Weebly

Poor neglected blog!  I apologize for not getting more goodies up sooner.

Today we have Weebly!

Weebly is a great way to create a site and get free hosting online.  It's simple and easy to use, but don't let that fool you - it's also quite powerful!

Take a look!

Hulu

Hulu

Ok, I know.  You're thinking this isn't educationally related.  Just for fun, huh...  

But wait a minute!  We're talking about educating with technology.  Ever want your students to watch a great movie about history, but couldn't take class time and realize asking them all to rent it was an impossibility?  Have them watch it on Hulu!  Go to the History channel on Hulu and see what all they have available!  It's mind-boggling...

Assign your students some Hulu and see at least a few happy campers!

Prepping for the New School Year

This year I have a new list of things I'm going to try and implement.  I also have a list of things I'm going to try and avoid!

Implement:

1. Touch things 1 time and deal with them adequately!

2. Improve my filing system for hard copies of important documents.

3. Weed through the ridiculous amount of books and part with some of them regardless of my emotional attachment!

4. Stop procrastinating on tasks I hate - by doing them first!

5. Be willing to give up a system, book, project, software, method, etc. that is not working for me before wasting vast amounts of time!

Avoid:

1. Making careless mistakes by rushing too much - ok....baby steps here - be more careful!

2. Use my time more wisely by using GTD strategies that work and simply life.

3. The phone....   Need I say more?

4. The television - at least during the day!

5. People who frustrate me or waste my time on things that don't really matter.

Well, it all sounds great.  The question is.....  Will I do it?  I'm definitely going to try!

Viewzi

Viewzi

A new way to search.  It's not like google or yahoo, but its much more visual and customizable.  

Check out viewzi for your next search!

Blambot

Blambot

Need a unique, comic book style font, for free?  Look no further than Blambot.  They have a huge selection (note - some of them are for fee)!

Privnote

Privnote

Want to feel like you're on Mission Impossible...

Try Privnote

You send a note and self destructs after they read it.  Cool, huh?

Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk

This slick little service allows you track tasks and projects and sync them.  It works well with other apps, especially GMail.  It's still in Beta so expect occasional issues and updates.  It's a handy little app for quickly entering or retrieving a to do list.  

Some of the things you can use it for include google calendars, you can twitter a message to it, email it, voice mail, etc.

iGTD for mac

iGTD 

Need an app for project and task management.  Here's a nifty one for mac users.  The interface is simple and easy to use.  The best news - its FREE!

Schoolhouse 2.0 for Mac

Schoolhouse 2.0 for Mac

This is a great organizer program for students (and applicable for teachers too).  It is only for mac, but its a well-done program and it's FREE!

Kaltura

Kaltura

I haven't really had time to play with this much yet, but with classes getting ready to start I thought I'd go ahead and post it.

Kaltura offers collaborative video editing online for free.  I can think of a million uses for this service.  Since I haven't gotten to play with it (and work with others) I'm not sure of the ease of use, but the idea is brilliant.  

How to Make It All Work Together

This year I've come across so many tools that will make teaching easier, but now I have to whittle it down to best choices.  This is the struggle.  Which tools will help the most, with the smallest learning curve for the students and parents?

I think the ones I will use the most this year are:

Twitter (a great way to get info to a group quickly)

Jott (a way to remind myself anywhere of something I'm likely to forget!)

Skitch (a great way to mark graphics up on anything quickly)

Evernote (for organizing notes with searchable text)

Since I have a website already, I don't need drop.io as much, but I think I'll still have some use for it

Adobe Buzzword

Adobe Buzzword

This online word processor allows you to work collaboratively with others and access your documents from any computer.  It's definitely a handy tool and free!  It allows mac and pc users to work together online without having to convert everything back and forth.  Love it...

Awesome Highlighter

Awesome Highlighter

Do ever want to have your students read an article and highlight certain parts?  Maybe its very long and you just want them to cover some of it...  Try Awesome Highlighter.  Nothing to download; you do it all online.

