The Best Web Tools for Students to Create Visually Powerful Digital Resumes and Portfolios April 9, 2014 I am sharing with you some wonderful web tools that you and your students can use to showcase your work and create great digital portfolios. 1- About.me About.me is a great web tool that allows you to create a digital page where you can highlight your achievements and assets and show people and potential job recruiters your strengths and academic accomplishments. 2- Visualize Visualize.me allows you to create a one page infographic resume based on the data imported from your LinkedIn account. 3- LinkedIn Portfolio Feature A few months ago, the popular professional networking website LinkedIn added a portfolio feature to user profiles.This new feature allows users to showcase their unique professional story using rich, visual content on their LinkedIn profiles. 4- Enthuse.me Enthuse.me is a simple, elegant service that lets you showcase your expertise in the most effective way – by cutting out the noise and hand-picking the best examples of your work, knowledge or passion.
3 Good Calendar Tools for Teachers Do you need a reliable and neat calendar where you can organize your upcoming tasks and keep track of all your important events in one place ? The tools below are probably what you are looking for. There are in fact a wide variety of online task management tools and most of them are free but only few are really worth the try. I have been experimenting with some of these tools and have found that the ones below perform better. 1- Assign A Day Assign-A-Day is a free tool designed to enhance teacher and student communication through an online teacher-managed calendar. 2- Google Calendar Google Calendar sets the standard for drag-and-drop editing inside of its uncluttered interface. 3- Short Calendar This is one the simplest calendar tools out there on the net.
100 Of The Best Educational Games For iPad 100 Of The Best Educational Games For iPad For some reason, educational games are getting an increasingly bad rap. Educators are questioning their merits on social media. Part of this could be over-inflated expectations. And if we use them as babysitters–and then soothe ourselves by downloading literacy apps–we’ve also got a problem. But if you’re using educational games as a part of an intentionally-designed, open-ended, or even self-directed learning experience, then they suddenly make more sense. Just know what the app “teaches,” and what it doesn’t. 100 Of The Best Educational Games For iPad New- Portfoliogen Allows You to Create and Download Your Portfolios in PDF Format October, 2014Portfoliogen is a great web tool for teachers. It allows teachers to create their own customized portfolio webpage. This means that you have a user friendly platform designed specifically to host and organize all your materials into one place. You can also share your portfolio with your colleagues and peers using the generated URL. Some of features of PortfoliogenHere is a list of the main features that Portfoliogen offers to its users :It is freeIt is easy and simple to useIt lets users create Portfolio onlineIt generates a personal URL for each portfolio createdIt lets users post information, certifications, work related photos and many moreIt allows users to upload documents and add work related links to use useful websitesUsers can customize the design and layout of their webpageToday, Portfoliogen.com has launched a new feature allowing members to download their content and show their artifacts locally in a variety of formats including PDF, PowerPoint, and Flash.
Virtual Classroom Tool Design Basics: Whiteboards This is the fourth post in a series of seven titled Virtual Classroom Tool Design Basics: A Virtual Engagement Primer. Click here to start reading at the beginning of the series. Virtual training design doesn't need to be difficult - but designers do need a working knowledge of the features each virtual classroom tool provides. In this blog series, Virtual Classroom Tool Design Basics, I'll be sharing high-level summaries of virtual classroom tools, including chat, breakout rooms, whiteboards, application sharing, synchronized web browsing, and survey and feedback tools. If you are an experienced virtual classroom designer, please build on the basics and share your expertise. Whiteboards The most commonly used tool in the virtual classroom is the whiteboard, where slides and documents are shared as if they were flipcharts in a traditional setting. Facilitators use whiteboards to record participants’ comments, to emphasize important points, and to write exercise instructions. How?
10 tricks for innovative student/teacher presentations We’ve all seen presentations — from students and from colleagues — that leave a lot to be desired. There’s the one where the presenter wants to play with all the bells and whistles in the presentation, so we get different transitions, different fonts, different sound effects. There’s the one with too much information on the slide. These are the ones where it would take you longer to read the slides than time allotted for the presentation. Then there are the great ones. As technology improves and developers come up with new tools for student and teacher presenters, our options continue to grow. Here are 10 tricks to improve presentations by students and teachers without getting in the way of the message: An Exam Time mind map 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. A list of screenshot shortcuts from Wikipedia 6. TechSmith’s Snagit is a great (but paid) tool for capturing images.Snagit has a free Chrome extension.Google Chrome has a screen capture extension that works well, too. 7. 8. 9. 10. Related February 2, 2015
5 Great Tools for publishing Students Works March 2, 2014 Writing workshop as an approach to teaching writing has been around for more than 30 years now, exactly since the publication of "The Art of Teaching Writing" by Lucy Calkins and "In The Middle" by Nancie Atwell. Other proponents of this approach include celebrated scholars such as Donald Murray, Donald Graves, Katie Wood Ray, Jim burke, Ralph Fetcher, penny Kittle. Writing workshop provides a theoretically sound and pedagogically useful model for writing instruction within out classrooms. The main emphasis of this approach is on "teaching the writer then the writing". Writing workshop relies on a set of core principles and one of these principles is about giving students the chance to publish and share their works with others. 1- Widbook This is a wonderful web tool that allows you to easily create and publish e-books. 2- Blogs Blogs are another option for students to use to share their writing. 3- Wikis 4- Issuu 5- Slideshare
