Web 2.0 Tools That Don't Require Student Registration

http://www.diigo.com/list/nathanghall/no-registration-needed-for-students

Bitly

Bitly Introduces New Bookmark Options

Bitly is the URL shortener that I have been using for years. It's simple to use, especially if you use the bookmarklet, allows you to customize URLs, and offers good statistics about use of your links. I like Bitly so much that I consider it one of the three browser tools all teachers should try.  Yesterday, Bitly introduced a slew of new options.

Bitly now offers a social bookmarking component that they are calling Bitmarks. Bitmarks are bookmarks that you save in your Bitly account. Your Bitmarks can be shared publicly or kept privately. Bitly offers an option for bundling bookmarks into one package that you can share with just one link. Bitly bundles are now collaborative too.

For iPhone users, Bitly has launched a new app that you can use to create and access bookmarks on the go.

Applications for Education
Bitly itself provides a good way to shorten links into URLs that are easy to distribute to students. Using the bundles option is a good way to direct students to a set of links that you want them to access for an assignment in your course.

Reminder Guru

Reminder Guru - Have Reminders Sent to You

Reminder Guru is a free service that you can use to have reminders sent to you through email, text message, or phone call. Creating reminders in Reminder Guru is very quick and easy. After you have registered on the service, simply fill in the reminder form with a message for yourself, choose a reminder date, then specify how you want the reminder delivered to you. If there are tasks that you need to be reminded of daily, weekly, or monthly, you can set reminders to automatically repeat at the same time every day or week.

Applications for Education
Reminder Guru could be an equally useful tool for students and teachers. The option to have messages sent to your phone and your email doubles the likelihood that your reminder will actually get to you and prompt you to action.

Remind 101

Corkboard Me

Corkboard Me - Another Nice Sticky Note Service

Last week I published a short post with ideas for using seven sticky note services in schools. This week I found another good sticky note service to add to the list. Corkboard Me is a simple service for creating and sharing a wall of sticky notes.

Registration is not required in order to use Corkboard Me. To use Corkboard Me just visit the site then click anywhere on the virtual corkboard to start typing your notes. A URL will be assigned to your corkboard. Share that URL with anyone that you want to add notes your wall. Corkboard Me is a freemium service. The free version of the product does not allow for private sharing of corkboards.

Applications for Education
If you're okay with creating public corkboards, Corkboard Me could be a good tool for students to use to post short "exit ticket" notes about things that they learned in your classroom that day. Just post the url and tell students to write a short note. Since registration isn't required in order to post a note, you won't lose classroom time to fussing about with log-ins. One thing to keep in mind if you use the public corkboards option is that you should have a conversation with your students about what is and is not appropriate to post online.

Learners TV

Learners TV Offers a Big Collection of Science Animations

There isn't any shortage of sites attempting to organize academic videos, I shared a nice one yesterday, but there aren't too many that are also organizing animations. Learners TV has organized hundreds of academic videos. They've also organized more than one hundred science animations. The science animations on Learners TV are organized into three categories; biology, physics, and chemistry.

Applications for Education
If you're looking for some animations to illustrate concepts mentioned in your science lessons, take a look at the Learners TV gallery of animations. I think it would be great if Learners TV had paired the animations to specific videos in their libraries. That could be a student project too.

Backpack TV

Backpack TV - Organized Academic Videos

Last night I received an email from a student intern at a new start-up company called Backpack TV. Backpack TV is a site that is creating a library of academic videos from across the web. You can browse for videos by subject, topic, and video duration. Backpack TV has also organized videos according to content providers. Some of the content providers are Khan Academy, Patrick JMT, and 60 Second Recap. According to the email that I received from Backpack TV, the videos have been selected and tagged by a team of high school and college students.

Applications for Education
Backpack TV, like many similar sites, could be useful for teachers and students to find short video lectures and demonstrations to supplement classroom instruction. The videos could be helpful for students who need a quick tutorial when they get stumped on a homework assignment.

