Be Funky allows you to upload digital photographs and then add special effects. It's completely free, with nothing to download and no account necessary. Simply upload your photo and then choose the effect you want to apply. You can edit the photo first (crop, resize, rotate, adjust brightness, etc.) and then apply an effect (pop art poster, cartoonizer, charcoal, vintage colors, and many more). My favorite effects are color pinhole and cyanotype. This is a great option for creating visually appealing images for students projects, publications, digital storytelling, and websites.
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Quick and Dirty Tips offers some wonderful podcasts by experts. I have used Grammar Girl and The Public Speaker in my classroom as bellringer activities by writing my own questions and having students write their responses on note cards. Podcasts can be downloaded as an mp3, streamed from the website, or printed as a transcript. Most of the podcasts are broken down by subject area; for example, Grammar Girl's podcasts are organized into categories including punctuation, usage, and style. Other experts that look promising include the Math Dude and the Nutrition Diva. Webspiration is a free "online visual thinking tool." Create mind maps, webs, graphic organizers (whatever you like to call them). Webspiration will even convert your creation into an outline for you. You can toggle between Diagram view and Outline view, save, print and export. Big Huge Labs has an endless supply of fun creation tools for photos. My personal favorite option is the mosaic maker (pictured left). I created a mural of famous African American writers to display on a classroom homepage. You can also create motivational posters, puzzles, magazine covers, movie posters, trading cards, slideshows, and tons of other goodies. This a great website for anyone who wants to create some visual appeal for their handouts or websites. You could also have students use the website to create interesting visual aids for projects and presentations, or for posting on e-portfolios. Gaggle is a free program that offers secure e-mail addresses for students. Other features include chat rooms, discussion boards, blogs and even safe texting (so that teachers and students can text without publicizing their phone numbers). Gaggle will notify the administrator if inappropriate content is sent. Accounts can be created for teachers, students, and even parents. Gaggle also offers digital lockers for storing files, as well as assignment drop boxes. ePals also offers free, safe e-mail for students and teachers. Additionally, ePals is a community which will facilitate correspondence between teachers to set up classroom pen pals. I have not used this service personally, but I did attend one of their free online webinars in order to learn more about them, and it seemed like a very exciting learning opportunity. I learned about DocStoc from Richard Byrne's blog, FreeTech4Teachers, in his post 7 Visually Appealing Ways to Post Documents Online. What I liked the most was that it offered the ability to embed documents to websites so that people can view them without having to download them. Of course, there is a download option for those who do want to keep a copy. I first used DocStoc to post my classroom syllabus on my class website, and then I started to go a little crazy with embedded documents. The downside is that, if you get as excited as I did with your embedding, your website can become cluttered and difficult to navigate, so I recommend using DocStoc sparingly. This would be great for classroom newsletters or for publishing student writing online. Another thing that makes DocStoc so wonderful is that you don't have to worry about the person viewing the document having the same version of software as you. Weebly is undoubtedly my favorite website-creation tool. It's completely free (two free websites per e-mail address) and teachers can set up accounts for students. This website is incredibly intuitive, using a simple drag-and-drop interface. I learned about Weebly during a demonstration by a fellow Piasa Bluffs Writing Project member at our Invitational Summer Institute in 2010. A few months later, I was asked to create a website for my school district in order to provide information to the public about a referendum that would supply funds for the construction of a new high school, and I immediately thought of Weebly. It received very positive feedback. In January, I held a workshop for teachers in my district about creating websites with Weebly, and the teachers that attended were very pleased with its attractive appearance and its user-friendliness. (I even saw one of my coworkers posting about it on Facebook.) Weebly has numerous design options and multimedia options. It will even let you embed items. Below I'm embedding the handout that I offered coworkers at my inservice. Note: This website was created with Weebly. |
AuthorDr. Jessica Pilgreen, Ed.D. Archives
December 2020
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