to create surveys.
21. SurveyMonkey SurveyMonkey is the world’s most popular online survey tool. It’s easier than ever to send free surveys, polls, questionnaires, customer feedback and market research. Plus get access to survey questions and professional templates.
22. Surveys Engine Surveys Engine is lightwheight online surveys server software. This tool enables you create various surveys and questionaires, from small and simple to large and complex. Surveys are hosted in our site so you and survey respondents don’t need any software or server, just Internet browser.
23. Survs Create online surveys with simplicity and elegance. Survs lets you create, distribute, and analyze online surveys and questionnaires with a friendly interface and powerful features. Survs gives you everything you need to gather feedback.
24. Vizzual Forms Vizzualforms is a web based service that will let you create forms and surveys, publish them online and see the results!
25. Web Form Factory Web Form Factory is an open source web form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend code to tie your form to a database. By generating the backend code for you, WFF saves you time… time you could spend doing more interesting stuff.
26. Web Online Surveys Create questionnaires with point and click ease. This is an all in one service designed for people who are not computer experts and have the need to conduct surveys by themselves.
27. Wufoo Wufoo is a web application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun.

17 Free Screen Capturing Tools For Teachers

1. Aviary Compatible with all modern browsers, including mobile devices which support Javascript and HTML5 or Flash. Customize with our code generator and integrate within minutes! Media creation tools: image editor, audio editor, screen capture.
2. Clip2Net This free service allows you to upload desktop area image or files on the web really fast such as Desktop area capture and upload, Video capture and upload, Upload image from Clipboard, Upload text documents and much more.
3. Faststone Capture A powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. It also allows you to record screen activities and sound into video files.
4. Greenshot A free screenshot tool optimized for productivity. Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with key features such as quickly creating screenshots of a selected region, window or fullscreen; capturing of complete (scrolling) web pages from Internet Explorer, easily annotating, highlighting or obfuscating parts of the screenshot and much more.
5. Jing Simple and FREE, Jing is the perfect way to enhance your fast-paced online conversations. Create images and videos of what you see on your computer screen, then share them instantly!
6. KingKong Capture Capture onscreen images fast and easy. Quick capture of your desktop, selected areas and objects. Easy printing of screenshots. Automatic saving in various supported graphic file formats are some of the key features of KingKong Capture.
7. kwout “kwout” is a way you quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map. To use this service, all you need is to add our bookmarklet to your favorite browser. Takes a screenshot, cut out an aread, and then embed it anywhere that you want.
8. PrtScr Screen capture tool. Accessable through Ptr Scr, Ctrl+Prt Scr, or custom hotkey. Captures full screen, rectangle selection, freehand selection, or active window. Can capture mouse cursor. Supports multiple monitors. Much better than Microsoft’s own Snipping Tool.
9. Rumshot Rumshot is an application for Windows similar to SnapShooter (Mac OS X) developed by Andrew Powell. Screenshots are a great way to show your desktop setup to friends and colleagues. But why settle for thumbnail of your carefully constructed desktop? Get classy – use Rumshot to automatically generate a themed and stylish screenshot preview!
10. ScreenDash Capture images from your computer screen with ease. If you can see it on-screen, you can capture it, including web-pages, PDF files, programs, etc.
11. Screenhunter Award-winning screen capture solution to capture your screen, print and edit. Also with auto-scroll web pages, auto-capture, webcam and video screen capture.
12. Screenpresso Screenpresso captures your screen (screenshots and HD videos) for your training documents, collaborative design work, IT bug reports, and more…
13. Screenshot Captor Screenshot Captor is a best-in-class tool for grabbing, manipulating, annotating, and sharing screenshots. It’s different from other screenshot utilities in several notable ways such as optimized for taking lots of screenshots with minimal intervention; highly configurable to make it work the way you want it to but stays out of your way in the system tray, excellent multi-monitor support, full set of scanner acquisition tools and scanner image correction, and perfect capture of Windows 7 partial transparency effects.
14. ScreenSnapr ScreenSnapr’s aim is to provide a simple and straight-forward approach to image capturing and sharing. Without any of the extra fluff, ScreenSnapr makes sharing images as easy as possible. Press the shortcut and go!
15. Skitch Annotate, edit and share your screenshots and images… fast. Download now, it’s free! Get your point across with fewer words using annotation, shapes and sketches, so that your ideas become reality faster.
16. TinyGrab Social Screenshot sharing. Take a screenshot and share it with your clients or friends in less time than it took you to read this sentence! TinyGrab 2.0 makes simple screenshot sharing social. Taking the critically acclaimed original TinyGrab and building on it. TinyGrab 2.0 adds a tonne of new features and proves on the existing service.
17. Websnapr Websnapr lets you capture screenshots of (almost) any web page. Allow your visitors to instantly visualize any web page before clicking. Increase site traffic, click-through rate and site stickiness.

