7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers The possibilities for social media tools in the classroom are vast. In the hands of the right teacher, they can be used to engage students in creative ways, encourage collaboration and inspire discussion among even soft-spoken students. But we've already made our case for why teachers should consider using social media in their classrooms. What about the how? Even when people say they want to incorporate social media, they don't always know the best ways to do so. It's especially daunting when those efforts can affect the education of your students. To help, we've collected seven of the the best classroom tools for incorporating social media into your lesson plans. EDU 2.0 is a lot like online course management systems Blackboard and Moodle, but with a couple of distinct advantages. The founder of software company The Mind Electric, who has roots in education, self-funded the development of EDU 2.0 in what the site describes as a "labor of love." 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
100 Incredibly Useful YouTube Channels for Teachers | Online College Courses YouTube has earned a reputation for featuring brain cell-slaughtering fare such as the truly abysmal Fred and playing host to the some of the most depressingly stupid comments this side of Yahoo! News. But for every participant liberally dishing out misspelled racist, sexist and homophobic talking points, there is at least one whose channel genuinely offers something provocative and educational. Multidisciplinary and General Education Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Technology Social Sciences, History and World Issues BarackObama.com: Love him or hate him, Barack Obama is still America’s president. Visual, Performing and Liberal Arts
Three Ways to Cut, Mix, & Mash YouTube Videos This post was inspired by a request from a reader for a tool that can be used to mash-up YouTube clips. YouTube is full of great content that can be useful in the classroom (YouTube is also full of nonsense that causes schools to block it). Sometimes you only need to show a part of a video to illustrate a point. Other times it could be useful to string together a series of videos. The following tools can be used to cut, mix, and mash-up YouTube clips. Disclaimer: Some of these tools might be interpreted as a violation of YouTube's terms of service. TubeChop gives you the ability to clip a section from any YouTube video and share it. Splicd is a service that lets users select and share a segment of a YouTube video. If you made mix tapes in the 80's, the concept of Drag On Tape will be familiar to you.
Creating Blogs and Websites This page is where you can find resources related to my presentations about creating effective blogs and websites to complement instruction. How to create a Blogger blog. How to turn on comment moderation in Blogger. How to add or subtract contributors to your Blogger blog. How to create an Edublogs blog. How to create a Wordpress.com blog. How to create a Posterous blog. The Basics of Creating and Editing a Wikispaces Wiki.More, including a video tutorial, about using Wikispaces. Creating a Google Sites website. Ten Options for Creating Websites. Yola (formerly Synthasite) is the tool that I am currently using to build websites for my department and other departments in my high school. Webs (formerly Free Webs) is another service that I have first-hand experience with in a school setting because my girlfriend (a teacher in another school district) uses it for her classes. Snap Pages provides a free service as well as a premium service for creating your custom website.
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