Technology Resources

Blogs

	Edublogs lets you easily create & manage student & teacher blogs, quickly customize designs and include videos, photos & podcasts - it's safe, easy and secure so try out an Edublog today!
	21 Publish hosts an unlimited number of blogs for you community members. You have instant use, no installation, central console to manage your members and it allows you to use your community homepage to connect members.
	Talkr is a text-to-speech service popular with thousands of bloggers. LiveOnTheNet will soon be releasing a proprietary and highly innovative voice conferencing platform that features a revolutionary voice conferencing widget that requires no software client or downloads.

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Creating a Web Site

	Building a school web site gives you simple basic information on building a school web site.
	Cool Text is a free graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you need an impressive logo without a lot of design work. Simply choose what kind of image you would like. Then fill out a form and you'll have your own custom image created on the fly.
	Jottit makes getting a web site as easy as filling out a text box.
	Shareware Junkies is the oldest software review site. They test the programs for you.
	Snip URL will take the ugly long URLs all over the web and snip them into a snipurl that is short, snippy, secure, memorable, and easy to share.
	Make a short and memorable URL with Tiny, plus you can obtain the best traffic stats on people that clicked your tiny link.
	Webmaster Resources offers links to online resources including multimedia, learning, tutorials, and free stuff.
	Weebly is a web design and hosting system that lets you create a professional site quickly with unlimited pages and no file restrictions.
	With Wix you can create your own web site with ease. There’s no need to add even a single line of code. Built with a beautiful graphic drag and drop interface, the web site builder was created to be as user friendly as possible while allowing for total creative freedom. Choose from thousands of professionally-designed web templates or create from scratch. The best way to learn how to make a web site is to stare with a template then simply click and replace and customize. You won’t believe how easy it is if you want to create a site from scratch, it’s also simple to add items like titles, logos, clip art, photo galleries and more as you go. Publish in 1-step and your site is live online.
	WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful web site or blog. It is free.

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Digital Cameras - Photo Editors

	Animoto allows you to turn your photos, video clips, and music into video masterpieces to share with everyone. It is fast, free and shockingly easy.
	Digital Gadgets offers a wealth of technical and practical information about the use of digital cameras in the classroom.
	Foto Flexer is the world’s most advanced online image editor. Create dazzling photo effects for free in your browser .
	Juxio was created to allow people to easily create elegant, large-format posters for display at events such as birthdays, anniversaries and graduations. During Beta, we've added templates to simplify the poster-making process and to provide smaller formats for personal framing and gift-giving. Educators in particular have found Juxio's simple, linear, organized way to tell stories a useful tool for the classroom.
	Pixlr is a free online photo editor. Edit, adjust and filter your images. There is no registration so you can jump right in.
	The goal of Photo Peach is to help you tell better stories online using photos. Photo Peach allows you to create a rich slide show in seconds to engage your friends or family. They also support background music, captions, and comments so you can elaborate on your story further.
	Sumo Paint lets you release your inner artist and put Pablo Picasso to shame with the finest painter software online!

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Electronic Field Trips - Virtual Tours

	Ball State University electronic Field Trips let you experience an incredible online field trip without ever leaving your school.
	Mapwing makes it easy to build, share, and explore virtual tours. Use Mapwing to turn your digital photos into virtual tours that include interactive maps, images, and comments. Then, share your virtual tours with friends, clients, or the entire world. Begin creating your own virtual tours for free.
	The virtual field trips here at Tramline were developed with the goal of making the best use of the web in the classroom. These annotated trips take students to some of the best web sites on each trip subject. We have a Trailhead (Intro) and Teacher's Resource that set the stage for most of our trips. The Tour Maker field trips format makes learning fun, and makes using the Internet in the classroom simple, efficient and focused. You will find virtual field trips on science, literature, social studies, and other topics.
	The Utah Education Network has produced an incredible site with the Virtual Field Trips site for educators to use with students. Organized by subject this mammoth resource has a great selection of web sites that are organized into virtual field trips in the classroom.
	Virtual Tours is a collection of tours of the world, museums, exhibits, points of special interest and the U.S. Government.

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Electronoic Newsletters

	The Big Deal Book Newsletter is free to educators and includes grants and other funding opportunities, free and inexpensive resources and much more.
	The Edtech Review technology magazine is available online for anyone to read. It has many helpful articles.