30 Free Social Bookmarking Tools For Teachers

1. Symbalooedu Organize and Share the best of the web with your students. Organize teaching resources all in one place. Encourage student to student communications. Promote innovation while maintaining simplicity in teaching.
2. Pearltrees A place to collect, organize and share everything you like on the web. Add everything you like and organize it naturally. Enrich your collections and collaborate on your favorite topics. Discover millions of pearls to your interests.
3. 19 pencils Discover resources for your PreK-12 students from teachers around the world. Save thumbnails of web resources to a class page for easy student access.
4. A1-Webmarks A1-Webmarks is a free service that combines the convenience of a personal webmark server with the power of social webmarking.
5. All my favourites Share your internet bookmarks. AllMyFavorites is free for personal use.
6. BibSonomy BibSonomy is a system for sharing bookmarks and lists of literature. Why dont you try it yourself? Collect, organise, and share bookmarks and publications.
7. BookmarkG Save and share interesting sites and articles
8. Buddymarks BuddyMarks.com has been called “The online personal, group and social bookmarks manager.”
9. Delicious Discover, remember, and showcase your passions from around the web.
10. Diigo Education Edition Diigo is a powerful online research tool and collaborative research platform that integrates several key technologies, including social bookmarking, web annotation, tagging, and group-based collaboration, to enable a whole new process of online knowledge management and participatory learning in the 21st century.
11. Edshelf Reviews & recommendations of tools for education. edshelf is a directory of websites, mobile apps, and desktop programs that are rated & reviewed by parents & educators, for parents & educators. We help you find the right educational tools for your specific needs.
12. Evernote Remember everything. Save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see. Evernote works with nearly every computer, phone and mobile device out there. Search by keyword, tag or even printed and handwritten text inside images.
13. Givealink Share your bookmarks with the community and help others navigate the Web. Use the GiveALink visualization tool to visualize and organize your bookmarks.Play the GiveALink games to create social links across the Web.
14. Historious Historious saves you time by helping you find webpages you saw before. Bookmark sites with a single click, then find them again by searching for any word in the content of the page!
15. ikeepbookmarks.com iKeepBookmarks.com allows you to upload, and keep, your bookmarks on the web. You can access them at any time, from any computer… anywhere!
16. Jog The Web JOG THE WEB is a web-based tool that allows anyone to create a synchronous guide to a series of web sites. Its step by step approach of taking viewers through web sites allowing the author to annotate and ask guiding questions for each page is unique.
17. Learn Fizz Find, organize and share the best free learning on the web.
18. linkaGoGo The free Online Favorites manager and Social Bookmarking application. Storing your Bookmarks (also known as Favorites, Anchors, Links or Hotlists) online. Your bookmarks are available on any computer with access to the Internet, protected by a password. So you can access them from everywhere, not only from home, but also from work, when you are visiting friends, when you are traveling etc.
19. Livebinder Collect your resources. Organize them neatly and easily. Make an impression
20. Netvibes Everything that matters to you, all in one dashboard. Netvibes is a personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web and digital life aggregation.
21. Netvouz Netvouz is a social bookmarking service that allows you to save your favorite links online and access them from any computer, wherever you are.
22. Pinboard Social Bookmarking for Introverts. Pinboard is a fast, no-nonsense bookmarking site. No ads, no fluff.
23. Pinterest A content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard.
24. Reddit User-generated news links. Votes promote stories to the front page.
25. Save This Save links to your favorite web pages from any site. Access your links from any computer or Web enabled wireless device. Organize your saved links into folders that you create. Share your saved links or folders with friends.
26. Sharetivity Share, Save and Search. Your social network enhances your search experience
27. Smub Smub is the bookmarking, link-sharing & bookmark management tool for smartphones and any PC or Mac.
28. Stumbleupon StumbleUpon is the easiest way to find cool new websites, videos, photos and images from across the Web. We make the best recommendations just for you.
29. TwoBrains Two Brains is an application that approaches the learning process in a different way. The application is built around goals, because in the end that’s what you truly care about
30. Vi.sualize.us Bookmark the pictures you like around the web. Enjoy people’s favorite images.

14 Online Bibliography and Citation Tools For Teachers

1. Bibme – Free The fully automatic bibliography maker that auto-fills. It’s the easiest way to build a works cited page. And it’s free. Search for a book, article, website, or film, or enter the information yourself. Add it to your bibliography and continue citing to build your works cited list. Download your bibliography in either the MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian formats. It’s that easy!
2. Citation Machine – Free Citation machine helps students and professional researchers to properly credit the information that they use. Its primary goal is to make it so easy for student researchers to cite their information sources
3. Citefast – Free Cite your work at APA, MLA, and Chicago without leaving http://www.citefast.com/ in three easy steps. Your citations will be kept as long as you keep visiting the site. After four days of inactivity your citations will be deleted.
4. Citelighter – Free Store, organize, and share your education and research for free. Creating internet-research bibliographies can be infuriating to say the least, so Citelighter grabs all relevant info to create accurate citations for you. Anything we miss you can add yourself, and we’ll save your additions for future users.
5. Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Citation Wizard – Free Offer three Citation Styles: APA, CSE, formerly known as CBE, and MLA. All feature specific templates for citing online Journals, Web pages with and without authors, electronic Books and Databases.
6. Oregon Public Education Citation Maker for MLA – Free Do you need to cite your sources? You can use this tool to create a Works Cited list of research sources following the MLA and APA standard citation formats.
7. Recipes4Success – Free Creating a complete and correctly formatted citation is a challenge for many students, especially documenting sources such as art and music that aren’t included in traditional citation formats. Create a citation formatted in either APA or MLA style. Students will still need to completely document the information, but the Citation Maker will format it for them.
8. RefDot – Chrome Extension – Free Making citation easy. Cite and store books or journal references. Add books automatically from amazon book pages. Cite books, journals and sites with this handy little extension.
9. Zotero – Free Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself. Whether you need to create footnotes, endnotes, in-text citations, or bibliographies, Zotero will do all the dirty work for you, leaving you free to focus on your writing. Create citations in Word and OpenOffice without ever leaving your word processor and add references to an email, a Google Doc, or some other editor simply by dragging one or more references out of Zotero.
10. Easy Bib – MLA Free Free Automatic Bibliography and Citation Maker. Save time by creating a Works Cited page instantly in MLA (Free), APA, or Chicago!
11. EndNote EndNote enables you to move seamlessly through your research process with flexible tools for searching, organizing and sharing your research, creating your bibliography and writing your paper. You’ll save hours building and maintaining reference libraries and creating bibliographies. With unique features to maximize your time like automatically finding full text and updating records, EndNote lets you spend less time in the details.
12. NoodleTools A powerful, integrated platform for research & literacy. NoodleTools is your instructional partner for differentiated teaching of literacy skills, critical analysis, sound reasoning, and collaborative group research.
13. ReferenceME – Android App Better essays, faster! Simply scan the barcode of a book using your mobile phone camera, and ReferenceME will create your bibliography and citations in moments. If there is no barcode you can find the book’s ISBN or simply enter the details yourself, and turn them into references in any of the major styles used by universities and libraries. ReferenceME creates Bibliographies and Citations/Footnotes for Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, MHRA, MLA, Oxford and APA.
14. RefWorks RefWorks — an online research management, writing and collaboration tool — is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.