Where A Bill Becomes Law

A Good Directory of Where a Bill Becomes Law

Where a Bill Becomes a Law is a Google Maps-based site designed to help visitors determine where and when a bill was presented to the US Congress. The site links directly to the sponsors of each bill, a summary of each bill, and the complete text of each bill. Where a Bill Becomes a Law also shows you the movement of the bill through committees to final votes by Congress.

Applications for Education
Where a Bill Becomes a Law could be a good resource for teachers and students of U.S. Government. The site provides an easy way for students to determine who sponsored legislation. Using Google Maps you could have your students create a similar map of legislation from their state's legislature. Have your students pick a piece of state legislation and put a placemark on the district of the legislator who proposed that legislation.

Here are a few other resources that can help students understand how a bill becomes a law.
US Civics Infographics
How a Bill Becomes Law - Interactive Flowchart
Videos for Learning About Congress

Online-Convert

My Favorite Online File Conversion Tool

Want to convert a video to a new format or download a video from the web? Online-Convert does that. Do you need to convert an audio file to MP3 or WAV? No problem, Online-Convert has you covered. Need to convert a document to HTML from PDF? Online-ConVert does that too. Those are just a few of the many conversions that you can accomplish with Online-Convert. And you can do all of this without ever entering your email address, Facebook credentials, or any other form of registration.

One of the features of Online-ConVert that I really liked is found in the video conversion tool. Not only can you change the format of the video, but Online-Convert also allows you to specify the display dimensions of the video you're converting.

Applications for Education
Online-ConVert can be a great resource for teachers who work in schools that use multiple operating systems and need to make media available to all of their students and colleagues regardless of which computer(s) they use. Online-ConVert could also be useful when a student comes to you with a flashdrive containing a document that you cannot open. Finally, Online-ConVert could be used to download videos from the web for classroom use.

Fakebook

Create Animated Fake Facebook Profiles

Back in August I introduced you to Russel Tarr's Fakebook. Fakebook is a tool for creating fictitious Facebook profiles about famous people in history. Over the weekend a nice new feature was added to Fakebook. Fakebook Animated allows you to watch the timeline of your fake Facebook profiles unfold over time. For an example, click here to watch Harry Truman's Fakebook profile unfold over time.

Applications for Education
Creating Fakebook profiles for famous people in history could be a good way for students to create the outline of a biography. If you're looking for an alternative to traditional book reports, creating Fakebook profiles for the characters in a novel could be a good way to have students outline the important points in a character's development.

Click here for three other ways that students can create fictitious Facebook profiles for historical characters.

QuizSlides

QuizSlides - Quizzes Based on Your Slides

QuizSlides is a new service whose purpose is to help you build quizzes based upon your slides. The basic concept is that you can upload PPT or PPTX files containing questions then add answer choices to create an instant-feedback quiz. The quiz can be set to allow students to try answers until they get the correct answer or the quiz can be set to allow only one try per question.

GoClass

GoClass - Create and Deliver Lessons on iPads

Last week I wrote about NearPod which is an iPad application for creating and delivering quizzes to students. This morning, through David Kapuler, I learned about a similar free iPad application called GoClass.

GoClass is a free iPad application for creating short lessons and delivering them to your students. The lessons can include annotated images, free hand sketches, text, and video. GoClass gives teachers tools for creating class rosters that they can use to keep track of which students are using the lessons when. Teachers also have the option to ask questions and poll their students. After the students' response have been gathered teachers can project those responses without showing individual student's names. The image below, from GoClass, illustrates how a teacher might use the app with students.

Applications for Education
GoClass is a promising iPad app for teachers who are working in 1:1 iPad environments. I particularly like the option to project students' responses in aggregate without revealing individual names. That feature could be useful for prompting discussions about the questions and materials you've presented to your students.

