Integrating Technology into Instruction

NWLSD Technology in Education Wiki  If you want the best new tools, please visit our Technology in Education wiki.  Filled with great tips and ideas, this site is created every day by our own teachers.  Join the wiki to share your ideas and best practices with all of us!  The sites listed below are only a partial listing of those you'll find on the wiki. 

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner You can download and print the full 8 page list of these standards, which can (and should) be incorporated into your teaching whenever possible in order to ensure that we're developing in our students the skills they need to become lifelong learners and to thrive in our ever-changing world.

eSchool News Get the latest in educational technology on this highly informative website!  You can sign up to receive free emails, or an RSS feed to the site.  Read about the latest developments in K-20 education; visit the "Site of the Week," and learn more about 21st Century Education on this high-quality site.

Filamentality Filamentality is a fill-in-the-blank tool that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Internet, gathering good Internet links, and turning them into online learning activities. Support is built-in along the way through Mentality Tips. In the end, you'll create a web-based activity you can share with others even if you don't know anything about HTML or sarving web pages.

Aviary.com  Photo-editing, logos, web templates, filters, color palettes, screen capture & more at Aviary.com

Voice Thread  Here's an exciting application that allows multiple participants to meet and discuss photos, images, and videos in a virtual classroom environment.  Sign up for a free educator subscription today!

Paper.li  Create a free account on this site and have your students building their own professional-looking online newspaper in minutes. Embed video and other multimedia, add photographs, link to outside sites.  Amazing!

Wall Wisher Create a wall on any topic and invite students to post sticky notes on the wall with their responses.  Or, if you work with the little ones, upload pictures (or rhyming words, etc.) and allow the students to move the stickys in a matching activity...on the interactive whiteboard, perhaps?  The sky's the limit with this tool.  It works well for formative assessment (exit cards) or for backchanneling during a presentation.

Build Your Wild Self Elementary students can create an avatar to use as a profile image in online applications (thus protecting their identity).  This creator is easy enough for Kindergarten students to use. 

My Avatar Editor Just like making a MII for your WII, this tool allows you to choose a variety of personal characteristics and then you can export it and save it to your computer.  No signup is required, although the tool allows signup and social sharing.  It is not recommended that students share their avatars online for safety reasons.

Gliffy Online diagram software.  Use it for concept mapping, making floor plans, etc.  Free, and no signup is required.

Befuddler Turn any image into a puzzle instantly with this cool tool.  It uses images from Flickr.  Upload your own images to Flickr and befuddle them for some family fun.

PhotoPeach Create slide shows from your photos quickly and easliy, set them to music, and publish.  Free tool, free signup.

VuSafe From web-filtering service provider M86, this free tool allows teachers to select YouTube videos (and videos from other blocked services), put them in an online library, and share them with students, thus eliminating the filter screen and any inappropriate comments or ads.  

Vimeo Vimeo is a video-hosting service, similar to You Tube or Teacher Tube.  Join for a free account, which allows you to upload 500 MG per week.  Videos hosted on the site will embed in web pages beautifully.  You can also control the privacy settings for your videos, making this a sound choice for uploading student-produced videos.

DragonArtz Designs Free backgrounds for web pages!  Includes vector art, vector graphics, and lots of clipart.  These are updated seasonally.

Learning in Hand Former teacher Tony Vincent's site helps you to incorporate podcasts, iPods, and handheld computing devices into your classroom projects.  Be sure to check out the "Our City" podcasting project that allows your students to submit their own podcasts.

Wikispaces  Wikispaces allows you to create your own wikispace...a website where students can contribute, communicate, collaborate, present, and edit their work.  Access to your wiki is limited to those whom you invite, so it presents a safe environment for students to post their work online.

Jog the Web This web tool allows anyone to create a synchronous web path to a series of websites on any topic.  It is great for creating webquests that guide students to reputable websites.

Lino It  Create a virtual bulletin board space where you (or your class) can create sticky notes, embed files, upload videos, and more.  This site makes a good parkig lot of your digital resources, or let students create a canvas to use for collaborative group work. 

Museum Box Wow.  This site allows the user to collect "evidence" of all kinds and formats and to place it in virtual boxes for display.  Traditional research report, move over!  This tool offers students and teachers a host of possibilities, from research projects to collaborative work and presentations.  Originally designed for the history classroom, this tool can be used in virtually any discipline.

Cyberbee  This is a great site for teachers looking for more ways to integrate technology into their classroom. Look to the Curriculum Ideas, How Tos, Treasure Hunts, and the great articles to give you fresh ideas.