13 Free Sticky Notes Tools For Teachers

1. Corkboard Remember and share what’s important to you. Collaborate with others on a single Corkboard. Post and access on your computer or on-the-go. Organize your postings into Corkboards. Share what you post on your Facebook wall and get notified of new comments on your postings.
2. Hott Notes Free sticky notes reminders for your desktop. A simple, easy-to-use sticky notes software for Windows.
3. Linoit Sticky and Photo sharing for you. A free sticky and canvas service that requires nothing but a Web browser.
4. Listings Online sticky notes. Take notes from your browser. Share and collaborate with others in real-time. Reach your notes from anywhere. Super fast, free and ridiculously easy.
5. Notepad2 A fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system’s registry.
6. Padlet Padlet gives you a blank page (a wall) and you put anything you want on it, anywhere. Perhaps the easiest site for children to use. Pose questions, get their answers, and give them feedback – all on the same page.
7. Scrumblr Scrumblr is a web-based simulation of a physical agile sprint board that supports real-time collaboration.
8. Simple Sticky Notes What is Simple Sticky Notes? It’s a simple, easy-to-use, absolutely free, fast and efficient note taking software.
9. Spaaze Spaaze (pronounced “space”) offers it’s users so called boards. Each board is an infinite space which resembles a virtual cork. On these boards, items can be put. Currently Spaaze offers 7 different items: Labels, Notes, Bookmarks, Images, Files, Videos and HTML. These items can be edited in place, moved via drag and drop and positioned freely on the board. Therefore it’s possible to arrange a bunch of items any way you like, which makes it possible to use it for many different use cases.
10. Stickies Stickies is a PC utility. Just like a real sticky piece of paper: Once on screen, stickies will remain where placed until closed, even through reboots. Stickies appearance can be customised; fonts, colours and buttons may be changed, and styles saved. Stickies can be resized and store text or images. Stickies can snap to each other and to the sides of the screen to keep them neatly lined up. Stickies can be attached to a web site, document or folder so they only show when it’s on screen, and much more…
11. Stickr With Stickr you can create streams, subscribe to your friends’ feeds, form and join groups, follow people you like, leave private comments. Stickr feed can be embedded to your homepage or blog, your account can be associated with accounts on other social networking sites.
12. StickyPad StickyPad is an invaluable, easy-to-use tool that lets you place sticky notes on your desktop. You can type notes to yourself, set meeting and appointment reminders, keep track of a to-do list, and anything else you would do with paper notes.
13. Stixy Stixy helps users organize their world on flexible, shareable Web-based bulletin boards called Stixyboards. Unlike most personal productivity or project management software, Stixy doesn’t dictate how users should organize their information. Users can create tasks, appointments, files, photos, notes, and bookmarks on their Stixyboards, organized in whatever way makes sense to them.

