Tools and Resources for Remarkable Explanations Sometimes, words are not enough. To grab an audience’s attention and make an explanation remarkable, explainers need ways to stand-out, to be interesting. Thankfully there are a growing number of resources that can help explainers turn their ideas into experiences that captivate audiences. I've listed a few below. (Note: I am not affiliated with the services below and receive no compensation from them). While you're thinking about these resources, consider this... Dan Roam is known for a series of books that focus on the use of simple drawings to understand and solve problems. Nancy Duarte and her company, Duarte Design, is known around the world for designing amazing and effective presentations. Design is one of Duarte’s core skills and the company recently created a new "visualization system" that gives anyone the ability to browse, purchase and download awesome looking graphs and diagrams for US$0.99 a piece. You may have seen an Xtranormal animation.
9 Data Visualization Tools for Librarians and Educators Data visualization and infographics tools are a great way to keep students and readers engaged. Here are ten free applications which will enable you to create your own infographics, maps, graphs, charts, and diagrams: Creately The free version of Creately enables users to design and store 5 diagrams which can include Venn diagrams, UI & Web mockups, Flowcharts, Organizational charts, UML diagrams, Mind maps, Network plans, SWOT analysis, Value stream maps, TQM diagrams and more. Stat Planet Used by the UN, NASA, and many Fortune 500 companies, Stat Planet will let you create customizable, interactive maps or graphs with data you import. Gunn Map 2 Gunn Map 2 is a completely online application which also lets you create customizable maps with your own data. Many Eyes Gliffy Wordle - Create beautiful and fully customizable word clouds with this free tool. Instantly create a word cloud for your blog or website by entering the RSS feed!
5 Interesting Virtual Museums and Activities for Students As field trip budgets are increasingly trimmed at schools everywhere, teachers will need to find some alternative virtual activities for students. Here are five museums that offer excellent virtual tours and activities for students. The Vatican Museums website hosts a fairly detailed virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel. In addition to the tour of the Sistine Chapel the Vatican Museums host virtual tours of five other places and exhibits. The European Virtual Museum is the product of collaboration between twenty-seven European museums. Tenement Museum is a resource for US History teachers that can best be described as an interactive virtual museum. The JFK Presidential Library and Museum website has four interactive exhibits for learning about John F. The White House Diary is an interactive flipbook of Kennedy's schedule while in office. The JFK Timeline is an interactive timeline Kennedy's presidency.
instaGrok | A new way to learn Great Infographic Making Tools for Teachers 1- Visual.ly This is my favorite tool. It helps you easily create awesome infographics using pre-designed templates. It also lets you create an infographic out of any Twitter Hashtag provided you are signed in which you can do using your Twitter account. 2-Easel.ly This is another great web tool to create infographics. 3-PiktoChart I love PiktoChart and I have used it a couple of times and found it really great. 4- Infogr.am Infogr.am is an easy to use online service that lets you create, share, and discover infographics and online charts.It is also very easy to use, you can select a pre-designed template, add charts, videos and maps and within a few clicks your template is ready to go viral. Other infographic creation tools you might want to try :
Seven Whiteboard Tools for Teachers & Students Whiteboard apps on tablets and in your web browser can be great for diagraming and explaining concepts. Here are seven good options for creating diagrams and other drawings on your iPad, on your Android tablet, or in your web browser. Aww App is a super simple browser-based application for creating drawings. Draw It Live is a nice little website that offers a free space for you to instantly create a collaborative whiteboard to use with anyone you like. FlockDraw is a simple service that allows people to quickly and easily collaborate on the creation of a drawing. SyncSpace is a whiteboard app available for iPads and Android tablets. Educreations is a new iPad app that turns your iPad into a whiteboard. Knowmia is a website and an iPad app for creating, sharing, and viewing video lessons. ShowMe is a free iPad app for creating whiteboard videos.
CoSketch.com - Online Whiteboard Collaboration How to Get Started With Infographics Media and publishing professionals know that infographics are hugely popular, and are more likely to be shared via social media than a standard blog post or article. By combining images with data, infographics get much more mileage than text or graphics alone. You can use them for news, presentations, or press releases on your company blog or website to attract publicity and show off your expertise. Companies without a graphic designer on board or on budget couldn't easily take advantage of infographics in the past. Choose Your Graphics and Data Wisely Every business holds expertise in something, and that specialized knowledge can make for an interesting piece. You'll want to plan out your infographic much like you would plan out a website, using wireframes or another method to map out exactly what it's going to look like and how the information will be presented. Data from Google Looking for ideas about the types of data you want to detail in an infographic? Templates and Icons
Animated Science Lessons for Children The Children's University of Manchester has great collections of animated lessons covering seven science subjects for students of early elementary/ primary school age. The lessons cover The Body and Medicine, Energy and Environment, Earth and Beyond, Teeth and Eating, Micro-organisms, The Brain, and Exercise. For each science subject covered by The Children's University of Manchester there is an introduction followed by seven to ten interactive animations. For example, in The Earth and Beyond students can see how the position of the sun affects the length of shadows. Students can advance the sun through the sky. As they advance the sun they can use a ruler to measure the lengths of the shadows that they create. Applications for Education The Children's University of Manchester science lessons could be good place to find supplementary interactive materials for your elementary school science lessons.
Tagxedo - Word Cloud with Styles Eight Free tools for Teachers to Make Awesome Infographics 1- Easel.ly This is a great tool that allows users to create visually rich infographics from pre-designed themes. It is very easy to use and only drag and drop. It actually supports Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. 2- Stat Planet This one here allows users to create amazing visualisations and share them with others. It can be used either within your browser or download the software for free. 3- Hohli This is an awesome chart maker. 4- Creately This is also a great tool in creating diagrams and flow charts. 5- Many Eyes This is one of the easiest of them all. 6- Wordle This is a text based visualisation tool. 7- Tableau This works just on Windows. 8- Inkspace This is also a free infographic creation tool.
Scribblar - Free Interactive Online Whiteboard Cool Infographics - Blog 40+ Tools to Create Infographics with Your Students Here is a comprehensive list of some very good tools for making infographics. The list features more than 40 applications so you have a wide variety of options to choose from.While some of these tools are pretty basic and you can use them without any complications, others do require some advanced tech knowledge and design know-how. As a teacher and educator, my favourite infographic making tools are Google Draw and Pictochart. Also bear in mind that most of these tools require a sign-up and some of them are fremium: they have, besides the basic free version, a pro version that offers more advanced features.