Cartoonize

Cartoonize is a fun site for taking photos and turning it into a cartoon similar to befunky (looks a little bit like the movie Scanner Darkly).

To have fun w/ photo effects check out Cartoonize by clicking here.

Also, check out Big Huge Labs for other ways to have fun w/ photos.



Thanks to Free Technology 4 Learning for the tip.

Corkboard Me

Corkboard Me is a wonderfully simple site for creating collaborative sticky notes. This site works very similar to Wallwisher, Pindax, and Spaaze, just click on board and start typing away to add a sticky note. This site generates a unique URL that can be shared w/ others to facilitate collaboration.

I highly recommend checking out Corkboard Me by clicking here.

Thanks to the award winning iLearn Technology for the tip!!

Pollmo

Pollmo is a simple new (beta) site that I joust found out about on Free Technology 4 Teachers. This is a great site for making simple polls by adding a question, answer, and then picking a skin (theme). Once that is a done grab the embed code to add the poll to your site.

Give Pollmo a try by clicking here!!

Lucid Chart

Lucid Chart is a nice free (for education) site for creating online charts, diagrams, wireframes, etc. It has a very easy to use drag-n-drop interface that that reminds me a bit of Lovely Charts.

I recommend giving Lucid Chart a try by clicking here!!

For a much more detailed review check out Richard Byrne's award winning blog.

Folding Story

Folding Story is a wonderful new site for collaborative writing that I just found out about from, Free Technology 4 Teachers. This is a site where users can either start their own story and then share w/ others or join an already existing story to collaborate on. There are other sites that accomplish much of the same thing, but Folding Story might just be the easiest.

I recommend checking out Folding Story by clicking here!

Chirpstory

Chirpstory is an interesting site that allows people to create a story from tweets on Twitter. This is done w/ a very easy to use drag-n-drop interface by adding tweets and links to pics, videos, sites, etc. This is a fun/innovative way to share information w/ others.

I highly recommend checking out Chirpstory by clicking here!!

Top 10 Sites for Images and Clip Art

Finding images on the internet for educators to use has been a common problem problem for many alike. This can happen for a number of reason such as: copy right privileges, inappropriateness, etc etc.

While there are a number of paid solutions for finding images such as Nettrekker or Discovery Streaming, there are a number of free alternatives that work nicely as well.

However, keep in mind that most of the sites listed below do not have built in filters for images. These image search engines should be used either by educators (adults assisting students) or go in hand in hand w/ a school district filtering solution and Acceptable Use Policy.

Top 10 Sites for Images & Clip Art

1. Pics4Learning - A very popular site to find free safe to use images for teachers and students.
2. Cyclo.ps - A search engine that searches the most popular free image engines around and provides a nice one stop shopping of sorts.
3. School Clip Art - A great site for free school clip art.
4. Ookaboo - A nice creative commons (free) site for finding great images for class work.
5. Picsearch - Excellent image search engine if used w/ a district's filtering solution.
6. Veezzle - A wonderful free stock photo search engine.
7. Google Swirl - An innovative way to search for images and see their relationships w/ each other (use w/ Google Safe Search enabled).
8. Free Photo Bank - An easy way to find creative common images.
9. Open Clip Art - A great way to find free clip art to use.
10. Find Icons - A nice site for free icons.

Tech Ease

Tech Ease is a site I just read about on David Andrade's wonderful blog. This is a great site for tech support for either Mac & Windows and also shares nice technology integration tips as well.




I highly recommend checking out Tech Ease by clicking here!!

Safety Web

Safety Web is an excellent site for parents which covers a lot of areas regarding online safety such as: bullying, stalking, social networking etc. Also, by entering your child's email address it scans the web and gives a detailed report of their online activity.

I highly recommend checking out Safety Web by clicking here!!

picture.of.a

picture.of.a is a wonderful new site I found out about from Larry Ferlazzo's blog. This is a search engine designed to find free pictures.

While I don't think there is any filtering going on, I haven't come across any inappropriate pics so far.



Give picture.of.a a try by clicking here!!

Instapaper

Instapaper is a cool site for bookmarking that I found out about on Twitter from the wonderful education consultant, Naomi Harm. After signing up a user installs via drag-n-drop a bookmarklet into their browser toolbar. Then after finding a site that you want to read later just click on the button. This also works well for using on a variety of mobile devices.

I highly recommend checking out Instapaper by clicking here!!

AirDropper

AirDropper is a new (beta) site that is ideal for file sharing. Basically, this site allows users to email "others" and request files from them. Once the files have been requested people can then "drop" those file into a unique drop box just for them.

I highly recommend checking out AirDropper by clicking here.



Thanks to David Andrade's wonderful blog for the tip!!

