Useful links

  by  vdowney 

• URL Droplet This tool allows you to upload links straight to your Dropbox folders. All you need to do is take a link (this especially works well if the link leads to a PDF or similar document) and paste it into the URL Droplet form.

• Teacher’s Guide to Adding Images in Google Forms ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning Post describing how you can embed images into the content of your Google form. A useful addition for teachers creating image-based quizzes and surveys.

• 5 Powerful Social Media Tools For Your Classroom | Edudemic Social media tools can help break the barriers set by the walls of schools. Learning and communicating outside the school hours with technology aid is a modern adaptation of education that has shown great results. This post looks at some web tools that provide school-specific tools that are just as powerful in facilitating the communication inside the student-teacher-parent triangle as the more famous popular social networking sites.

• What Teachers Need to Know about Fixed Vs Growth Mindset ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning An infographic which features the major differences between fixed and growth mindsets using teachers as the underlying subject

• Should university students use Wikipedia? | Education | guardian.co.uk Article from TheGuardian ” Students use Wikipedia extensively, probably more than any other social group. Although the website’s founder Jimmy Wales once warned readers not to use the website for academic purposes, American research shows that the majority of students browse its pages when researching essays. Most universities and academics distrust the service, warning us: “Never cite Wikipedia.” Why is the academic world so hostile to this vast information resource? And why do students find it so hard to stay away?”

• TagCrowd: make your own tag cloud from any text The service offers three ways to create word clouds: copying and pasting text into TagCrowd, upload a plain text file or you can copy and paste a web address into TagCrowd. Simple and effective visuals

• Stripe Generator – ajax diagonal stripes background designer A free tool that simple makes stripes. Another way to create a visual for a digital site. Simple and easy to use.

• Photomontage Generator – WriteOnIt Create a photomontage to add interest to a photo. Easy to use tool that offers a fast way to create some fun photos/images.

• 10 Digital Citizenship Tips From Your Mother | Edudemic This infographic takes a look at good digital citizenship tips as well as some common do’s and dont’s for good manners when using the internet.

• A Simple Guide on The Use of Hashtag for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “Here what Twitter said about it : ” The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. Hashtags are a great way to build community around content.” Post with ideas about how teachers can make the most out of hashtags.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Coggle – A Simple Mind-Mapping Tool “Coggle is a new, collaborative mind-mapping service that is very easy to use. To create a Coggle mind map just sign-in with your Google account and click the “+” icon to start your mind map. After entering the main idea of your mind map you can add branches by clicking the “+” icons that appear next to everything you type. To re-arrange elements just click on them and drag them around your screen. “

• 25 Top Concept-Mapping Tools For Visual Learning

• 30+ Mind Mapping Tools 30+ mind mapping tools. Some are free and others have a fee.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Terrific Mind Mapping and Brainstorming Tools A post that looks at some of the tools that could be used for mind mapping. Brainstorming, collaborative brainstorming, free ipad apps, Free Technology For Teachers, mind mapping.

• Memofon Memofon is a new mind mapping tool that makes it possible to create mind maps from typed outlines. It is similar to Text 2 Mind Map. To create a mind map with Memofon you just have to type an outline. It takes some time to figure out the outline formatting tricks. Once you have the formatting down it can also be used to create to-do lists within your mind map.

• 9 Web 2.0 Sites to Publish Student Work | Teach Amazing! 9 easy-to-use web 2.0 sites to publish, share and celebrate student work.

• Narrated Slideshow – Screencast » Mapping Media to the Common Core “A screencast is a digital recording of a computer screen with audio narration. Screencasts can include illustrator (‘John Madden pen’) annotations. Narrated slideshows include audio recordings synchronized to images without hand-drawn annotations.” Some nice, straightforward directions by Wes Fryer

• 4 Popular Screencasting Tools Being Used In Education | Edudemic Recording what is happening on your screen can be a pretty useful tool for teachers who want to create video tutorials or presentations for their classrooms. Many teachers are using screencasting tools but before you delve into what you’re going to do with your screencast, you need to take a few moments to learn about the tools that are available to do the actual recording. They range from free to fairly expensive ($299) and offer a variety of functionality from simple recording to quite complex video editing. $ are examined here.