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Electronoic Portfolios

		Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights. Tell your story now digitally.
		Projeqt takes the idea for collating and displaying the content you find online one step farther by introducing your own content to your display. Using Projeqt you can mix content from the web with your own content to create visual stories about your favorite things. Using Projeqt you can create a visual story by linking together images, videos, and text. The content you link together can be material that you upload or material that you have found on the web.

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Global Projects

	The Global SchoolNet Collaborative Learning Center offers tools, resources for online collaboration, tutorials, and project lists.
	At Operation Ruby Throat students are asked to observe the hummingbird and share information with peers across North and Central America.

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Inspiration

	Inspiration^® is the essential visual thinking and learning tool students rely on to plan, research and complete projects successfully. With the integrated Diagram and Outline Views, learners create graphic organizers and expand topics into writing.
MS Office Tricks	MS Office Tricks shows you how to use Power Point and Inspiration.

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Integrating Technology into the Classroom

	Audacity ® is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
	Audio Boo is a mobile and web platform that effortlessly allows you to record and upload audio for your friends, family or the rest of the world to hear.
	The lesson plans that you will find at Best Practices of Technology Integration in Michigan here have been written by practicing teachers and have been "kid tested" to work in the classroom. They are examples of how technology can be used as a valuable tool in your classroom.
	The Center for Engineering Education and Outreach from Tufts University presents the following resources: Sam Animation, Lego Engineering and the Stomp Network which is designed to be an online resource to unite Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math (STEM) outreach programs across the country and throughout the world.
	Classtools.net provides free, customizable flash templates to embed into blogs, wikis and web sites. There is no signup, no passwords, and no charge.
	Freeplay Music provides royalty-free downloads of background music of "educational, non-commercial use."
	Free Technology for Teachers offers free resources and lesson plans for teaching with technology.
	The Filamentality site shows teachers how to create web-based learning activities.
	ISTE standards for students, teachers, and administrators help to measure proficiency and set aspirational goals for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to succeed in today’s Digital Age.
	Surf Report offers classroom web resources.
	Teaching with the Internet demonstrated new literacy methods that are especially important to the effective use of content area information on the Internet. They allow us to *identify important questions, navigate* complex information networks to locate appropriate information, critically evaluate that information, synthesize it to address those questions, and then communicate the answers to others. These five functions help define the new literacies that your students need to be successful with the Internet and other information and communication technologies.
	The Tuscon School District offers these Teacher Resources where you will find great technology activities, lessons and ideas using Power Point, Excel, Word, and Publisher.
	Evaluating Internet Resources from Teacher Tap helps students sort out what information is good and what isn't on the web.
	Toon Doo is a cartoon strip generator can be used to create dialog among characters, create a scene from another culture, explain a scientific concept or historical event. Characters can be imported.
	VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Users can doodle while commenting, use multiple identities, and pick which comments are shown through moderation. VoiceThreads can even be embedded to show and receive comments on other web sites and exported to MP3 players or DVDs to play as archival movies.

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Internet Tutorials

	Excel Modules, from Internet 4 Classrooms, contains modules and links for explaining Microsoft Excel.
	Find Sounds allows you to search the web for sound clips that can be downloaded.
	Whether you’re new to the computer, returning for review, or want to use technology to enhance your skills, GCFLearnFree.org has something for you.
	Online Tutorials contains about 125 interactive Web "min-movies" for teaching yourself and others how to use Microsoft products.
	Teachnology provides Web Quest generators that allow you to create an original Web Quest assignment by filling out the simple Web-based form. Print out the finished assignment when you are finished.
	Techtorials Archive, from Education World, comes this great site of links to tutorials for all kinds of technology including Excel, Word, blogs, computer maintenance, email, mail merge, Power Point, web design, professional curriculum and development, and much more.
	Tech Trekers is a great site for teachers. It includes sites from early elementary to high school, free stuff for teachers, history, math, and science sites, simulation sites, scavenger hunts, thematic units, virtual field trips, web quests, Power Point ideas, rubrics, and web page tools. Check it out!

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Keyboarding

		Keyboarding Resources offers help to teachers for instruction in keyboarding.
		The award-winning online typing competition, TypeRacer, allows students to race each-other by typing quotes from books, movies, and songs. It is the first multi player typing game on the web .
		TypingWeb is a free online typing tutor and keyboarding tutorial for typists of all ages. All skill levels will benefit from TypingWeb's free keyboarding lessons.