30 Free Photo and Image Editing Tools For Teachers

1. Aviary A better photo editing solution for web and mobile.
2. Cacoo Cacoo is a user friendly online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site maps, wire frames, UML and network charts. Cacoo can be used free of charge.
3. Chart Chooser We’ve rebuilt our favorite tool for improving Excel and PowerPoint with HTML5 goodness. Use the filters above to find the right chart type for your needs. Then download as Excel or PowerPoint templates and insert your own data.
4. ChartGizmo With your free account from ChartGizmo you can now create charts for your website, blog and social network profiles.
5. ChartTool Charts and graphs are a great tool because they communicate information visually. On Onlinecharttool.com you can design and share your own graphs online and for free.
6. CoSketch CoSketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images.
7. Creately 100′s of thoughtful features to make creately diagramming quick and natural, its a joy to use.
8. Creative Docs.net Creative Docs .NET is a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text, ideal to quickly write short documents, manuals, posters, illustrations, schemas, plans, flow charts, and much more.
9. diagram.ly Draw Diagrams Online, free. draw.io is an online diagramming application and github project. It features the full range of visual configuration you expect, as well as web application features such as a full range of export options, a large collection of icons, real-time collaboration and embedded widget sharing.
10. DoppelMe With DoppelMe you can create a cool graphical likeness of yourself, your friends, family or any group of people for use as an avatar in forums, instant messenger, blogs and almost anywhere else on the web. It’s free and there are no Flash, ActiveX controls, downloads or toolbars needed – just your browser and a few mouse clicks. That’s it!
11. Flash PAINT This is an online full paint application. Draw online with paint tool. Save on your disk your drawings and send your drawing to the public gallery.
12. Flowchart.com Flowchart.com is an online multi-user, real-time collaboration flow charts service. It’s Flowcharting made easy.
13. Gickr.com Instantly create Animated GIF online, free, right now! Just upload pictures or grab them from your Flickr.
14. Glogster Looking for a new way to express yourself? Mash up music, photos, videos, & more to express what you care about. Your ideas, your emotions, your Glogster. Glogster costs 10 seconds to sign up. That’s it! Everything on Glogster is free & always will be.
15. GoAnimate Make Amazing Animated Videos! Use our Video Maker to create videos for free.
16. Google SketchUp Intuitive and fun to use. Re-imagine your living space. Model buildings for Google Earth. Use SketchUp for free.
17. Inkscape An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
18. Paint.NET Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface. Every feature and user interface element was designed to be immediately intuitive and quickly learnable without assistance.
19. Pencil Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.
20. PhotoPeach Our idea is to help you tell better stories online using photos. With PhotoPeach you can create a rich slideshow in seconds to engage your friends or family. We also support background music, captions, and comments so you can elaborate on your story further.
21. PicMarkr Free Watermark. Add Custom Watermark with PicMarkr! PicMarkr lets you to add custom watermark (image or text) to your images online and free.
22. Pixlr Welcome to the most popular online photo editor in the world…
23. Reshade Here you can resize images maintaining quality, edges and texture. This means Reshade reduces or eliminates most of the usual side-effects of photo enlargement.
24. Rich Chart Live Create for free enjoyable and captivating Flash Charts from your web browser.
25. Roxio PhotoShow Make Free Photo Slideshow. It’s so easy that just about anyone can tell an engaging, one-of-a-kind PhotoShow story in just minutes!
26. Slidestory Combine sharing pictures and narration and what do you get? Slidestory! Slidestory is a new, exciting and FREE way to make presentations and share them on the Internet.
27. Splashup Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once.
28. SUMO Paint Web’s best image app, hands down! Our editor is full of unique features that let you unleash your creativity.
29. Toondoo World’s fastest way to create cartoons!
30. Voki Voki is a FREE service that lets you create customized avatars. Add voice to your Voki avatars. Post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile. Take advantage of Voki’s learning resources.

17 Free Testing and Quizzing Tool For Teachers

1. ClassMarker ClassMarker’s secure, professional web-based testing service is an easy-to-use, customizable online test maker for business, training & educational assessment with tests and quizzes graded instantly – saving hours of paperwork!
2. ClassTools Create free games, quizzes, activities and diagrams in seconds! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!
3. Easy Test Maker EasyTestMaker is a free online test generator to help you create your tests. You can create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, matching, short answer and true and false questions all on the same test. You can also insert instructions and divide your test into multiple sections.
4. Hot Potatoes You can choose from the following six types of questions to create your interactive quiz: crossword, multiple-choice, short-answer, gap-fill, matching/ordering and jumbled-sentence.
5. iQuiz Maker 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.
6. ProProfs Quiz School Create Online Tests & Quizzes Easily. Over 100,000 quizzes created. Over 1 million quiz takers.
7. Quandary Quandary is an application for creating Web-based Action Mazes. An Action Maze is a kind of interactive case-study; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it.
8. Quedoc Our quiz software not only plays quizzes, interactive lessons and revision aids; it also helps you create your own learning content and work cooperatively with others in the process of authoring.
9. Quiz Revolution Make Free Facebook Quizzes and Free Online Quizzes. Interactive Multimedia Quizzes That Can Be Embedded On Any Site.
10. Yacapaca If you are a teacher you can use 15,000 quizzes in every subject or you can create quizzes, surveys, tests, eportfolios and more.
11. FunnelBrain FunnelBrain gives you and your friends a new way to learn. You can form study teams, play games, take quizzes, and show off your intellectual prowess. It’s fun, it’s free and you’ll do better in class.
12. Jeopardy JeopardyLabs allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own jeopardy template is a piece of cake.
13. Edgames Use games to enhance your classroom teaching! On this site you will find more than just one or two games, we have categories of games for all types of classrooms.
14. QuizSlides The easy way to create stylish, interactive online test!
15. What2Learn The fun and effective way to learn. Play some of our thousands of revision games and quizzes or make your own. Whether you are revising for examinations and tests such as GCSE and SATs, or simply looking for a powerful and engaging way to develop literacy and understanding, register today and start the learning fun.