CamStudio CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and turn them into Streaming Flash videos.  You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program! There are lots of other ways to use it, too.  Just download the free software.

Scratch  This site offers a free download, which then allows students to create their own animations, simulations, and games.  You can view scratch projects here, too. Scratch is a

programming language that makes it easy to create and share your creations on the web.

 

Webspiration Free online collaboration tool.  This powerful graphic organizer is offered by the creators of Inspiration software.

Gizmos! Online simulations that power inquiry and understanding.  You can find an earthquake recorder here, along with a multitude of other handy tools, like a gizmo that demonstrates graphing in the coordinate plane.  Most are for Math and Science and are searchable by grade level and topic.  Sign up for a free trial.

Gizmoz Fun photo editing site even allows you to create yourself as a computer character...then animate it! (Sort of like the "elfyourself" site Mrs. Chandler shared with us at Christmas...)

Gimpshop A pretty good free photo editing site, similar to Photoshop, which can be expensive.  Kids will enjoy adding special effects to photos.  Be sure to save a copy of your original photo before editing.

ImageLoop Create a slideshow with your photos in seconds and share it online.

Wordia is the answer if you're trying to make vocabulary instruction more interactive.  It has lots of features specifically for educators, including games, archives, curriculum-linked word collections, and MORE. Students are encouraged to post their personal word connections and connotations. 

ImageChef Imagechef allows you to create images from text (like Wordle), customize your photos, add frames, create motion images with a photo, and more. 

Wordle Create word art from text selections.  Word size increases with the number of times the word is repeated in the selected text, emphasizing concepts and showing relationships between words and ideas.

Tagxedo Just like wordle, but with more formatting choices.

Flickr The world's largest free photo sharing site.

Mixbook  Create digital scrapbooks with beautifully animated page turning..for free.

Animoto  Create a 30-second video for free. "Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your media.  Free, fast and shockingly easy."

Audacity You'll need to download the software, but it's really worth it.  Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.

Blabberize  Make a photo talk!  It's easy: Choose a photo (or upload your own), select the mouth area you want to move, and record your speech. 

Vocaroo Record your voice, and then send it to anyone in an e-mail message.  Or, embed your voice on a web page. 

Magnatune  Music sharing site contains thousands of songs that you can listen to for free, pay to download, or download for a small fee with a licensing request form built into the site.  This is a very convenient way to obtain music for educational purposes and still stay in compliance with copyright.  The site is also awesome for playing music to build a classroom "atmosphere" without having to download anything!  Add speakers and enjoy!

Brochure Maker Free tool allows you to make a brochure, with or without a mailer, in moments.  Also contains a flyer tool.

Flipbook Maker (NCTE Read Write Think)  It's a simple tool that can net big results in terms of student learning.  Use it in any subject for predicting, summarizing, and synthesizing information.

Floor Planner Floorplanner is the easiest, quickest, and best looking way to create and share interactive floor plans. Using point-and-click, drag-and-drop tools, you can make your house plan in minutes, and rearrange it as often as you want. Then you can save, send, and print your designs to share them, or place them on your own website.

Jim Gates' Tipline  This blog provides some very helpful ideas, links, and sites that can transform your use of technology.  Tired of sifting through all the videos on YouTube to find educational content?  Perhaps you've tried to use Flikr, but have been experiencing difficulty.  The topics are a bit random, but there's a nice archive that will help you find just what you've been searching for, and a few things that your weren't!

Skype If you've got a webcam and a microphone, you can make video calls to anywhere in the world...free!  You'll need to join the Skype community, and make sure the person (or classroom?) you want to call is registered, too, before making that call.

Moodle is a course management system designed to help educators who want to create quality online courses. The software is used all over the world by universities, schools, companies and independent teachers. Moodle is open source and completely free to use.

Slideshare SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing PowerPoint-type presentations on the web. And it's free.

Powerpoint and Kid Pix

PowerPoint and are powerful multimedia software tools. They include many art tools, stamps or clip art, and slide show features that include sound, and screen transitions. Text can be easily added, formatted, edited, and even turned into speech.

Blogs in Education  Created by the Instructional Technology Center at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, this site is designed to provide you some resources if you want to get started using blogs for yourself or with your students.

Copyright Friendly Images, Audio and Video Clips, Clipart and More on this Wikispace.  You might want to join the space so that you can link to others' spaces devoted to this same topic.