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Trading Card Creator. The Trading Card tool gives students an alternative way to demonstrate their literacy knowledge and skill when writing about popular culture texts or real world examples. This interactive allows students to create their own trading card about a real or fictional person, place, object, event, or abstract concept. These cards are can be used with any type of book students are reading or subjects that they are studying, and make for an excellent prewriting exercise for students who are writing narrative stories and need to consider characters, setting, and plot. Specific prompts guide student through the various types of cards, expanding students' thinking from the basic information and description of the topic to making personal connections to the subject.

The save capability gives students a way to work on a draft of their card and come back to it to rework and revise as necessary, and to save their finished product to share with friends and family. Back to top. Cooltoolsforschools - home. 9 sources of news for kids that you may not know about.

Newspapers have always been an excellent educational resource for teachers. Now with the Common Core's focus on reading non-fiction material, they are more valuable than ever. Many of the classrooms that I have visited have been using either Time for Kids or CNN Students News and with good reason as both are terrific resources. Below are nine additional websites to consider when incorporating news into the classroom. NewselaNewsela is an awesome site that I previously shared and it helps students develop close reading and critical thinking skills by offering current event articles with varying levels of text complexity.

Lexile levels of an article range from 2nd grade up to 12th grade which allows for differentiation within the same classroom. The articles are categorized by war/peace, science, kids, money, law, health and arts. Many of the articles are accompanied by quizzes that provide quick feedback. Dogo News is a current events website designed for kids and teachers. 17 Free Tools for Creating Screen Capture Images and Videos. When you're trying to teach people how to do something new on their computers having screencast videos or annotated screen capture images can be invaluable to you and the people you're trying to help. Here are some free tools that you can use to create screen capture videos and images. Vessenger, producers of a group messaging system, offers a free program for capturing and annotating images on your computer screen. The free program, called Snaplr, is available for Windows and Mac.

With Snaplr installed you can capture all or part of your screen. Snaplr's annotation tools include text boxes, highlighting, and free-hand drawing tools. When you've finished creating your annotated screen capture you can save it as a PNG file or attach it to an email message in Outlook. Using the print screen key on your PC or "command+shift+4" on your Mac are easy ways to create a screen capture.

Monosnap is a new, free screen capture tool for Mac and Windows. Capturing and Annotating Your iPad's Screen. Plagiarism Checker - the most accurate and absolutely FREE! Try now! Use Hello Sign to Electronically Sign Documents. Great Tech Tools. Every year, so many new technology tools for teachers are launched into the market that it can be nearly impossible to keep up with them all. In order to keep you up-to-date with the latest and greatest educational tech tools, our team of edtech specialists has put together this list of the best edtech resources and technology tools for teachers.

Clicking on the links below will take you to hundreds of apps, websites, extensions, and more. Whether you're looking for a specific tech tool or just trying to find something new and interesting for your class, we encourage you to browse around all of the different categories to see how many wonderful resources are available for your students. Also, if you have a tool that you'd like to see added to the list, please feel free to contact us at admin@edtechteacher.org. The following technology tools for teachers have been organized by academic subjects, topics, and learning activity. Best of 2011 So Far - Flubaroo. 15 Free Awesome Drawing and Painting Tools for Teachers and Students.

1- Sketchfu This is a great free web tool that allows users to easily draw and create sketches and share them with others. It requires a sign up. 2- Sketchpad Sketchpad is a cool platform that you can use to make awesome drawings using text and a wide range of colours and patterns. 3- Comics This is another cool website that lets users draw comics and share them with others. 4- Quickmaps Quickmaps allows users to draw a quick map. 5- Tux Paint This is a free drawing program for children ages 3 to 12. 6- Drawing Game Maker This is a free drawing program for children with many nice options. 7- Livebrush Livebrush is a drawing application. 8- FlockDraw FlockDraw is a free to use online whiteboard based painting and drawing tool. 9- DoInk DoInk is a simple and friendly vector editor that lets users create flash-style animations. 10- Chogger Chogger is simple platform where you can use different tools to create awesome drawings. 11- Colour Lovers 12- Psyko Paint 13- Kerproof 14- Odosketch 15- Pencil.

