Web Tools!!!
Tools that may make your teaching a little easier
What are Web Tools?
Animoto
Jim shares: "Animoto is a fantastic tool to use when you want to promote something fantastic that's been happening in your classroom. It's as simple as uploading photos and letting the program create a free 30 second video. If you have photos of your students, this is the program that will show-off their projects, work, events, and just about anything else.
This would be the perfect tool to use as a year-end wrap-up with your students and showcase their progress throughout the year. Just make several (or many) 30 second videos and you'll feature everyone in the class."
Edmodo
Jim shares: "Edmodo has been used by educators for several years with great success. It helps move your classroom to the Internet where students can access your content, ask questions, take a quiz, and more. Also, it is a wonderful colaboration tool for educators to get ideas from each other or just be able to professionally share ideas and thoughts.
There are a variety of "communities" you can belong to: Career and Tech Ed, College Readiness, Computer Technology, Creative Arts, Health and PE, Language Arts, Math, Professional Development, Science, Social Studies Special Education, and World Languages. These communities discuss area specific content."
Edublogs
Jim shares: "Edublogs is a great site for teachers who would like to receive student (or other teacher) feedback. Or, maybe you would like to start a conversation thread where your classes or PLC share ideas or provide input.
Edublogs has nice themes (with the free account) and is relatively easy to create and navigate. It is easy for others to post comments. You have the opportunity to read the posts prior to making them public so you control all aspects of the site.
I find this site easier to use than "Blogger" and other blogging sites. You can create an account and have students provide feedback. Note: Have a generic email address for students to use since students who are 13 and under cannot use public email accounts in the school environment."
Celly
Jim shares: "This Web Tool was featured on one of our WD Tech Time videos. Since then, other teachers have used it and found it to be easy and useful in their classroom. It's so good that I wanted to share it again for those teachers who allow students to use cell phones in their classroom.
Celly gives you the ability to quickly gather electronic data from your students. As long as they have a text-enabled cell phone they can send messages to you.
What sets Celly apart from other text-interactive services (PollAnywhere for example) is that it allows for unlimited responses and several formats of response gathering."
Teaching Channel
Jim shares: "Teaching Channel may be the video resource site you have been looking for. According to Teaching Channel, all videos are screened for content and are safe for teachers and students.
I found that creating an account was remarkably easy. The video library has excellent content that addresses a wide spectrum of subjects. The videos are quality, easy to apply professional development sessions."
Testmoz
Jim shares: "If you would like to create electronic tests, this is a site you must check. Testmoz is almost too easy to use... you feel like there has to be a catch. You don't even have to create an account to use it!
You have four choices of question types to choose from: True/false, Multiple choice, Multi response, and Fill in the blank. Once you have created your test, you publish it and receive a URL link to the test that you can provide to your students.
Here's the beauty of Testmoz; it automatically scores the test for you and provides corrected feedback to the student as soon as s/he has completed the test. Not only does it do that but it provides a cumulative report of those having taken the test which you can export as an Excel file. From there you can chart, graph, etc.
This Web Tool is easy, quick, and safe. Give it a try!