Cool Online Tools

Next week I facilitate a workshop designed to assist Year 11 students find some useful online tools to support their learning, especially research, collaboration, organisation, study and presentation.

my original wordle

There will be a very, very brief presentation and overview of each tool and then students will be free to experiment, exploring the tools of use/interest to them.

Do you mind checking out this list and suggesting some more tools?

Also, are any of the below best avoided by Year 11?

Why?

 

Here’s the list

 

Tame the web

RSS feeds: point website updates towards your reader (watch the video here)

Google Reader: is a place to read all your RSS feed (watch the video here)

Instapaper: a read later bookmarking service

Readability: remove the clutter around the webpage you’re reading

bit.ly: shorten your links

 

Sharing & Collaboration

Delicious: a social bookmarking site (watch the video here)

Diigo: another social bookmarking tool

Google Docs: collaborate on documents with peers online at home

 

Creative Commons for Images and Sound

Creative Commons (Australia): understand licenses

Flickr: the largest photo sharing site

Flickr ‘The Commons’: search the great public photographic collections

Soundzabound: royalty free music for schools

 

Organisation

mindmeister: free mindmapping tool

bubbl.us: organise brainstorms

Evernote: synch files with all your devices

Dropbox: free online storage

Livebinders: collect and share resources (here’s the video)

Netvibes: dashboard everything

 

Customise

iGoogle: customise your homepage with a variety of widgets

Wetpaint: free site where you create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks

 

Mashups

Wordle: generate word clouds

GAPMINDER: unveils the beauty of statistics while revealing trends

Newsmap.jp - a mashup of headlines that shows new patterns

 

Research & Answers

Google Alerts: keep up to date with topics of interest

Wolfram Alpha: enter what you want to calculate

Project Gutenburg (Australia): free ebooks

bibme: a free automatic bibliography generator

Noodletools: guides you through the research process

 

Memory Tools

Anki: makes it easier to study and remember (iPhone app here)

BRAINFLIPS: online flashcards

10 more Mindmapping tools: + what’s best for mindmapping anyway?

 

Presentation

Slideshare: converts your PowerPoints and other documents + saves them online to share (take the tour)

Prezi: astonishing presentations

updated wordle

Social Media Revolution

Thanks to Jane Hart for this one.

more about “Social Media Revolution“, posted with vodpod

 

Visual Representations of Web 2.0

 

Thanks to @sujokat for posting this at her blog.

Australian Educators to Follow on Twitter

Recently I’ve been chatting with lots of teachers new to Twitter or keen to experience the service. I’ve sent them links that list ways to find teachers and professionals to follow on Twitter.

Here’s an alphabetical list of 10 Australian educators that I get great value from on Twitter:

Chris Betcher

Dean Groom

Elaine Talbert

Kelli McGraw

John Larkin

Judy O’Connell

Julian Ridden

Sue Waters

Tomaz Lasic

Tony Searl

Melissa Giddens, Kim Pericles and Troy Martin are relatively new to Twitter and teachers to follow. Victor Davidson is yet another teacher-librarian who is an enthusiast in many areas of our profession.

Following the English Teachers’ Asscociation and the NSW Board of Studies may be useful to you too.

This list could have been much lengthier and maybe your comments could detail some other great teachers you follow? I am bound to have left someone off who I’d have included (but following almost 600 people makes it increasingly difficult remember everyone) so apologies in advance.

Clay Shirky

NYU Adjunct Professor of New Media, Clay Shirky talking on Brian Lehrer Live about how the internet is changing society.

more about “Clay Shirky“, posted with vodpod

 

School of Life

I don’t want to give the punch-line away but after you’ve viewed click here and then here.

education, technology, life

Occasional blogging, with musings on education, technology and life, will appear here shortly.