Sharing+Tools+for+Students


 * //So many tools, so little time....//**

With hundreds of free web 2.0 tools for sharing, we'll try to find the "just right" student collaboration tool to enhance and simplify the creation of interactive environments for your students.

In this 2 hour tech session we will: =1) [|Day of Class sign-in]= =2) [|TodaysMeet]= [|Learn it] Encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs
 * Review & discuss TYPES of sharing tools (blogs, backchannels, graphic organizers, presentations, video, text docs, etc)
 * Provide resources for finding free sharing tools
 * Explore as a group and on your own to find the right sharing tools to match your classroom environment and desired outcomes
 * Select 1-2 tool to learn
 * Share your discoveries at the end of class :-)
 * ====The goal is that these tools will assist you in transforming your classroom environment and encourage student sharing, collaboration and engagement by incorporating technology to meet the needs of the 21st Century Learner.====
 * TodaysMeet** helps you embrace the [|backchannel] and connect with your audience in realtime.

=3) [|Pinterest Web 2.0 for Teachers]= There are tons of resources for educational web 2.0 tools. Here is one source I like.

**4)** Look at the different tools and choose a couple that interest you. Investigate them and think of ways to integrate them into your current routines.
= =

**Multi-functional tools**
Create, share and collaboratively edit documents using a Google account. Google Docs is especially useful for group projects where students are working together on an assignment. Ask your students to provide you with access to their Google Doc while they’re working on it so that you can give them real-time feedback on their progress.
 * [|Google Docs]**

**File Sharing**
Dropbox allows users to save a variety of file types to a shared folder.
 * [|Dropbox]**

**Collaborating ideas**
[|**Socrative**] This web 2.0 tool uses cell phones and/or laptops to gather feedback from students. You can post as many questions as you’d like, which is nice if you have several classes. Poll Everywhere is an inexpensive and quick alternative for clicker response systems. Create your first poll in 30 seconds without having to sign up. Your students simply text their answer to a predetermined number and, voila! Poll Use Pinterest to create subject-specific Pinterest boards to organize a shared theme, idea, concept, etc or provide a group study board. Create and publish your own online survey or quiz in minutes. You can make 10-question surveys with 100 respondents for free. It’s super easy to use and you don’t have to download anything.
 * [|Poll Everywhere]**
 * [|Pinterest]**
 * [|SurveyMonkey]**

Mindomo is another online mind mapping tool. It’s neat because you can collaborate in real-time with others and share/embed what you’ve created. You get three free mind maps. Use Bubbl.us to create colorful online mind maps. It’s great for class discussions and brainstorming sessions. [|spiderscribe.net/] SpiderScribe is an online mind mapping and brainstorming tool. It lets you organize your ideas by connecting notes, files, calendar events, etc. in free-form maps. You can collaborate and share those maps online!
 * Inventing/Mind Mapping**
 * [|Mindomo]**
 * [|Bubbl.us]**

Celly is a group text messaging program for schools with no user limit. It’s easy to start a group chat and create a class poll using text messages. Curators filter the messages before they are sent to the group. This keeps students on-topic and deters cyberbullying. Many teachers create a class Twitter account and use it as a way for students to contact them with questions about homework, due dates, and exams. It’s a quick alternative to writing out an entire email and most students have Twitter apps on their phones.
 * Announcing**
 * [|Celly]**
 * [|Twitter]**

With millions of YouTube videos, there’s bound to be something that’s relatable to your lesson. There are step-by-step tutorials, news clips, editorials, short documentaries and more. Recently, YouTube launched an education-specific version of the website called YouTube for Teachers. SlideShare is one of the most popular ways to upload and share PowerPoint presentations and other documents. Again, this is a great tool for transferring documents between your home and school computer without having to carry around a flash drive. [|AuthorSTREAM] AuthorSTREAM is another one of many websites that allow you to upload a PowerPoint presentation and access it from any computer with an internet connection. It’s nice because you can select the privacy settings you want for your PowerPoint.
 * Publishing**
 * [|YouTube]**
 * [|SlideShare]**

[|ScoopIt**] An awesome social bookmarking tool that allows you to easily save and share blog posts and articles. [|Live Binders**] Live Binders is a cool online storage and organization tool. You can use it to create tabs for your important documents. Zotero is a neat tool that helps you collect, organize, cite and share research that you have done. You can add PDFs, images, audio and video files, snapshots of web pages and more. It indexes the full-text content of your library, allowing you to quickly find what you’re looking for.
 * Curating**
 * [|Zotero]**

Padlet (formerly WallWisher) is basically an online message board where you post “Sticky Notes.” You can make one for yourself to help you remember important events and dates, or create one for your class. You can even choose to approve each sticky note before it is created so that you can monitor what’s being said. Create beautiful word clouds from text that you provide. Like Tagxedo, it gives prominence towords that appear most frequently. You can save, print and share your creation. Tagxedo is an awesome word cloud creation tool. You can turn customized text, websites, blogs, twitter accounts and more into stunning designs based on the frequency of words found in the medium. There are numerous designs and color schemes to choose from that can be saved to your computer or shared. Writeboard allows you to create sharable, web-based text documents that let you save and view every version of your content. It can be used as an individual or collaboratively which makes it perfect for group assignments. Create your own comic strip for free. You can write in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Latin. After you’re done creating, you can print your customized comic or email it to yourself. Blabberize is a fun web 2.0 tool that allows you to upload a picture (of a person or animal), select its mouth, and make it talk by adding an audio file. Like Gizmoz, your students are sure to get a kick out of it! PrimaryPad is an online word processor that allows students and teachers to work together in real-time.
 * Using text**
 * [|Padlet]**
 * [|Wordle]**
 * [|Tagxedo]**
 * [|Writeboard]**
 * [|Make Beliefs Comix]**
 * [| Blabberize]**
 * [|Primary Pad]**

