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Digital Storyteller
Digital Storyteller is a web-based tool that offers teachers and students, K-12, integrated access to digital images and materials that enable them to construct historical narratives. Producing the narrative provides a strong active learning experience, in which the learner must research the topic, actively construct meaning from the primary documents available, craft a written story that conveys that understanding to others, and finally, create a movie that uses the documents to accompany the narration in a visually compelling manner. The Center for Technology & Teacher Access at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education developed Digital Storyteller as a catalyst in use of effective technology-based tools in the K-12 classroom.
Visit WebsiteEdublogs
Classroom blogging can serve as a communication tool between teacher and parent, teacher and students, and students to students; and blogs can also create communities and extend communication beyond he classroom. Edublogs, powered by WordPress, offers free blogging sites to educators, directions for setting up, and tips for teaching with the blog.
Visit WebsiteFleck
Fleck allows you to annotate web pages using sticky notes. Fleck gives the teacher the option of guiding learning on the web and offers students a collaborative platform and note-taking tool. Fleck annotations can be saved as public or private, shared through email, and embedded in blogs and web pages. A teacher-only account allows students to read comments. Alternatively, students can share a central login to add their own annotations. Fleck annotations take a little longer to load than the web page itself.
Visit WebsiteFlickr
Flickr is a free, online photo management, repository, and sharing application. Flickr fosters collaborative learning through tagging and discussion boards while a mapping feature allows linkages between photographs and maps. Users may choose to make photos public or to limit access. Flickr requires a yahoo account, and Yahoo community guidelines explain intellectual property rights associated with Flickr use.
Visit WebsiteGoogle Docs
Google Docs is a free, web-based word processing, spreadsheet and presentation program that allows users to create, share and collaborate to develop materials. Users can create documents, tables, and other presentations within Google Docs or upload existing files or create materials within the Google docs program. The real time, collaborative feature lends itself to student group projects as well as to faculty and administrative use. Users determine who has access and editing privileges through invitational emails, and files are stored on-line, safeguarding against hard drive or power outage loss. Usage requires a Google account.
Visit WebsiteGoogle Earth
Google Earth is a free, satellite imagery-based, 3-D mapping application, enabling teachers to incorporate geographic literacy and analysis into the history curriculum. Google Earth offers numerous tools for geographic discovery, including the ability to mark places on the earth, change perspective, select information for display, measure, and make movies. According to explanatory text, "The only limit to Google Earth's classroom uses is your imagination."
Visit WebsiteSocial Explorer
Social Explorer provides easy access to census demographics about the United States from 1940 to 2000. The free public edition offers collection of interactive demographic maps of census data that can be viewed, queried and manipulated. Students can visually analyze and understand the demography of the U.S., their regions, and their neighborhoods, creating their own queries and parameters. Tools include zoom-in capability, selection of variables, the option to create a slideshow enabling comparative dataset mapping, and printing, City University of New York (CUNY) developed the project.
Visit WebsiteTrIntuition Workbench
Workbench allows users to create web pages and full websites using drag and drop tools for content and easy-to-manipulate tools promoting coherent content and graphic quality. The user may create single pages or full sites, including uploaded files, save them. Viewers can access them online (via a unique URL you request) or from downloaded files you create. Workbench tutorials include learning-by-doing supplemented with thorough explanations. The program is both Mac and Windows compatible and requires Flash. Individual accounts are free; group accounts are not
Visit WebsiteWeb Poster Wizard
This free tool allows educators to create a lesson, worksheet, or class page and immediately publish it online. Web Poster Wizard offers centralized login with student and teacher information in one account, but site management tools enable teachers to set up assign projects to students and separate them by classes. With this tool, students can create posters or short reports in a poster format and add images and links to their pages.
Visit WebsiteWikis
Wetpaint offers free wiki websites, advertisement-free for educational use, and an invitation-only option for viewers and contributors. As Wetpaint points out, wikis in education encourage collaborative learning and information sharing in the classroom, between teachers and parents, and among teachers. They can be on-going or project specific. Visit the main website for an overview, then cut straight to the Education section for discussion and examples of how educators are using wikis and negotiating wiki administration. Note Wetpaint.com is for students thirteen and older in conformity with COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act & Rule.
Visit WebsiteZotero
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use, open source research tool that runs in the Firefox web browser and helps users gather, annotate, organize, cross-reference, and share the results of their research. It includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store full reference information in author, title, and publication fields and to export that as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software such as del.icio.us or iTunes, like the ability to sort, tag, and search in advanced ways.
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