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Miscellaneous

		FindIcons.com is an icon search engine helps you find free icons. We have the largest searchable free icons database in the world (Found somewhere with more icons than us? Let us know!) and both a sophisticated search filtering and result matching system make it possible for you to get an icon you need for every design task.
		Home to one of the largest free information databases online, ibiblio.org has something for everyone. Visitors can browse through their eclectic collections catalog.
		Icon finder provides high quality icons for web designers and developers in an easy and efficient way. Search through 155,340 icons or browse 753 icon sets. After you find your graphic, you can choose the background color. If you choose the middle color, gray, your background will be transparent. No more annoying white backgrounds.
		Live Binders allows you to collect your resources, organize them neatly and easily and present them with pride. Best of all it is free!
		Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art – and share your creations on the web. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.
		Simple Booklet is a new service offering free online booklet creation and publishing. To create a book using Simple Booklet just sign-up for a free account and click create. Select the layout template that suits your needs. To add content click anywhere on the blank canvas and a menu of options will appear. You can add text, images, audio files, videos, and links to each page of your booklet. Each page of your Simple Booklet can have multiple elements on it. To include videos you can upload your own files or select from a variety of provides including SchoolTube, TeacherTube, YouTube, and others. To add audio to your pages you can upload your own files or again select from the online hosts Last.fm, Sound Cloud, or Mix Cloud. When you're done building pages in your Simple Booklet you can share it online by embedding it into a webpage or you can share the unique link generated for your booklet.
		Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning tag cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text.
		Teq is the nation’s largest provider of interactive classroom technology and support services. We offer educators the complete technology solution, from SMART products and digital content to installation services and technical support. In addition, our training division offers a variety of Professional Development services designed to help schools make the most of their technology purchase.
		Vocaroo is a free service that allows users to create audio recordings without the need to install any software. You don't even have to create an account to use Vocaroo. All you need to provide is a microphone. To create a recording just go to Vocaroo.com, click record, grant Vocaroo access to your mic, and start talking. After completing your recording, Vocaroo gives you the choice to publish it or to scrap it and try again.

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Podcasting

	LearnOutLoud.com is your one-stop destination for audio and video learning . Browse over 20,000 educational audio books , MP3 downloads , podcasts , and videos.
	Students and teachers from all over the world are learning from audio and video programs on desktop computers, laptops, iPods, netbooks, and other devices. Hundreds of free educational programs are available online. Here are some examples from Podcasting: Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, English Idioms and Slang, Storynory: Free Audio Stories for Kids, MathGrad: Everyday Mathematics Explained, and First Amendment Minute .
	Podbean is a Podcast Publishing and Social Subscribing site. This is an ultra simple podcast publishing solution and publishing your own podcast is fast, easy and free.

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Power Point

	Power Point for the Classroom, from Internet 4 Classrooms, has has everything you need to know about Power Point.
	Here are some tutorials to get you started in Power Point presentations in your classroom: creating slides, adding sound, adding images, and more.
	Presentation Magazine offers help with presentations, speeches and power points
	Prezi moves beyond Power Point. It is creative presentation. You can work with infinite spaces with no ties to sequence of slides and is very easy to use. It is excellent for showing relation and context, just like on a map. Finally, Prezi allows you to have open ended discussions with audience and add comments live.

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SMART Boards

		Dabbleboard is an online collaboration application that’s centered around the whiteboard. With a new type of drawing interface that's actually easy and fun to use, Dabbleboard gets out of your way and just lets you draw.
		Interactive Whiteboards is a web quest that helps you use whiteboards in the classroom.
		Scrib Link is your online whiteboard.
		Scribblar offers simple, effective online collaboration with a multi-user whiteboard, live audio, image collaboration, text-chat and more.
		SMART Board Tools provides the tools for you to use a SMART Board in your classroom.
		SMART Technologies is the first searchable database of lesson activities for interactive whiteboards.

