Free tools for creating
- Audacity – software for recording and editing sounds
- Blabberize – add audio or text to images; for example, have a student record a poem to a photo of a llama who speaks with your student’s voice!
- Edmoto – free, secure platform for cloud-based discussion boards and other class communication, grading software, groups–you name it!
- Flubaroo – Google add-on that grades objective questions, gives data analysis, and sends info to students
- Kahoot – educational gaming platform for assessments; games
- A Librarian’s Guide to Makerspaces
- Make Pictures Talk – Phone apps that make your videos talk
- Meez – create and animate avatars
- Moovly – create animated movies
- Piktochart – free platform for creating infographics
- Pinterest – a way to collect and share
- Pixlr – online picture editing tools
- Prezi – “create astonishing presentations live and on the web” – way beyond PowerPoint
- SAS Curriculum Pathways Writing Reviser – hands-on tools to help with revision
- Slide Share – free platform to share PowerPoint slides
- Rubistar – software to create rubrics; a repository of editable rubrics
- Tiki Toki – create interactive timelines
- Wikimedia – free platform for images, sharing, and more
- Wordle – create artistic collages using text from your writing; this file explains how to save your Wordle
- WordPress, Kidblog, and Weebly – blogging spaces; how to design a blog
Free tools for organizing
- Google Docs will allow you to both organize and share content
- Kiddom offers a platform for managing and assessing class assignments
- Nearpod – deliver interactive instruction to students on their devices with clickers, presentation software, and lots more
- TrackStar – organize websites for your students or yourself
- Zotero – share and keep track of your files and websites
Free tools for sharing & collaborating
- Collaboration_Rubric – describe & evaluate productive behaviors
- Global e-pals
- Glogster – a free space to share and create with audio, video, and text
- Jing – platform for sharing videos and images
- Padlet – a secure way to collaborate and share
- PB Works, a space to set up free wikis and info on how to design wikis; Wikispaces, another free wiki space
- Poll Everywhere allows students to use their phones for polling–objective and open-ended questions to display
- Powtoon – cloud-based platform for creating animated presentations and videos
- Remind 101.com – free one-way site for sending reminders to students; parents and students cannot reply; schedule to be sent later
- Slide Share – platform to create shared PowerPoints with audio
- ThingLink – create interactive images
- Twiddla – a “no set-up web-based meeting ground” for collaboration
- Voicethread – create collaborative, multimedia slide shows that hold images, documents, and videos and allow people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways
Free content
- American Memory Project is an amazing collection of music, photographs, maps, letters, ads, and other memorabilia free from the Library of Congress
- Creative Commons – share and find online content
- DarkHorse – free digital comics
- Flickr – photos
- Flocabulary – free trial of multimedia vocabulary content
- Newsela.com – find news articles on any topic; change the reading level so that main content stays the same, students are reading the same articles, but the reading level has been adapted
- Noredink.com – create free grammar quizzes based on individual students’ interests; track growth
- Pandora – online radio that fits your tastes
- ReadWriteThink NCTE/IRA website with lessons, units, and other resources for K-12 teachers
- SAS Curriculum Pathways – free standards-based content in the core disciplines
- Sentence Surgery – grammar games and more
- TeacherTube – a “safe educational video community for teachers, students and parents”
- Wimp.com – video content appropriate for all ages
Links on how/why to use technology
- Adapting teaching to a new era
- Buck Institute project-based learning
- Digital Dilemmas & Delights – what questions do we need to ask about how and why we use digital technology?
- 8 ways digital media will evolve
- Keith Lightbody’s Technology in Education is “about helping everyday people use technology to do a quality job – quicker, easier, smarter!”
- Technology-Rich Learning, a special edition with many ideas and tools from ASCD Express
Links to standards and definitions of 21st c literacies
- Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects
- Conference on English Education (CEE) beliefs about technology and the preparation of English teachers
- National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
- NCTE Definitions of 21st century Literacies
- NCTE 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment Framework
- NCTE 21st Century Position Statements, Guidelines, and Resolutions
- NCTE/IRA Standards for English Language Arts
- Partnership for 21st c Skills
Links about visual literacy
- K-8 visual literacy – a hands-on resource that is also appropriate for secondary and tertiary classes
- David Jakes’s visual literacy wiki offers resources and suggestions
- Talking about visual texts with students