Note-taking Tools

7 Great Note-taking Tools for Teachers and Students

This is another post that was prompted by a reader's email. The email was looking for a list of recommended note-taking tools. I've reviewed a lot of note-taking tools over the last five years, but I have never made a list. So here's my list of seven great note-taking tools for students and teachers.

InClass is a free iPhone and iPad app that could be a very useful tool for students carrying those devices. InClass provides students with tools for taking text, audio, and video notes. Students can also use the app to take pictures of hand-outs, slides, and other valuable information that they see in class. Taking notes is not all that InClass can be used for. It can also be used as a task management tool to help students keep track of their schedules and due dates. To share notes, images, videos, and schedules students can connect InClass to their Facebook accounts.

Color Note is a simple note-taking app that I've been using on all of my Android phones for the last year (yes, it's been a rough year for phones in my life). Color Note offers a sticky note environment, a calendar option, to do list options, and the option to share your notes via email and sms. Color Note does offer an option to password protect your notes so that even if someone takes your phone, your notes are still protected.

Save Meeting is a meeting recording app for iOS and Android devices. The app allows you to record the audio of your meetings, transcribe the audio, and share the recordings and transcriptions with others. The transcription options that I tried were somewhat limited (30 seconds of automatic transcription and 5 minutes of manual transcription) but should be sufficient for recording quick notes during a meeting. Save Meeting uses a freemium pricing model. At the free level you can save up to 1,000 minutes of audio.

Notes.io offers a simple platform for taking and sharing notes. To use Notes.io just go to the site and start typing your notes. When you want to share your notes just click "short" to have a shortened url created for sharing on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever else you like. It really couldn't be any simpler to use.

No list of note-taking tools would be complete without mentioning Evernote. Evernote can be used by students to take notes on the web, on their desktops, on their Android devices, and on their iOS devices. Their notes can be automatically synchronized across devices whenever they connect to the web. Notes can include text, images, links, and more. Click here to read about how I am using Evernote.

mySchoolNotebook is a service for taking, saving, and sharing notes online and offline. The basic purpose of mySchoolNotebook is to provide a place that students can take and organize notes from all of their courses. Students can create notebooks for each of their courses to which they add text and image notes. To use mySchoolNotebook you do have to have a Facebook account. By signing into mySchoolNotebook with a Facebook account students are able to connect with and share notebooks with their friends taking the same courses that they are taking. mySchoolNotebook is available to use on the web and as an iPhone/iPad app. Students can export their notebooks as PDFs if they need to have a paper copy of their notes.

If your students are already in the habit of using Google Documents to create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets it just makes sense that they take notes in Google Docs too. Teach your students to create folders for each of their courses to help them keep their notes organized. While the mobile versions of Google Docs aren't perfect, they can be used for some basic viewing and editing.

Road to Grammar

Road to Grammar - Hundreds of Grammar Practice Quizzes

Road to Grammar is a free resource featuring quizzes, games, and lessons for English language learners. Visitors to Road to Grammar will find more than 300 grammar quizzes on the site. Each quiz provides instant feedback and notes to explain why an answer is correct or incorrect. Before taking the quizzes visitors can work through a dozen practice activities and five practice games.

Road to Grammar Jr. is the companion site to Road to Grammar for younger students. The words and phrases on Road to Grammar Jr. are chosen for use in elementary school.

Applications for Education
In addition to the resources that students can use individually, Road to Grammar offers some downloadable resources for teachers. Teachers will find the collection of eight downloads offer discussion starters for English lessons, lesson warm-up activities, and some worksheets.

Meetings.io

Meetings.io - Video Conferencing Without Registration

Hosting a Google+ Hangout can be good way to have a video conference with a small group, but only if everyone you want to join you has a Google account. Meetings.io doesn't require users to register at all which could make it a great alternative to Google+ Hangouts.

Meetings.io allows you to have up to five people in a room. You can start using Meetings.io by simply clicking on the blue "Get a Meeting Room" button. When you click that button Meetings.io will create your room and assign it a URL to share with the people you want to video conference with. Once the room is created just allow Meetings.io to access your webcam and you're in business. You can make your room public or private after it has been created.