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Surveys

	AnswerGarden is a new minimalist ic feedback tool. Use it as a tool for online brainstorming or embed it on your web site or blog as a poll or guest book .
	Formsite is an HTML form builder. Their drag and 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, they provide the functionality to email, analyze, share, and download your data .
	MyStudiyo offers a rich free solution to create online quizzes in minutes. You can embed a great looking quiz widget in any web site or blog without programming.
	Polldaddy is robust survey software that feeds the data you collect into powerful reporting systems to help you make the most informed decisions you can.
	Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, television, print — anywhere. It can help you to raise money by letting people pledge via text messaging.
	Response O Matic has an easy-to-use Form Wizard that lets you choose which kind of input fields you want to add to your form. Simply choose the kind of field you want and type in a label for your field. You can even specify whether your field should be a required field or not. Keep adding as many fields as you like! After you've added all your fields, simply save your form and let Response-o-matic automatically generate the HTML code for you. Simply copy and paste the HTML code into your web page and upload it to your server. Your form is ready to use!
	Survey Monkey is a free online survey software & questionnaire tool. You can create and publish online surveys in minutes, and view results graphically and in real time.
	Wiffiti publishes real time messages to screens in thousands of locations from jumbotrons to jukeboxes, bars to bowling alleys and cafes to colleges. You can interact with Wiffiti from your mobile phone or the web.

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Technology Infusion

	Computer Lab Favorites contains all the quick, compelling one-session activities you need to incorporate interactive learning and technology into your curriculum. Each activity requires no prep and can be completed in 15-30 minutes .
	Glogster EDU is the leading global education platform for the creative expression of knowledge and skills in the classroom and beyond. They empower educators and students with the technology to create GLOGS - online multimedia posters - with text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments and more.
	Enabled by Web 2.0 tools, GoogleTreks™ allows teachers and students to synthesize information in one easy-to-use map that places text, pictures, audio files, video files, and much more in one central location.
	At kitZu, you will find a collection of free, educational, copyright-friendly media resources. Students and teachers around the world can access pre-made collections, or "kits," of various digital assets - still images, background music, narratives, video and text. Each kit is built around a common theme, or curricular topic . A digital kit is meant to provide students with the building blocks necessary to build video and multimedia projects that tell a story and demonstrate learning. A kit can be made up of: photos, illustrations, animations, video clips, audio clips and documents.
	The Internet 4 Classrooms site helps teachers use the internet effectively
	Screencast-O-Matic is the original online screen recorder for creating screen capture video recordings (aka screencasts) with free hosting all from your browser with no install! It includes step by step screen shots.
	The Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education is an online resource that allows SITE and other educators to submit, view and discuss educational digital videos in a variety of content areas.
	Tammy's Technology Tips for Teachers provides fantastic ideas for technology integration.
	Tapped In allows K-12 teachers, librarians, administrators, and professional development staff, as well as other educators to gather here to learn, collaborate, share, and support one another.
	Twiddla is a web-based meeting playground. Not only is it a fun way to swap ideas about a web site or image, it’s incredibly useful as well and it’s free .
	Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog, profile, and in email messages.
	Vuvox is a dynamic media creation suite that enables everyone to easily turn their photos, videos, text and audio clips into interactive stories. A collage can be published, embedded, and syndicated into any web site, blog or social networking site.
	Use Yodio to add your stories to your photos or presentations, and share these narrated photos with your friends and colleagues.
	Zoto is a place where you can upload and share media online quickly and easily.

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Using the Internet Safely

	Cyber Smart Curriculum is provided by Common Sense Media. They offer a free K-8 curriculum empowering students to use the internet safely, responsibly and effectively.
	GetNetWise is a public service brought to you by Internet industry corporations and public interest organizations to help ensure that Internet users have safe, constructive, and educational or entertaining online experiences.