15 Free Web Conferencing Tools For Teachers

1. AnyMeeting AnyMeeting is free with ads. It allows for meetings of up to 200 people, and has essential functionality like screen sharing, VoIP and phone conferencing, meeting recording and it even has a follow-up functionality.
2. BigBlueButton BigBlueButton enables universities and colleges to deliver a high-quality learning experience to remote students.
3. Google+ Hangout Would you like to see, hear, and share information to your online learners. With Google+ Hangouts you can have a video group chat for up to 10 people for free! It is a powerful tool much better than a Web Chat.
4. Managemeet ManageMeet.com is a online service that enables teams to collaborate on tomorrows solutions in real-time. Share knowledge, collect ideas, analyze and decide.
5. Meetin.Gs Unlimited meetings with 6 participants/meeting, material exchange, agenda & notes, 5MB size limit per file, and Skype integration.It’s also a great place to edit documents together with a group and anyone can mail-in notes and other materials via email.
6. MeetingBurner Host up to 10 webinar attendees for FREE with no ads – forever! Instantly share your screen with anybody. Works with iPhones, iPads, and Android Phones. You’ll also get analytics for your meetings so that you can see how your guests interact with your content.
7. Mikogo Screen sharing has never been so easy! Have an online meeting, give a presentation, or provide remote support with Mikogo. Sign up today and see how simple online meetings can be!
8. ShowDocument ShowDocument lets you do quick and easy real-time collaboration with others with no software required.
9. Sync.in Sync.in is a web based word processor for people to collaborate in real-time. When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone’s screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate with text documents, useful for meeting notes, brainstorming, project planning, training, and more.
10. TokBox Video Chat TokBox makes it easy to add video chat to your site using either the OpenTok API or OpenTok Widgets.
11. Twiddla Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo – it’s all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly.
12. Vyew Vyew allows you to meet and share content in real-time or anytime. Upload images, files, documents and videos into a room. Users can access and contribute at anytime.
13. WebHuddle Meetings can be conducted either in conjunction with an enterprise’s existing teleconferencing service, or utilizing WebHuddle’s optional voice over IP.
14. Yugma Yugma free web conferencing allows anyone, anywhere to instantly share their desktop and ideas online with others. To start hosting your own meetings, sign up today for FREE. Your Yugma Free web conferencing account allows you to invite up to 1 attendees with 30 minutes meeting limitations.
15. Zoho Meeting Get started with online meetings, start sharing your desktop to anyone, anywhere at any time.

15 Free Authoring Tools For Teachers

1. Easygenerator Easygenerator provides cloud-based eLearning authoring software. Easygenerator enables instructional designers and subject matter experts to rapidly create the most engaging courses that have the highest learning impact. Easygenerator is affordable, easy to use, and future proof. Simply create, design and publish your eLearning courses. Used and loved by 5000+ users in more than 120 countries in both enterprises and universities. Easygenerator’s headquarter is located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
2. LCDS The Microsoft Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a free tool that enables the Microsoft Learning community to create high-quality, interactive, online courses and Microsoft Silverlight Learning Snacks.
3. SmartBuilder SmartBuilder is the award-winning course authoring tool that enables you to create rich Flash e-learning with an easy-to-use interface.
4. The Multimedia Learning Object Authoring Tool The Multimedia Learning Object Authoring Tool enables content experts to easily combine video, audio, images and texts into one synchronized learning object.
5. authorPOINT authorPOINT is an authoring tool that allows users to capture presentations and add pre-recorded audio/video, all inside of Microsoft PowerPoint. authorGEN also offers authorPOINT Lite, which converts PowerPoint presentations to Flash.
6. Dipity From what we can glean from their website, Dipity is an online timeline creator. Users, known as Dipsters, can create their own content on subjects that are meaningful to them and share them with other users. Dipsters can also integrate social media into their timeline, utilizing real-time updates.
7. Document Suite 2008 Document Suite 2008 is an authoring tool that helps transform documents into online help modules.
8. Izzui Izzui is a hybrid social learning application that can be linked with QuickLessons. Izzui uses Facebook as an LMS to track and deliver courses. Izzui also has an e-Commerce capability allowing users to charge and pay for courses that they have created.
9. Jackdaw Jackdaw produces SCORM 1.2 compliant content that is easily integrated into any LMS. Users can create interactive content either from scratch or with the the help of over 100 templates. Jackdaw also lets users create content that they can then sell on the Open Elms web-store.
10. LessonWriter From what we can gather from their website, LessonWriter is a tool for teachers that allows them to create lessons from any passage. These courses allow teachers to be creative with their lesson plans and also saves them a great deal of time.
11. MOS Solo MOS Solo offers a way for users to create content on the go without having to rely on a constant Internet connection. Even though they are using an offline content creation tool, they do not lose any of the functionality or power to create their multimedia content.
12. myUdutu A free online authoring tool with a suite of WSIWYG tools, allowing users to create courses in an approachable environment. Claims to export SCORM 1.2/2004 conformant courses to be used in a 3rd party LMS or integrate into social media sites, such as Facebook.
13. QuickLessons Authoring Tool QuickLessons was built from the ground up to be a completely SaaS based content authoring tool, requiring the user to only have access to a web-browser. QuickLessons comes equipped with quizzes, games, characters, out-of-the-box animations and other customizable content to allow users to create truly unique and interactive flash-based content to meet their needs. Users can either use QuickLessons for free, publishing their content only to Facebook, or they can buy an individual, corporate or academic account.
14. Scratch From what we can gather from their website, Scratch is a creative tool that helps users create content that is beyond the barriers of traditional page-turners. Scratch users can create interactive stories, animation, music, and art, then share their creations on the web.
15. xtimeline xtimeline is a tool that allows users to create timeline based content for free. Users can also share their timelines with other users, creating a community.