[|Create-a-Graph] Use Create-a-Graph to make attractive graphs for free. Choose from bar, line, area, pie and simple XY coordinate graphs. With Dipity, you can find, create and embed interactive timelines. The best part is that you can add photos to customize the look of each timeline. This website is especially useful for providing your students with a visual representation of a sequence of events. It’s great for history and English teachers.
 * Using numbers**
 * [|Dipity]**

VoiceThread’s group conversations are stored and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world. It allows you to create multimedia slideshows with images, videos and documents. Others can view the slides and then leave text, audio or video comments. WordPress is a blogging platform that allows you a lot of versatility in the kind of content you can offer. Prezi is a really neat cloud-based presentation program that allows you to zoom in and out. If you don’t mind your slides being public, you can sign up for a free account with 100MB of storage. With a free option for K-12 teachers, Wikispaces is a great tool for making custom webpages that your students can edit together. You can manage privacy settings, create student accounts without email addresses, embed media and even customize the design of your Wiki pages. [|Weebly**] Weebly gives you a surprisingly easy way to create a professional-looking website or blog. It’s great for your first foray into the blogosphere! Use Animoto to easily create presentations and videos with your own images and music, or choose from a library of stock files. Teachers can apply for a free Animoto Plus account. WeVideo is an online video editing program that you can use collaboratively with others. It is easy to add effects, music and narration to a personal or group project. WeVideo also takes the hassle out of sharing by providing options for popular social media sites. Screenr is one of the best instant screencast tools available. It’s free and you can record on your PC or Mac, play it anywhere—even on your iPhone—and there’s nothing to download (as long as you have JAVA installed on your computer). With Edublogs, you can create and manage your own teacher blog as well as student blogs. You can customize designs and include videos, images and podcasts. Best of all, it’s safe and secure. Screenr is one of the best instant screencast tools available. It’s free and you can record on your PC or Mac, play it anywhere—even on your iPhone—and there’s nothing to download (as long as you have JAVA installed on your computer). Screencast is another media storage website. With a free account, you get 2GB of storage and 2GB of bandwidth a month. You keep the rights to everything you upload and you can determine the privacy settings for each file. From there, Screencast makes it easy to share and embed your media. Screencast also works seamlessly with TechSmith’s screen recording Camtasia software. Create and upload your own podcast or find a variety of free podcasts on Podomatic.
 * Multimedia Presentations / Publishing**
 * [|VoiceThread]**
 * [|WordPress]**
 * [|Prezi]**
 * Wikispaces**
 * [|Animoto]**
 * [|WeVideo]**
 * [|Screenr]**
 * [|Edublogs]**
 * [|Screenr]**
 * [|Screencast]**
 * [|Podomatic]**

Use Cramberry to create, study and share your flashcards online. You can download the Cramberry app on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad to access your flashcards on-the-go. It’s nice because it analyzes your progress and shows you cards that you need to focus on [|Quizlet**] As one of the largest and most popular flashcard creation websites around, Quizlet allows students and teachers to customize their own “sets” of flashcards. You can manage access to the flashcards you create and share them with your students.
 * Practicing / Reviewing**
 * [|Cramberry]**

If you tend to provide your students with a lot of links to online readings, activities, etc., you should look into using bitly’s link shortening service so you aren’t sending your kids super long URLs. You can even track how many times each link has been clicked to get an idea of how many students actually followed your instructions. Easily find images and files that can be freely used for worksheets, presentations and more with the Creative Commons Search. Every once and a while you’ll come across something that isn’t licensed for use; however, the majority of results can be shared and edited. Upload a large image to Block Posters and create any size wall poster you want for free! This website is great for decorating your classroom if you’ve got high-quality digital photographs or art files. [|Poll Daddy**] With a free account, you can create online surveys and quizzes with up to 10 questions. However, you only get 200 responses a month, so it’s not something you can use every day. Your students can respond via your website, email, Facebook, iPad and Twitter. Also, the free account comes with some basic reports so that you can quickly see how well your class understands the topic. Share Grammarly with your students because it’s a user friendly way to improve a paper. Simply copy and paste text into the box and click “check text.” Within 30 seconds, it provides a detailed analysis that includes 150 different grammar rules, plagiarism, word choice and more. The only downside is that Grammarly is a premium service; however, you can sign up for a free seven-day trial. [|Cueprompter**] A lot of students have a hard time giving class presentations, but Cueprompter helps to relieve some of the nerves. Copy and paste your script into the box and it displays just like a real teleprompter. Plus, it’s free to use.
 * Even More.....**
 * bitly**
 * [|Creative Commons Search]**
 * [|Block Posters]**
 * [|Grammarly]**

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 * But wait...there's more!**