Twhirl

Twhirl

Twhirl is a desktop client that helps manage your Twitter account.  If you have multiple accounts this is great for following them all simultaneously.  Give it a whirl!

Twitter

Twitter

I've heard twitter called microblogging, but that's not very explanatory for some.  Twitter is one of those things that you either just get, or you don't.  Basically you make short posts (of less than 140 characters) and follow others posts and they follow you.  The best way to learn about twitter is to just sign up (Free!) and try it.  I have found that its often a faster way to get info about current events and tech support than most forums.

iSquint

iSquint

iSquint is a slick little app that allows you to turn most any video into one that is compatible with iPods.  Since I use iPods to keep up on the news and reading, etc. this app is fantastic!  I simply drag a video to the iSquint panel and in a few minutes it can download it directly to my iTunes account and sync to my iPod.  Love it....

Rulers

Rulers

This is a simple little program, but quite handy.  Basically it puts rulers at the top and side of your desktop (using a variety of measurements you can choose).  It's available for both windows and mac.

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire

I can't imagine life with an rss feed reader.  I subscribe to quite a few blogs (news, tech, hobby, etc.) and its the best way to keep up with them.  NetNewsWire used to be paid app but went free a few months ago.  It is a mac app.  Their reader for windows is FeedDemon.  I use NetNewsWire (I switched to it from Vienna) but I hear google reader works fine too.

Here are a couple of links listing free rss feed readers:

about.com

New Aggregators Directory

Wordle

Wordle.net

This doesn't really solve any problems or help teach anything, but it is kind of fun.  After a writing assignment, especially a creative one, this could be a cool app to run on it.

LibriVox

LibroVox

I stumbled across this little gem a ways back.  They have a great selection of books in the public domain (most of the 'REAL' classics are there!) available for download.  I like to subscribe to them via iTunes and listen on my iPod.  It's a quick and convenient way to review something I haven't read in awhile, but I think he may help reluctant readers.

Moodle

Moodle.org

Hard to describe, so I'll use their description:

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

MindNode

MindNode

For those that use mind mapping (I'm more of an outline chick) here is a free app for macs.

Flickr

Flickr

Obviously not specifically an education app, it serves some great purposes.  You get free online (limited) storage and can upgrade at a fee for more.  Flickr has great plug ins for many other apps.

Evernote

Evernote.com

How do I explain evernote?  It's a way to keep all the data, photos, notes, phone numbers, etc. that you run across everyday but can't ever find when you need them.  It lets you organize this info with tags.  There's so much more.

Here is a link to their own description: www.evernote.com/about/what_is_en/

del.icio.us

del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site.  What does that mean?  Not only can you organize your bookmarks with multiple tags, find them on anyone's computer via the internet, but also share them.  You can look up what other people are tagging similarly.  It's a great way to find new sites.

Dipity

Dipity.com

Dipity is free online timeline app.  It can bring together your online history (through other apps) or allow you to enter your own data.  The timeline can be personalized for you (with your own websites, blogs, etc) or about a historical event, a group, etc.  History teachers in particular could be THRILLED with this one!

Skitch

Skitch.com

Wow!  I love this little app.  I use it for all kinds of things!

Skitch allows you to take a snap shot of any screen (there are a lot of other apps that do this) but then you can draw and write on it, move it around (like a picture) and save it.

You can also draw with it, which is definitely better handled with a stand alone mouse!  It's simple and helpful.

For the windows users, here is the link for pc users to get Skitch

Jott

jott.com

What a great little tool!  I love being able to give jott a call and leave a message and find my little email waiting when I get home.  This neat little free app is for reminders.  It's hard to explain how many cool uses it has, but wiki has a pretty good one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jott

Drop.io

Drop.io

What a great site for file sharing with students and fellow teachers.  You can even conduct online meetings.  Drop.io is accessible via file upload, emailing, sms, voice mail, the internet.  You can rss subscribe to the drop or have email alerts when anyone adds to it.  You can even subscribe to it via iTunes as a podcast.  

To learn more about drop.io go to: www.http://drop.io/tutorial