5 Free Annotation Tools For Teachers

1. Diigo It’s one of the most commonly used free web annotation tools which lets you bookmark and tag web pages. In addition to that, you would also be able to highlight a part of a webpage if you wish to emphasize something and attach sticky notes to it. Its advanced search allows you to rummage through the text of pages you have bookmarked which includes tags, titles, URLs and even your own comments and highlights. One of the best features of Diigo is your ability to comment on other users’ notes which can be set to either public or private.
2. A.nnotate A.nnotate is not just a free annotation tool but also a collaboration and indexing tool. It can be used to catalogue images and other document formats. It also makes it easier for you to work with a group especially when documents are needed to be sent through email back and forth because of comments of different users. With the use of A.nnotate, you can simply create a single read-only copy of your document and share it with whomever you like so you could all comment on it. Another good thing about it is, it is very easy to use and it works fine in commonly used web browsers without you having to install software or plug ins. You may sign up for a free account which gives you credits for annotating 30 items every month, anything above that will require payment.
3. Bounce App Bounce app is a very simple free annotation tool that works just as effectively as others in the market. You simply log on to their website, enter the URL of the webpage you’d like to comment on and then click on Grab Screenshot. Voila! You’ll have a screenshot of that webpage and you’re now ready to comment on it by dragging the mouse and creating red boxes (like the one you see below). These red boxes are labelled with another box that contains your name and has a space for your comments. One of the best features of Bounce is that you can share your feedback on either Facebook or Twitter and let your friends see it.
4. Crocodoc Crocodoc Personal is a free annotation tool used for commenting on documents. Simply log on to their website, upload a PDF file, Office Doc or image, modify it using Crocodoc tools which allow you to highlight, draw or comment on it. When you’re done, click on Share button at the upper right hand corner of the page and send the link to whomever you’d like to share the document with. You may share it through copying the link and sending it through email or IM, or you may even embed it on your blog or website. However, if you would like to store your files or view your upload history, you have to sign up for a Crocodoc account but you need not worry because this app is absolutely for free.
5. Markup.io Markup allows you to draw on any webpage using built in tools. Simply go to their website, drag the icon located at the lower right hand corner of the page to the bookmark bar of your browser.

8 Free Video Tools For Teachers

1. Ezvid Ezvid is a 100% free video creation tool that allows you to capture everything that appears on your computer screen. It also allows you to edit your recorded videos by splitting your recordings, inserting text and audio, controlling the speed and even drawing directly on your screen. There’s also a Gaming Mode specially designed for gamers to avoid black screen problems when recording games such as Diablo III and Call of Duty which are full screen games. You can save your edited videos for later use or you may directly upload them on YouTube.
2. BlueBerry Flashback Express Recorder This recorder just, like other screencast tools, enables you to capture your screen while recording yourself through a webcam.  It introduces quite a long list of features that will let you edit videos like a pro. BB Flashback Express Recorder also has a very easy user interface that allows you to decide what area of your screen you would like to capture and whether to record sound and web activity or not. Another good thing about it is that you can have scheduled recordings so you wouldn’t have to miss online events.  It also includes a player which works like a VCR and allows you to review your recording frame-by-frame.
3. Screenr Screenr is a web-based screen recorder. Yes, you read it right. It’s web-based so that means, you wouldn’t have to install it on your computer but it requires Java to run. Screenr allows you to easily capture your screen by logging on to their website, clicking on the record button and keeping it open while you are capturing your screen activity.  Keep in mind that you only have a maximum of 5 minutes per recording. Files are saved on the site. When you’re finished, you’ll be given a link that can be easily shared by email or can be embedded on websites. It’s absolutely free, works on both MAC and PC and will work even on your iPhone.
4. Rylstim Screen Recorder Rylstim is a very simple and easy to use Screen Recorder which, aside from capturing your screen, also allows you to record events happening on the monitor including right and left clicks. It has a minimalistic and intuitive interface but supports multiple CODECs. You can also customize the video frame rates. Rylstim Screen Recorder works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows
5. Krut Krut is a screencast tool that works in almost any Operating system and requires Java to run. It’s a very simple program with only 3 basic controls: Record, Snap for still pictures, and the Arrow button used to adjust the borders of your recording area. It’s very minimalist without all those complicated features that other screencast tools offer, but it can be powerful too because of some additional features such as timer-controlled recording. You can also use it for recording streaming video and audio.
6. CamStudio CamStudio is a pretty straightforward program that lets you record your screen and audio and produce outputs in AVI or SWF format. It enables annotation such as text and call out inserts and even provides you some cursor options such as default, hidden or highlighted, which should be carefully laid out prior to recording. You have some video options too which lets you control compression, frame rates , quality and time lapse but aside from that, you can’t really do much with the video because it doesn’t include editing capabilities.
7. Webineria Webineria is an open-source easy-to-use screencast tool which lets you capture your screen activity and do “picture-in-picture” video by adding your webcam stream. It provides you 3 frame rate options: 5, 10 and 15 frames per second and outputs can be produced in either AVI or FLV format. It has built in features too that let you adjust the boundaries of your record area, use hotkeys to pause and resume recording. Outputs are saved on the site and can be shared via email links or embedding on websites.
8. Screen-O-Matic Screencast-O-Matic is a screencast tool which has both web-based and desktop versions. It’s very easy to use and will run so long as you have Java installed on your computer. It has free video hosting and allows you to record your screen or both your screen and webcam. You may also publish your output directly to YouTube. The free versions of Screencast-O-Matic has limited features though. For instance, there’s a 15-minute recording time limit, there’s a small watermark when recording, it doesn’t allow webcam-only recording and it doesn’t allow you to zoom and annotate while recording.