• The Future of Tablets in Education: Potential Vs. Reality of Consuming Media | MindShift

• Shakespeare A-Z – Popped culture Interesting take on Shakespeare’s characters

• Photos Gone Wild! How to Combat Unwanted Photos on Facebook | Common Sense Media Advice for some control. Although it can’t force people to take down a photo, Facebook does offer several “tag settings” that give you some measure of control over tags. “Using the privacy settings under How Tags Work, the “profile review” setting allows you to review and approve every tag before it goes on your page. If you don’t approve a tag, the photo will still be live, it just won’t link to your page. You can also exclude some people from seeing the tag. “There are some other photo-tagging tips as well.

• Five Characteristics of Learner-Centered Teaching | Faculty Focus

• How to Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft Online An infographic that offers tips on how you can protect your identity in the online world.

• Infographic: How to Implement Blended Learning | Getting Smart Infographic: “Blended Learning Implementation Guide,” which explores blended learning as a phase change with a goal of accelerating learning toward college and career readiness.

• 12 Principles Of Mobile Learning

• 4 Principals Of Digital Literacy A useful summary which highlights comprehension, interdependence, social factors and curation as the four important principles. “Digital Literacy is about being able to make sense of digital media. This occurs through meaningful and sustainable consumption and curation patterns that improve an individuals potential to contribute to an authentic community. This includes the ability to analyze, prioritize, and act upon the countless digital media 21st century citizens encounter on a daily basis.”

• A Simple Acronym For Encouraging Digital Citizenship – “THINK” A very simple but effective acronym for helping students to remember good digital citizenship behaviours

• BBC – Scotland – Pinball This is a suite of fun tools from the BBC for organizing ideas and generating new ideas. In Pinball you will find tools for creating mindmaps, outlines, and simple slideshows. Pinball also has tools to help you brainstorm and generate new ideas.

• RealtimeBoard | Online collaboration whiteboard This is a new online tool for hosting online, collaborative brainstorming sessions. Realtime Board provides a blank grid on which you can type, draw, and post pictures. Connect elements on your boards through a simple linking tool. They can be shared publicly or privately. There is a chat function built into every board.

• Awesome Poster on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Terrific Mind Mapping and Brainstorming Tools “Create drawings and documents on your tablet. You can create using free-hand drawing tools, using typing tools, or a combination of the two tool sets. Your drawings and documents can be sent to and synced with other users so that they can comment and edit your drawings and documents.”

• Wizard Tool for Searching “This tool is built on Google’s Advanced Search and conducts a Google search with the keywords that you fill in for each field. As you type, WATCH as the Wizard builds your query in the search box above. Then click Search. Evaluate the results and revise your keywords to get the best results for your topic!”

• Tracking Cloud Adoption in Schools [Infographic] | EdTech Magazine The post  incorporates an infographic  that contains information about the trend toward cloud computing in K–12 and higher education.l

• 26 Teacher Tools To Create Online Assessments A post that looks at the tools with a link and brief description of each.

• Definition Of Digital Citzenship An interesting discussion trying to define exactly what is meant by digital citizenship. Includes an infographic that takes a student-friendly approach by defining digital citizenship in terms of its actions and habits.

• 34 Assistive Technology Apps From edshelf “An assistive technology: a technology used by an individual with a disability to perform a function that might otherwise be difficult or impossible.” Samantha Thomas, a student, future librarian, and educator at Kutztown University, created this handy collection of assistive technologies that you may find helpful. Some are commonly used with special needs individuals, such as augmentative & alternative communication apps and others are general consumer apps. Listed alongside each app is her assessment of its value as an assistive technology.”

• 20 Evernote Search Features You Should Be Using Some very useful tips for getting the most out of Evernote

• 6 Awesome Writing Quotes ( Posters ) ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning Some great posters on writing that you could use as stimulus for students to boost their writing.

• Catch – Capture Notes on Your Android Device and Desktop A service that allows you to create bookmarks, text notes, voice notes, and images anytime you’re on the web. You can use Catch on Android and iOS devices.

• The 7 Most (And Least) Effective Ways To Improve Student Achievement An infographic below showcases the results of a study that looked at a number of different items and if they negatively or positively affected student achievement.

• How to set SMART website goals – web designers Adelaide – web design Gold Coast Good Infographic on goal setting.

• Top 6 Visual Search Engines For Finding The Image You Want Description a 6 search engines that are good for finding images – 4 were familiar but 2 are new or updated. TinEye now has a Multicolor Engine and WeSEE is new.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.