Cool+Tools

Each of these tools can be used to support student learning in different ways. Click each one to learn more and practice using them: Glogster - Create or have your students create interactive posters on a certain topic.

Animoto - Create or have you students easily create videos on a certain topic.

Voki - Create or have your students create speaking avatars to communicate information.

Prezi - A great alternative to PowerPoint for making engaging presentations.

Wordle - Copy and paste text to create a visual word cloud of important words from the text.

Here are more tools to explore: Great Free Resource Tools for Digital Storytelling - Browse these resources and find ones that will work for you and your class.

[|Weebly] This is a GREAT free Website building Tool. Literally drag and drop! A blog comes with every site! YOU will love it!

[|Independent Lens: Off the Chart Web Karaoke] This tool is a easy as 1..2..3. Listen to a sample song. Compose your own poem or lyrics that represent what you learned in your inquiry process. Perform your song to ready made music.

[|Toondoo] Toondoo is a cool, comic-creating tool from Jambav, a fun site for teachers and students. Jambav is devoted to creating a unique array of free and customizable online games of educational value for children of all abilities. Represent what you learned in your inquiry process through a comic strip.

Wordle [|www.wordle.net] Wordle enables you to create artwork from words, its wondrous properties also allow you to identify key words within a written passage and analyze content. There are unexpected ways to make use of word clouds, classroom teachers already have stepped out in front by identifying all kinds of applications for the classroom that encompass everything from assessment to test review to storytelling.

[|WordSift] (View the WordSift Cool Tools session )

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WordSift====== instantly captures and displays the vocabulary structure of texts that are pasted into an application embedded within the Word Sift website. Word Sift creates a Tag Cloud of the 50 most frequently used words text you pasted in. It and brings up Google images that correspond to any word that you click on and provides a

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Visual Thesaurus word-cloud web of target words. You can also instantly see how the words that you select are used in their original context. The possibilities for word study using this site are endless.====== [|Google Lit Trips] (View Google Lit Trips Cool Tools session ) The virtual expeditions housed on this site offer a unique reading experience that make it possible for students to visit geographical locations virtually as they learn more about the places where book characters lived, traveled, struggled, and triumphed. Google Lit Trips encourage higher-order thinking skills, such as interpreting, analyzing, comparing, and explaining.

Twitter (Click Here for the Twitter Cool Tools Session) Twitter is becoming a quick tool for teachers to build their professional learning network. In this session we will examine ways to use Twitter to start building your Professional Learning Network. We will also briefly discuss some learning activities to try Twitter in the classroom.

[|Zotero] (Click Here for the Zotero Cool Tools Session) Zotero 2.0, a free Firefox plug-in, is a collaborative library where your students can share resources, gather in discussion, and learn important skills using citation and note taking tools. Educators can use Zotero to model and assess the students need to read in complex environments such as the Internet.

[|Jing] and [|Skitch] //Jing is a free video screen capture tool for creation of video tutorials to allow students & teachers to easily follow directions on use of online tools.// //Skitch is a great, free tool that is dead simple and great for creating screencaptures that you can use to identify items on your computer screen you want to share with others. Then take the image and attach to powerpoints, emails, word docs, etc// //.//
 * (Click here for the Creating Visual Tutorials Cool Tools Session)**

[|Xtranormal] **(Click Here for the Xtranormal Cool Tools Session )** //A free, easy to use animation creation tool. Billed as a "text-to-movie" tool, if you can type, you can create a movie.//

[|ePals] Safely connect, collaborate and learn using our leading protected email and blog solutions for schools and districts

Penzu [] Penzu is a free web-based private journal and diary. According to the Penzu, studies have shown that keeping a journal can not only boost your “working memory” but your grades too. One of the best things about Penzu is that it's incredibly easy to use. Whatever you write is saved automatically and you can insert images if you like. You can keep your entries private or share them with others. Penzu can easily be used for class writing projects or students can access the program for keeping their own personal notes.

[|Ning] Create Your Own Social Network

TEXT2MINDMAP [|http://www.text2mindmap.com] This online program automatically converts a student's structured list of ideas, items or sentences into a mind map on the web. The student can then freeze the map and move the pieces around on the screen. The final product is printable, or it can be saved and shared with others.

VoiceThread (Click Here for the Voicethread Cool Tools Session) [|http://voicethread.com] VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish.

Glogster [|www.glogster.com] Glogster is an exciting poster-creation tool that provides a platform for students to combine text, images, video, and audio to create an interactive, Web-based poster masterpiece. It introduces students to 3-D communication skills, requiring them to merge the left and right sides of the brain as they seek to communicate and evaluate both information and meaning. The visual, audio, and textual capacity of Glogster not only will appeal to digital learners, it has the potential to support the visual literacy skills that are becoming essential skill sets for 21st century learners.