6 Free PDF Tools For Teachers

1. Adobe Reader XIAdobe Reader is a trusted high quality tool that allows you to view and print your PDF files. It also lets you interact with PDF content, including multimedia. Other features covered are adding and verifying digital signature, annotating on PDF pages, creating and filling out PDF forms, and printing out these documents.
2. Doro PDF Writer by CompSoftDoro PDF Writer is very easy to use and is pretty straightforward. It doesn’t have all the other options that other PDF tools have but it works great in printing PDF files. It is installed as a virtual print driver and converts any printable document or image to PDF format. It can be powerful too as it lets you set the author name and even protect it with a password before conversion. Just select it from the program’s setting menu before printing a PDF document and it will launch and provide you the option to change the document’s metadata. On top of those mentioned is the ability to enable and disable copying, pasting and printing functions of the document. It is compatible with XP, Vista, Windows 7 and 8.
3. BullZip PDF Printer by BioPDFBullZip is another PDF tool that works as a virtual print driver and uses Ghostscript to convert documents. Like Doro, it also allows you to convert printable document or image to PDF format but on top of that, it also lets you add watermarks, merge PDF files and even add protection to your PDF files. It is free for up to 10 users and offers installation of promotional, third party components. You may check the guidelines here.
4. PDFTK Builder This is an open source PDF tool used which allows you to easily reorder or merge selected pages. It is also capable of splitting and rotating pages and adding stamp and encryption to your file. Aside from those mentioned it doesn’t offer too much and even lacks the basic function of watermarking with background text.
5. PDFill PDF Tool This is probably one of the most user-friendly free PDF tools that offer you so many features. It provides the most important functions such as merging, splitting, reordering, rotating and cropping pages and even allows you to add headers, footers and watermarks. It also offers additional features such as encrypting and decrypting security options, and deleting, flattening and adding form fields. It requires GhostScript and Java to run.
6. jPDF Tweak It can be a good choice when you want to get as many features as you can in just one application.  It lets you merge, split, reorder and rotate pages, and add watermarks and encryption too.  You can also digitally sign PDF documents using it. There are features for attaching files to PDF and editing metadata as well. jPDF Tweak requires Java 5, or even higher, to run. It uses iText library to manipulate PDF documents and JGoodies Forms for its GUI.

34 Sites To Download Royalty Free and Creative Commons Music For Teachers

1. Archive’s audio and MP3 library This library contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.
2. ArtistServer Free independent music, 11,000 mp3 downloads by more than 10,000 artists.
3. Audiofarm It´s the best and easiest way to find new and interesting music, audio recordings, people and friends from around the world.
4. Audionautix All music in this online collection created by Jason Shaw.  Released under Creative Commons license 3.0 You are free to use the music (even for commercial purposes) as long as you credit “Music from – audionautix.com”OR provide a link to this website from yours. Music must be part of some other created works. No further permission is required.
5. BeatPick Creative Commons licenses allow the use of music for free for non-commercial projects, provided that users credit your name in association with their multimedia projects. Thus, we provide music for free for scholastic and socially involved projects, while we require that governmental funded ones pay a licensing fee. For personal use, we encourage our users to buy the albums/EPs from our site. To obtain the download of the required files, all projects must provide us with their name, e-mail and project description, allowing us to control that they are indeed entitle to such uses.
6. Brainy Betty Free Sound Clips and Music for Presentations!
7. Bump Foot Bump Foot is a non-profit netlabel in Japan. There are two main branches. Bump side : techno and house, or based on them. Foot side : ambient, IDM, or etc… other than bump side.You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to Remix – to adapt the work.
8. CASH Music CASH Music is a non-profit organization that hosts digital tools for musicians and labels to share their music. The digital tool allows for uploads and downloads of songs and sharing is made easy.
9. ccMixter Looking for music for a video, school project, game you’re developing, podcast or just for listening in your cubicle or mobile music device? Find exactly the music you’re looking for – podsafe, liberally licensed – using dig.ccMixter Music Discovery tool.
10. CCTrax All showcased music is available under one of the six Creative Commons licenses. They authorize free music download and enable the artists to promote their music while protecting their rights.
11. DanoSongs Hi, I’m Dan-O and I post my original music as free MP3 downloads here on DanoSongs.com. You can listen to the songs online or download the tracks. It’s also legal to use the music royalty free in your video, game, film, presentation, slideshow or website.
12. FMA The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads.  The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America.  Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.
13. Freeplay Music Library Freeplay’s first product, the Freeplay Music Library, is a comprehensive collection of High End Broadcast production music spanning all the popular musical genres, available for download either on-line or via our Portable Hard Drive.
14. FreeSFX Download free sound effects.Stuart Duffield has been creating audio professionally for 18 years. Having worked predominately in the Games Industry, he has produced a wide range of audio for various worldwide clients and numerous high profile projects. Based in the UK, Stuart has a history of synthesising, recording, designing, processing and editing audio of all types. Having worked in-house for a number of major Game Developers, Stuart currently works on a freelance / contract basis. This involves audio design, music composition and voice production in various forms – for Games, Animation, TV and Film.
15. Freesound Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, … released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse.
16. iBeat Free Beats – Download beats, loops, breaks and samples Free beats, loops, and breaks – iBeat.org iBeat – pushing beats, loops and breaks since 2007. Free under Creative Commons licensing.
17. Incompetech Incompetech hosts a wide variety of royalty free music. You can browse their selection by genre or feel. “Feel” would include things like: Action, Relaxed, Intense or Humorous; you can select a combination of ‘Feels’ and it will check its database for selection matches. Clips can be played on the website and instantly downloaded as well.
18. Jamendo370,000 tracks.Free music for all. Enjoy unlimited music, it’s completely free and legal.
19. JewelBeat Free Background Music. Easily search thru over 4,000 free background music and sound effects simply by using keywords. No need to download to preview – just type in keywords, listen immediately then download what you need! Start searching for free background music.
20. Josh Woodward Yes, you can freely download, share and use all 180+ of Josh Woodward songs.
21. Kompoz Kompoz is an online community that prides in collaboration between artists from all over the world. Artists post their clips on the website where anyone can download it and use it for their own productions. They can also add their own instruments or creative mix to the original clip and upload it on the website again.
22. LifeSounds LifeSounds works on the integration of music throughout the curriculum. Their desire is to build each individuals’ ability to strengthen their emotional intelligence and to encourage understanding between people.
23. Musopen Set music FREE. Musopen (www.musopen.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.
24. Orphan Songs The Orphan Songs website is running by Carl-Otto Johansson. Most of the music here is free to download and use. (Creative Commons).
25. PacDV This is a small database of free audio clips organised by mood or emotion such as: Warm, Loving, Serious or Lonely.
26. Partners in Rhyme Royalty free music libraries for you to download and start using right away in your commercial projects. These high quality music tracks will make your projects more effective and sound more professional.
27. Public Domain 4U Great Historical Music Recordings, Free to Download, Play, and Share. Our musical heritage is our culture. The Past should be appreciated, not neglected. These artists are so unique, they should never be forgotten. This site is designed for your musical edification. This site can not grant any commercial uses of this material.
28. Purple Planet Free Collection of Royalty Free Music available for download, composed and performed by Geoff Harvey and Chris Martyn Music can be used free of charge for web-based projects e.g. YouTube (see ‘Using Our Music’ for more info) in exchange for a link to our site. Donations are welcome!
29. Restorm This is  a platform to sell music to the public. Also, you can download some of their free selection of music just by creating an account.
30. Royalty Free Music Library Royalty Free Music Library is proud to offer one of the largest offerings of online broadcast-quality royalty free music anywhere on the web. Download royalty free music from 3 of the top royalty free catalogs online:
    1. Royalty Free Music Revolution – The definitive royalty free music catalog with over 1000 songs from some of the top composers in the industry.
    2. Radical Music Library – Royalty free music with cutting edge productions and “indie” attitude. Created by professional composers with a long list of film and television credits.
    3. Mojo Music Library – An offering of top- notch royalty free music with broader coverage on each CD for those who need a bit wider coverage for their budget.
31. SampleSwap Creative Commons Licensed Electronic Music for Commercial and Non-Commercial Royalty-Free use(Free professional-quality MP3s for DJ’ing, film scores, radio, TV, video games, podcasting, etc.). These pre-cleared songs were uploaded by artists at sampleswap.org under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. Please be sure to read the licensing information for each track carefully before using any of this music.
32. Sonnyboo 40 completely free pieces of music. For each and every single song below, all you have to do is credit the songwriter – Peter John Ross (www.sonnyboo.com) and the music is your to use for free.
33. SoundCloud SoundCloud is a website where artists share their new tracks to the world. There is a section under Creative Commons license where you can download other people’s tracks. You can stream the available clips and it takes just a simple click to get the MP3 file without any registration.
34. Stock Music Boutique Stock Music Boutique library offers high quality royalty-free production music. All tracks have full music clearance ready for instant buy out. Find a track you like and use it forever at no extra cost.

