Diigo-Keep and Share Your Favorite Websites in the Cloud

 Diigo is an awesome tool that allows teachers or anyone else to save their favorite website and shre their with their group or larger Diigo community. Diigo is free for a basic account, which has more than enough features for the average users. If you are a teach Diigo will upgrade your account for free. All that is required is a school related Email account. 

Even if you do not want to share your favorite websites with a larger community, Diigo is great for just keeping your favorite websites in the cloud. Have you ever used a computer that was not your own or purchased a new machine and wished you could access all of your favorite websites. Well Diigo is that perfect answer for both of the above situations. Since your favorite websites are stored in the cloud you can access them from any computer that is connected to the internet.I am currently using Diigo in my professional learning community at the high school where I am a teacher. Diigo is a great way to increase collaboration between a department or entire school. With all of the  teachers in my community using this Diigo, I have access to a constant steam of fresh resources that I can bring to my classroom.

I encourage everyone to try Diigo to get those favorite websites in the cloud. Whether you are going to share your favorite websites or not Diigo is the next step in the evolution of saving your favorite websites.Oh yea, did I mention it is free.
Click this link to access Diigo

Free Everything!

Educational Freeware is a site dedicated to offering the best educational games, software, and websites free of charge for teachers or anyone else dedicated to education. I have utilized this site for a couple years and I am nowhere near exhausting all of the free educational resources that it offers. Every teacher should keep this site at the top of their favorites list. Educational Freeware also has a Multilanguage feature which allows users to sort through the free products by language.

Unlike many other sites that claim to have free educational software, the education free ware site is free from all pop ups and annoying advertising and extremely easy to navigate. One of my favorite applications I found on Educational freeware is Google Bodies. The only way to describe Google Bodies would be to say that it is a fully controllable digital version of Gray’s anatomy. In addition to just giving you the link to the site Educational Freeware gives users detailed instruction on how to access and use the site in an effective manner.

Education Freeware not only does this for Google Bodies, but also for most of the hundreds of other games, software, and websites they have compiled. This site is a great resource for teachers of all grade level and content areas. I could go on and on about all of the features available on this site, but it would be much easier if you just clicked the link below and checked it out for yourself. Trust me you will not be disappointed.

Educational Freeware Link

Do You Weebly?

Weebly website maker is the easiest and most intuitive website creator I have ever used.  Did I mention that it is also free!  Not just free web creation but also free hosting!  Weebly also has many widgets available in addition to one click Google Ad sense set up.

I use Weebly website creator as the culminating project in my computer class every year. I have the students set up a website of their own creation, something that will draw as many viewers as possible and then have them set up a Google Adsense account for their site. High school students love projects with real world implications and the ability for them to make money through a class project is as real as it gets for students.  A great feature about weebly is that you can upgrade your site at anytime without losing any of your content. The pay portion of the site allows users to drop the weebly address from the domain in addition to a host of bonus features.

 I find that the basic site is more than enough for students to complete their project, but I know a few students who have upgraded on their own and from what I have heard are actually making a few dollars on their sites.

Don’t take my word for it though, check it out for yourself.  What do you have to lose it is free!

Click the link below create your very own free website.

Weebly Link

Are You Historically Relevant? Digital Story Telling Project

Getting my 10th grade U.S. History students excited about historically relevant figures is an uphill battle to say the least. One way I have found to make them sit up and listen is when I start making connections to events of the past and how they effect the lives of the students today. Some of my most teachable moments occur when I can make a personal connection with a historical figure or event to the lives of my students. In my opinion history is a personal experience and the more personal you can make it for you students the better they will learn and retain the content provided.

The assignment I created for my 10th grade U.S. History class consists of the students researching a historically relevant figure that shares personal and possibly professional characteristics with the student. My goal is that students will make a connection with history and realize that the people and events we talk about in class have relevance in their modern lives. It is important for the students to know that most people share the same hopes, goals, and dreams and with a lot of hard work and ingenuity they make be able to be historically relevant one day.

I have included a link to my assignment page below that contains an example Prezi that I made.

Link to my assignment page

Please let me know what you think. I appreciate any and all feedback.

Thanks

Erik

Digital Storytelling, A Great Assignment for a Great Price

Digital stories are a great way to connect with your students while simultaneously allowing them to work with new technologies and have their voice herd. I have used digital stories in my classroom for the past two years with great success. The culminating project we complete is a me story. A me story is basically a biography of the student which tells where the student comes from, where they are now and where they are headed in the future. I have found that the most interesting topic for my high school students is themselves and the me story allows them to study and present their favorite topic to the class. With the me story project in full swing I have decided to add another digital storytelling assignment to my curriculum.

The new digital story telling assignment will consist of the students researching a historical figure and presenting on how that figure inspires them as well as the similarities and differences between the historical figure and the students. The students will also explain a personal connection that they share with the teachings or actions of the particular historical figure. This assignment would fit in perfectly with by 10th grade US History curriculum.

The students would create their digital story using free photo story software and I would allow some of my more advanced students to use Windows Movie Maker. In order to facilitate this project I would recommend a few websites to get the students started and allow them to integrate sites of their own once they became more comfortable with the digital story telling assignment. In addition, I would create a digital story of my own to use as an example so the students could get an idea of what was expected of them. I find that a good example is often more effective than two hours of explanation.

I have listed some of the initial sites I would have my students research below

Photostory tutorial 

Biography on many famous United States figures

The History of Storytelling

digital storytelling on Prezi

This presentation was made using Prezi. Prezi is a free program that allows you to take your presentations to the next level. Start using Prezi today and see the difference in your classroom.

Take a picture or record your screen for less than the price of a can of beans.

How many times have you wanted to take a picture or record live action from your computer screen?  If your answer is all the time, then I have your solution, Jing. Yes that’s right I said the answer to your question is Jing. Jing allows you to take instant screen shots or short videos directly from your computer screen. In addition, Jing also allows you to label and alter the screen shots before you save them to your computer.

As a teacher I use Jing almost every day. For example, I take screen shots of students’ assignments, comment on the assignment and email the graded and commented assignment back to the student. Jing is also great for communicating with faculty and administrators. I do not know how many times I have used Jing to help a faculty member solve a computer problem using Jing. Imagine being able to take a picture of your computer screen with an arrow and text pointing to the fix of a problem.

Jing can also be used to create short videos with sound, which I find to make great anticipatory sets when the day begins. The best part of all is that Jing is totally FREE! Techsmith, the company that owns Jing does allow free users to upgrade for additional features and recording time, but I find the free version is more than sufficient for my use. Try Jing and you will prove to yourself all over again that a picture is truly worth a thousand words.

Click the link to download Jing for free. 

Jing Homepage