Book Flavor

Book Flavor is a great site I just learned about from the award winning, Free Technology 4 Teachers. It is a search engine for books that is similar to how Amazon works.



I highly recommend checking out Book Flavor to meet all your reading needs by clicking here!!

Clipgenerator

Clipgenerator is a nice site for making slideshows/presentations that I just found out about from a colleague on Twitter. It is a real simple site to use that is rather similar to Animoto. A user just uploads or picks their favorite music, add's some pictures, and the choose the effect they want to use. The results are then emailed out.



Give Clipgenerator a try by clicking here!!

Super Book Educators Web Tools

The Supoer Book Educators Web Tools is a wonderful free resource brought to you by Richard Byrne (Free Technology 4 Teachers). This is a compilation of resources from a number of well known super educators.

I highly recommend checking out this excellent resource by clicking here!!!

Teach Parents Tech

Teach Parents Tech is a site that has been getting a lot of press lately online. It is a site designed by Google to provide technology support for "parents". I find it mainly to be a fun site w/ a sense of humor designed to share some tips w/ your folks.



Give Teach Parents Tech a try by clicking here.

Find the Best

Find the Best is a new (beta) comparison search engine that works similar to Hitsplitter. This is a nice way to find and compare data on a number of subjects. It has a nice education area to test out comparative data.

I highly recommend checking out Find the Best by clicking here.



For a more detailed review check out Free Technology 4 Teachers!!!

Figment

Figment is a wonderful new site that I just found out about from the great, iLearn Technology. This is a site similar to Tikatok as it is a community for students to share and read others writings. Keep in mind this site is geared for older students (13 on up) but is a very nice way to introduce web 2.0 technologies.



I highly recommend checking out Figment by clicking here!!!

Hitsplitter

Recently, I received an email promoting a new kind of search engine called Hitsplitter. After giving it a try, I decided to post verbatim about this interesting site.

Hitsplitter is a tool for comparative search, based on Google.

With Hitsplitter, you can find where people write about brands, products, persons or any keyword.
The tool scans sets of websites like the Top 50 US blogs or the top 20 Wikipedia domains. User can also define their own sets of sites to scan.

Economists can use Hitsplitter.com to see where people around the world write about inflation. Linguists can use Hitsplitter to see which newspapers write ‘insurgents’ and which prefer ‘terrorists’.
Journalists can use Hitsplitter to see who writes about the iPhone.

The free tool runs up to 250 searches simultaneously, for example to compare 10 keywords across 25 websites.

In 2011, Hitsplitter will offer a subscription service that offers more searches and automated monitoring.

Give Hitsplitter a try by clicking here!!

Below is a demo video of Hitsplitter in action...

GoAnimate

GoAnimate is well known site for creating custom animations. Now, GoAnimate has released an educational version that is ideal for schools. The educational instance comes in two kinds of accounts, Teacher Plus or School Plus. Each version allows the creation of student accounts and the ability to host your animations in a safe environment.



I highly recommend checking out GoAnimate by clicking here!!! (take a look at the lesson plan area).

Wondersay

Wondersay is an excellent new (beta) site for creating animated text. This would be a fun way for teachers to create a nice title to a webpage, blog, or document.



I highly recommend checking out Wondersay by clicking here.

http://www.wondersay.com/#!fix=9740306574063361

Honey Nut Cheerios Comic Creator

Upon having breakfast w/ my boys this morning I discovered on the back of their cereal box a comic creator for Honey Nut Cheerios. I have it a shot and found it to be a nice site to use w/ kids to teach them digital storytelling and how to create a comic. Everything that can be found in most online comic creators can be found here: drag-n-drop interface, ability to choose characters and backgrounds, and editing text.

I recommend checking out Honey Nut Cheerios Comic Creator by clicking here.



The only disclaimer I can give is, to unlock extra content you need a special code that you can only get from the back of the cereal boxes.

Wylio

Wylio is a search engine that is ideal for bloggers as everything that it returns is free via Common Craft. It also makes it very easy to cite photos based on an html embed code.

I highly recommend checking out Wylio by clicking here!!



Thanks to Richard Byrne's amazing blog for the tip!!

CanTeach

CanTeach is an excellent site that provides 100's of resources for educators such as lesson plans, links, etc. for elementary schools.

I highly recommend checking it out by clicking here!!



Thanks to the wonderful blog, The Educational Technology Guy for the tip!!

Find that File

Find that File is a new (beta) site whose mission is to provide the most comprehensive file search on the Internet encompassing Web, FTP, Usenet and P2P resources including 43 file types and 200+ file extensions. (Including audio, video, bittorrent, documents and more)

FTF searches as deeply as possible to identify and serve the most relevant data possible including properties, meta data, extracts and more.

Below is a demo video of the site...



Give Find that File a try by clicking here!!