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Videos

		ABC News Videos include all different facets of news including personal opinions and advertisements.
		American Memory: Motion Pictures contains a collection of audio, video, and photos, etc. that “document the American experience.” The collections of the Library of Congress serve as a public resource on the history of American culture.
		Anneberg Teacher Resources contains streaming videos on all subject areas; you must register for an account to view materials and you may only stream videos, not download them but they are all free.
		The Archaeology Channel provides streaming video to explore cultural heritage and archaeology.
		This site is the BBC’s worldwide link to news, video, and audio in 33 different languages. News for each includes major headlines, weather, and radio shows.
		‘Best Tech Videos’ is a user driven social content web site dedicated to finding the best educational videos for developers, designers, managers and other people in IT.
		Biointeractive has multiple resource types for biology, some controversial, includes “ask a scientist, videos, lectures, virtual labs and more.
		CBS’s News Video home includes links to most CBS news shows, includes all different facets of news including personal opinions and advertisements.
		C-SPAN American Writers II explores American history through the lives and works of American writers who have influenced the course of our nation
		The C-Span Video Library is a digital archive of C - SPAN video.
		The CNN Video Almanac provides video resources for significant U.S. and world events in the 80’s and 90’s.
		Ease History has historical videos and photographs, and includes historical events, campaign ads, core values, and much more!
		Euronews, the European news channel, includes all different facets of news including personal opinions and advertisements. It also includes news in different languages.
		The films at Explore profile issues facing the environment, education, human rights, public health, philosophy, animal welfare, spirituality, and disabilities. The lesson plans accompanying Explore’s films are written for use in the K – 12 classroom and are connected to grade level national standards.
		Fox network's news and video, includes all different facets of news including personal opinions and advertisements.
		Graspr is an online video community that offers high quality instructional content on a wide range of topics. Our mission is to make the world a smarter place by bringing together people who possess different kinds of expertise, and helping them share what they know with others. We want to make knowledge more accessible, and thus empower users to explore new interests, cultivate new skills, and become even more proficient in the subjects they know well.
		The History Channel contains a large collection of excellent videos.
		Msnbc.com is a leader in breaking news, video and original journalism. Stay current with daily news updates in health, entertainment.
		At the NASA Multimedia Archive you can watch, download or share the latest NASA videos, including launches and landings, mission operations, science updates and animations.
		NASA Television (NTV) is a resource designed to provide real-time coverage of Agency activities and missions as well as providing resource video to the news. It also has multimedia resources for earth-space science; provides resources for research and presentation on projects and additional resources to understand course content.
		View hundreds of free videos from National Geographic, featuring animal videos, weather videos, nature videos, world music videos and other popular areas.
		PBS Newshour provides analysis, background reports and news updates with Jim Lehrer putting the day's news in context.
		At PBS Video you can watch award-winning national programming and locally produced shows. Catch up on the episodes you may have missed and watch your favorite, full length shows .
		The Prelinger Collection contains free movies, films, and videos of all genres; classic features and shorts, Mosaics, Middle East News, and more.
		SitePoint has gathered up over 30 of the best resources online for audio, video, images and more for finding just the perfect Creative Commons licensed item for use in your next project.
		Teacher Tube is an online community for sharing instructional videos.
		Watch free Documentaries Online at Top Documentary Films. The site includes annotated links to online documentaries on a wide variety of topics, including September 11, biographies, the supernatural, sports, technology, conspiracies, wildlife, and more.
		The Travel Film Archive is a collection of hundreds of travel films recorded between 1900 and 1970. The films were originally recorded to promote various places around the world as tourist destinations. In the archives you will find films about US National Parks, cities across the globe, and cultural events from around the world. The films are a mix of color and black & white footage. The earliest footage is silent while the later footage is narrated. You can view the films on The Travel Film Archive site or on The Travel Film Archive YouTube channel.
		Watch Know offers videos for kids to learn from. It was developed by a consortium including Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger.

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Web 2.0

	Web 2.0 from Ajax Projects is your guide to the read/write internet that allows users to manipulate, share and create content.
	Bib Me is a web-based bibliography tool with a streamlined automated interface to create a properly formatted bibliography.
	Classroom 2.0 is a free, community supported network for those interested in Web2.0 and collaborative technologies in education.
	Go2Web20 helps you find all online tools and applications on one page. You can obtain a short description, compare, read reviews, and see what people are saying about each one on the web,
	Google for Educators offers all kinds of neat tools to help you in the classroom including tips posters at this site.
	HandBrake is an open source, GPL-licensed, multi platform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows.
	Listio is a community directory of web 2.0 applications, tools and services.
	Media Converter allows you to convert your audio and video files from your hard disk, by url/stream (http,ftp,mms,rtsp) or directly from web sites like Facebook or Youtube.
	Pageflakes is a personalized desktop that allows users to set up their favorite Internet applications.
	With Sitemark you can save, organize, share and discover your favorite web sites. You instantly get a thumbnail preview of your favorite web sites and you can save your favorite web sites and share them with your friends. In addition you can access your favorite web sites from anywhere at any time, view your favorite web sites in 4 different ways and import your favorites/bookmarks from any browser.
	Technorati provides real-time search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword. It also provides popularity indexes.
	Weblist allows you to create a quick and easy list of internet sites for students to access. Just enter the urls and weblist creates a page with thumbnails for all the sites.