5 typos qui imitent l’écriture manuscrite – Les Outils Tice Que ce soit pour un affichage pour la classe, pour un travail artistique ou une invitation, on est parfois à la recherche d’une typographie un peu originale. En voici cinq. Cinq typos qui imitent l’écriture manuscrite. Cinq typos que je trouve particulièrement jolies et qui ont l’avantage d’être gratuites pour une utilisation en classe. Vous pourrez les télécharger en allant sur la page de leurs auteurs. MyghtType Une typo particulièrement élégante pour de beaux titres en grandes lettres. Cavorting Un petit air d’aquarelle pour cette belle typo qui joue avec les couleurs. Arabella Une typo façon calligraphie très originale. Tragic Marker Une police qui imite à la perfection une écriture manuscrite faite au marqueur ou au gros feutre. Skrawk Serif Encore une jolie typo qui imite une écriture manuscrite faite au crayon ou au feutre fin. Voilà pour ces cinq coups de coeur personnels. Sur le même thème
10 Web Tools Every Digital Classroom should Have Whether you like it or not, part of your classroom is turning digital. The digital component is an essential part of the 21st century classroom and will very soon take the lion share inside it. Our students are heavily dependent on digital media to communicate, collaborate, socialize and share resources. In this regard, and from my four years experience in educational blogging, I have curated a list of some necessary web tools every teacher should , if not try them, then at least know about them. 1- Google Docs/ Drive This is a must have tool for every teacher. 2- Evernote One of the best things you can do with Evernote is to take notes and render them accessible across different devices including phones, tablets, and computers. 3- Dropbox As a teacher you can use Dropbox to upload your files and PDFs and share documents and images with your students. 4- Edmodo Edmodo lets you create your own teacher blog as well as students blogs. 5- Twitter 6- Prezi 7- YouTube Editor 8- Engrade 9- ClassDojo
Plant a Question, Grow Answers! Generate a live word cloud with your audience. Topic (required) Type the topic of your new AnswerGarden. This can be a question or a topic, such as: "What do you think of my website?" More options (optional) For your convenience, you can change the following settings for your new AnswerGarden. If you're using AnswerGarden in the classroom, we recommend that you provide a password, so that you can moderate the contents during the session. AnswerGarden Mode In Classroom Mode respondents can submit an unlimited number of answers, but may only submit each answer once. Answer Length You can set the answer length to 20 or 40 characters. Admin Password You can enter a password that enables you to edit this AnswerGarden (such as the topic, unwanted answers and mode) afterwards. Show password Reminder Email Enter an email address and you'll receive an email containing the AnswerGarden link and admin password. It's ok to send me very occasional news about AnswerGarden. Spam Filter Case Example: Hello and hello are grouped as hello.
5 Excellent Web Tools to Teach Collaborative Writing Collaborative writing is a great way to to teach students the writing skill while enjoying it. Now that technology and web 2.0 tools are ubiquitous, you can use a plethora of awesome tools to enhance collaborative writing in your class. Natalia et al. paper on collaborative writing sheds some light on the importance of this skill for students: In the classroom, collaborative writing increases student participation, facilitates discussion of readings and enhances critical thinking (Chan, 1996). It encourages students to continually assess their own performance and class work as well as that of their peers (Jacobsen and Mueller, 1998).Students learn to clearly express ideas through writing . Here some of the web tools to encourage and foster collaborative writing : This my number one tool for writing collaboratively. This is another awesome web tool that allows people to work on the same document simultaneously. This is a very simple writing editor that has great collaborative features.
10 mejores aplicaciones web para crear imágenes con citas o textos Cada vez que miro mi feed en Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Intagram y Pinterest me encuentro con muchas imágenes hermosas que incluyen un texto o cita. Es normal compartir este tipo de imágenes, gustan mucho y consiguen gran difusión, y tu puedes crearlas fácilmente con cualquiera de las 10 mejores aplicaciones web para crear imágenes con citas. Todas las herramientas online incluidas en esta selección son completamente gratuitas, algunas pueden requerir registro y otras no, fáciles de utilizar y con un potencial enorme para crear las imágenes más bonitas. Luego podrás deslumbrar a tus amigos compartiéndolas en las redes sociales. Es importante que sepáis que no hemos seguido ningún criterio para organizar nuestro Top Ten de aplicaciones web para crear imágenes con texto. Esto quiere decir que la que ocupa el primer lugar no tiene que se mejor que la que ocupa el décimo, cualquiera de ellas es bastante buena y ya depende de vuestros gustos que uséis una u otra. Quozio Text Generator PixTeller
13 Good Social Studies Resources February 11, 2014 It's been awhile now since my last post on resources for social studies teachers. I have been bookmarking some new websites and platforms that can be of some help to social studies teachers and today I sat down and went through all of these resources and compiled the list below. I invite you to have a look and share with your colleagues : 1- Google Cultural Institute Google Cutltural Institute allows you to discover exhibits and collections from museums and archives all around the world. You will also get to explore cultural treasures in extraordinary detail, from hidden gems to masterpieces. 2- Ed Helper Social Studies resources EdHelper has this page packed full of resources and teaching materials on social studies for different grades and age groups. 3- Lesson Plans and Resources for Social Studies Teachers This is another page full of resources curated specifically by PBS Media for teachers and students of social studies. 5- Social Studies Teaching Resources