Twtpoll - From Simple Twitter Polls to Powerful Web Surveys. Social Media Feedback Tool. Top 13 Web 2.0 Tools for Classrooms. Every day in my K-8 tech classes, I use a variety of cloud-based tools to enhance the learning experience for my students. There are more of these ‘Web 2.0′ tools than I can keep up with, but when you teach tech or coordinate technology for your school, ‘keeping up’ is part of your job. Here’s how I determine which of these hundreds (thousands?) Of tools are student-ready: Before I introduce a tool to my class, I try it myself. If a tool passes these two tests, I try it in class. Here’s my list of 2011 favorites that have run that gauntlet: BigHugeLabs–create trading cards, posters, puzzles, mosaics using the student’s own images. Here are a few more great ones that I didn’t consider in my Top 13 because most educators already know about them: Edmodo–a micro-blogging service (like Twitter) for teachers and students.

Should be on the list, but I’ve had too many problems either in their set-up or stability of their platform: Follow me Like this: Like Loading... Related. 86 Productivity Tricks, Tips, and Apps. I collect productivity books, tips, and ideas. Going through my bookmarks on Diigo, I realized I had some great stuff in here that I still use and ponder. In this "best of" post, I'm sharing some of the best productivity tips, tricks, and apps for those of you who are trying to get the most out of every moment. This website lets you mashup and create new feeds from existing ones. Take some time to manipulate feeds into smaller ones and you'll be glad you did. A service that filters feeds for certain keywords. This Feed flitering service will pull out spam and profanity - great to try for those who are behind firewalls and concerned about inappropriate content getting through. Plan your routines now for next school year! If you want to be more productive, set your Chrome bookmarks to sync across computers using your Google account.

This is a very long and peppered with the occasional expletive, however, habits are VITAL. If you have an iPhone, Camera+ is the best way to take photos. Quikmaps.com :: maps for the masses. EdTech: 100 Tech Tools for Teachers and Students. This post is #12 in DailyTekk’s famous Top 100 series which explores the best startups, gadgets, apps, websites and services in a given category. Total items listed: 104. Time to compile: 8+ hours. Follow @DailyTekk on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss a week! This post is quite a departure from last week’s subject: 100 Tools to Develop the Next Killer iOS or Android App. So here’s what I’ve got for all you educators our there: some random and cool EduTech tools, tech tools for teachers and students, ways to integrate mobile devices into the classroom, social learning tools, elearning and online learning resources and finally some test prep, textbook, educational gaming and a few other random resources.

Actually, this post has been a long time coming. I know there are tons of education technology resources out there so if I missed something good, maybe a favorite of yours or something that cropped up after I created this list, leave me a comment to let me know so I can get it added. BigHugeLabs: Do fun stuff with your photos. Clay Yourself! | A Hotels.com Production. Embedit.in — Any file, in your website. Collaborate | Online Collaboration Software for Engaging, Collaborative Learning. 10 Great Tools for Tech Savvy Teachers. Prezi A fantastic tool to liven up presentations, Prezi does away with traditional, crowded slides by allowing you to zoom in and out, so you can create an entire presentation on one slide and guide your audience through it step-by-step.

Zoom in to the details, but zoom out to show how your ideas fit together as a whole. Edmodo Edmodo turns your classroom into an online community by providing you with a secure online social learning environment. That Quiz A great, simple-to-use online tool for creating your own quizzes on the topics your students are working on. Crossword Puzzle Maker A fantastic, fun resource to engage your class; particularly useful with language, vocabulary and spelling or complex definitions for subjects like science. Doink A simple, online program for creating your own animations. Flashcard DB Free online tool for making your own flashcards, which students can then use in an online test format. Collaborize Classroom Certificate Street Simple Booklet Think Quest. Pocket (Formerly Read It Later) Text Message (SMS) Polls and Voting, Audience Response System.

16 Ways Educators Use Pinterest. Creative Commons. Comment on, edit, and fill PDF files, Word documents, images and more | Crocodoc. Save paper & ink printing only what you want « PrintWhatYouLike.com. Zamzar - convert document, eBook, image, audio and video - free online file conversion. How to Do 11 Techy Things In Your Classroom.