If you do want to register on Meetings.io, you can. Registering on Meetings.io allows you to create a personalized room with a URL chosen by you. That room is yours to use as many times as you like.

Applications for Education
Meetings.io doesn't have screen sharing or file sharing, yet but it still could be a good way to host a small video conference with students, parents, and colleagues. I think that Meetings.io could be useful for hosting parent-teacher conferences with parents who cannot come into your school.

KNOEMA

Knoema - World Data Maps and More

Knoema is a huge collection of data sets and maps for public use. Knoema offers data maps and charts for almost every country in the world. There are dozens of data categories to pick from. Some of the data categories that you will find include GPD Per Capita, Government Debt, Migration, Housing, Energy Consumption, and Agricultural Production.

To find a data map or chart on Knoema to use with your students first select a data set then choose a country from the drop-down menu tied to each data set. Each data set, map, and chart can be exported downloaded and or embedded into a blog post or webpage.



Applications for Education
The obvious fit for Knoema is in a social studies setting in which students are comparing economic indicators. Knoema's library of data sets and visualizations is vast enough to include data sets and visualizations to include environmental science data.

Car Talk

Car Talk Puzzlers as Math Challenges

In the winter one of my weekend rituals is to listen to Car Talk while running errands in town. One of Car Talk's weekly features is the Car Talk Puzzler. The Puzzler is usually a math puzzler although some are language-based riddles too. As I was listening last week it hit me that the Car Talk Puzzlers could make great little classroom activities to get students thinking about math and language in a format that is a little different than standard textbook examples. Click here to access sixteen years of Puzzlers and their answers.

Spreaker

Spreaker - Create and Broadcast Live Podcasts

Spreaker is a service for creating podcasts and broadcasting them to the world as live or recorded productions. If you want to simultaneously broadcast live and record your podcast for re-release later, you can do that too. The Spreaker virtual mixing board provides tools for mixing in buffer music and editing voices.


Applications for Education
Spreaker could be a useful service if you want students to record podcasts, but you don't have quality recording software installed on your school's computers. Spreaker has free Android and iOS apps that your students can use to record too.

Free Icons and Clipart

Icon Bug - Free Icons and Clip Art

Icon Bug is a collection of more than 10,000 icons and pieces of clip art that can be downloaded and re-used for free. The Icon Bug search engine allows you to search by keyword, browse popular icon categories, and refine searches according to icon size. Registered users can upload their own icons to contribute to the gallery.

Present.me

Present.me - Sync Audio and Video to Your Slideshows

Present.me is a handy service for recording video and or audio to accompany your slides. Present.me allows you to sync your recorded audio and video to your slides then publish everything as one complete package. Here's how it works; upload a set of slides to your Present.me account, then use your webcam to record a video of yourself talking about those slides. Your video and slides will appear side-by-side when you have finished recording. If you don't want to record a video, you can simply record audio only.

Present.me accepts a large variety of presentation file types. And if you sign-in with your Google account, you can import presentations to Present.me from your Google Drive account.

New Fonts in Google Drive (Google Docs)

According to their latest product blog post Google Docs, which is now a part of Google Drive, now has more than 450 fonts available to all users. To access all of these new fonts select "add fonts" from the bottom of the font selection menu that you've always used. Selecting "add fonts" will open  up a new menu in which you can mix and match fonts to your heart's content.

Download Sound Effects from Sound Clips

Download Sound Effects from Sound Clips

SoundCli.ps is a gallery of free sounds. SoundCli.ps is a community-powered site on which you can upload sounds to share and download sounds shared by others. I was able to download sounds without registering on the site. To upload sounds you do need to register on the site.

Here is the link:

 http://soundcli.ps/

10 Must Have Bookmarklets For Teachers

Visit the link below for a list of the "10 Must Have Bookmarklets For Teachers:

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/04/10-must-have-bookmarklets-for-teachers.html