Letterpop [] Letterpop can be used to create eye-popping newsletters, actionable presentations, irresistible invitations, beautiful product features, sizzling event summaries, informative club updates, lovely picture collages, etc. It is a service that allows you to easily create online newsletters with text and images and several pages. It offers a free plan with which you can publish up to 10 newsletters. When you’ve created a new one, you can update up to 25 contacts with up to 10 emails per year. Newsletters will be available through online profiles and RSS.

Photo Story [] Bring digital photos to life with Photo Story 3 for Windows. Teachers can download Photo Story 3 for free. Teachers and students can make show-and-tell fun again as they create slideshows using your digital photos. With a single click, you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures.

Delicious [] Social bookmarking sites allow students to research issues/topics, and share information. Students can access the bookmarks from any computer, share sites with groups, organize sites by topic. Also includes RSS feeds so students can sign up to receive information on any topic of interest.

Plantation Letters [] This website displays letters from people living the antebellum plantation life. This site shows social studies teachers how they can use web 2.0 tools to help students analyze primary source documents.

Google Maps [] Google Maps allow students to create and personalize maps. Basic functions include adding multiple placemarks, and descriptive text to a map. Images/photographs can be added to any map, but the photos must be online (Flickr). Students may place hyperlinks in the descriptive text boxes to link the map to additional information/web sites if so desired.

Slideshare [|www.slideshare.net] This site allows students to upload a PowerPoint presentation, with an audio file included if the student has included an MP3/podcast. Students can upload and share their presentations with small groups or with the class.

MixBox [] MixBox took over Scrapblog, which allows you to create a scrapbook using your own photos, audio, videos, and text. It is very user friendly and would be great in the classroom because it will be simple for the kids to use and it is free!

FreeRice [|www.freerice.com] FreeRice is a vocabulary-focused site with a philanthropic side. Students and visitors go through multiple-choice vocabulary questions which get increasingly harder as they answer correctly. As the students answer correctly, rice is provided for Third World Nations through the United Nations World Food program.

Great Book Stories [] This is a collaborative wiki space for K-20 students and educators wanting to listen and see a great digital story about a book, and to create and safely share stories about great books with a global audience and receive feedback.

Webspiration [] Webspiration is the online version of Inspiration, the visual thinking tool that helps you capture ideas, organize information, and diagram processes whether working individually or collaboratively. It is currently in a free beta-version, but will eventually have a subscription fee.

WIX @http://www.wix.com Create your own website.

Canva 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!

[|Socrative] A smart that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets.

[|Powtoon] PowToon is the brand new Do-It-Yourself animated presentation tool that supercharges your presentations and videos! Save massive amounts of time and money by creating Presentoons that bring the WOW!-factor to product demos,, social media clips, and much more.

Tagul A word "cloud" generator... create custom word clouds - and be able to connect each word to specific URLs

Screencast-o-matic Amanda and Preference (see below!) Easy way to make a screen capture video recording with audio (aka screencast with picture in picture options). Download file (mp4, etc.) or upload it for all from your browser with no install.

Story Bird An interactive and customized storybook maker.

ThingLink Be creative! Make your images come alive with video, text, images, shops, music and more! Every image contains a story and ThingLink helps you tell your stories.

TACKK An easy GREAT multimedia poster building tool. GREAT for research projects and/ other visual/creative project..

ActivelyLearn Katie Hennenlotter, Hong Cheng and Yuanyuan Fang Actively Learn is a digital reading platform that provides educators with new tools to get every student reading closely.

EduCreations Educreations is screencapture/annotated where students can show what they know and teachers help them "see" and learn what they don't.

SpicyNodes Rebecca Adams and ShaCarol Stewart SpicyNodes fuels students’ imaginations, enabling them to create their own concept maps via a free, easy-to-use tool. They can integrate such as images, YouTube videos, and music, while also incorporating text and catchy headlines.

Vocoroo ivocaroo s a quick and easy way to make and share voice messages and mini-podcast that captures students' learning.

EdPuzzle Jamye Abram - is anyone else interested in working on this one? Wenting--I'm in. Look forward to working with you. 😄 Turn videos interactive -- into personalized content (teacher voice over) and formative assessment (embedded questions).

Rewordify Rewordify simplifies difficult English, and teaches students words quickly and effectively. This site will creat FlashCARDS for students with audio, so the can practice difficult vocabulary from online content.

KAHOOT Create and play quizzes, discussions or even surveys using any device with a web browser… including a laptop, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Android, Chromebook, or PC and more.