17 Free Stock Photos Sites For Teachers

1. PublicDomainPictures.net is a repository for free public domain photos. You can download high quality photos, upload your own pictures, earn money to charity, get exposure and gain popularity and improve your photographic and graphic skills.
2. FreeImages is not just another clipart graphic site!….  more than 6000 original stock photos all for FREE! Free images is a high quality resource of digital stock photographic images for use by all. All images in their collection are free to use on websites and printed materials.
3. FreeFoto.com is made up of 132232 images with 182 sections organized into 3630 categories.
4. Free stock photos, easy to download, easy to browse. Use them for commercial or personal design projects of any kind! Some are even public domain, so you can use those for whatever you want. Whether you’re looking for free stock designs for your project, free stock photography for your next big design or something in-between, freestockfor.us is your resource for quick downloads!
5. FreePixels offers free high resolution stock photos for use in both personal and commercial design projects.
6. Nearly 100% of their Royalty Free Stock Photos are Free Download. Every image is absolutely free, with some more options to buy individual higher resolutions. They can be used either for private or commercial purposes. In exchange, we only ask you to use the images according to our Licensing.
7. The SXC (stock.xhng) is a website providing free-to use stock photography and illustrations. The stock.xhng operates as a hybrid of a picture library site and a social networking site; registered users may set up a personal profile, upload their photographic works to share with other users, write a blog and participate in online forums to discuss and critique each others’ work.
8. The 4 Free Photos is an online community of photographers who enjoy taking pictures and decided to share them with the public to use them for free in their private or commercial projects. They  hope you will find the collection of free and public domain images useful.
9. Morgue File is an easy to use free photo site. Free images for your inspiration, reference and use in your creative work, be it commercial or not!
10. From Free Digital Photos you can download royalty free photos and illustrations for websites, newspapers, magazines, video and TV productions, iPhone applications, PowerPoint presentations, forums, blogs and school work.
11. Turbo Photo offers Free stock images from 10 categories (3.4 GB). Stock images are in the public domain.
12. If you are a designer you can download high resolution RF stock images for free from Dreams Time. If you are a photographer you have the opportunity to achieve a great portfolio exposure by offering free images.
13. Image * After is a large online free photo collection. You can download and use any image or texture from our site and use it in your own work, either personal or commercial.
14. In Public Domain Photos you can access 5,000 free photos, 8,000 free cliparts. All photos on this web site are public domain. You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial.
15. The photos in the Flickr Free Use Photos Group are available for use by anyone. There is no need to give credit or to fear rights infringement. These images are posted by their creators. By posting to this group, you’re allowing freedom of use.
16. Free photos and clip art from Microsoft Office Online
17. Every Stock Photo is a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo’s license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free, without advertising, and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos.

—Via eLearning Industry