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Blogger - Google
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use Blogger to create and share your class blog with students and parents. Include updates on classroom lessons and upcoming events, and share pictures of students at work (with appropriate permissions). Add this site to your list of website creation tools for students to use for many projects. For example, ask students to share poems, lab reports, or quick journal entries and add an image or links to additional information. If students create pages, check with your district's policy on publishing student work. Have students take turns writing weekly blog posts that share information about what they learned at school or ask them to share writing or research projects with family and friends. Use images you and your students take, or find free image resources on TeachersFirst Special Topics Page: Free Image Resources, reviewed here.Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Blooket - Blooket LLC
Grades
1 to 12In the Classroom
Discover and use Blooket's many engaging games as a resource for practicing and reviewing information within any area of content. Use the score results to provide feedback for guiding further lessons. Some games are more fast-paced than others; use this to your advantage by sharing different versions for different groups of students. Use Blooket to differentiate instruction by adjusting the difficulty of question sets based on student abilities. Introduce new content using Blooket as a pre-assessment before starting any new unit. Use Blooket as an ice-breaker or get-to-know-you activity at the start of the school year or at the beginning of a new semester to build comradery within your classroom.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Bomomo - Philipp Lenssen
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Share this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Create abstract art that uses one or more design principles. Allow students to create example projects to demonstrate these principles. Save the files and upload them to a class design wiki or blog, or have students upload and critique them on ThingLink, reviewed here. This tool can also create graphics to decorate your classroom, class web page, or individual student blogs.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Book Creator - Red Jumper Limited
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Create books together, as a class, as you move through a unit or topic. Enhance student learning by adding images and ideas your students suggest. Use in a flipped classroom to deliver course information. Assign several student groups a different topic and redefine their learning by having each group create their own multimedia versions as they learn more about the topic. Students can combine their books later as a class book. Make a digital bookshelf of all the versions for all to use. Challenge gifted students to modify the "standard" class text with the additional material they discover, by going deeper and learning about related topics. In lower grades, create teacher-made e-books for your young readers, perhaps adding audio - your own voice reading the text. Find much more information and ideas for using Book Creator in any classroom by exploring the Book Creator Toolkit for Schools and Districts available here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Bookemon - Bookemon, Inc.
Grades
K to 12After you save and publish the work, share the URL so people can read the entire book online, either among an audience of "just my friends" or publicly. They also offer the embed code to place your books on a class or school web page, wiki, or blog. The easiest option is to copy the address of the new window displaying the interactive book. There is an option to have the book printed for a fee, but this is not required. You can also read books created by others (if they make them public). Use the fully-public option to create learning materials for classes to access year to year for at-home review or reading practice.
This site requires a simple registration. Teachers can set up an edCenter for their school or class in accordance with school policies. See more detailed suggestions "In the Classroom" below and in our sample book! Newer mobile device options include players to view your books on iPads and more.
This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
SKIP the profile and friends areas to get to the book creator to play with the tools a bit. Before you get too involved, create an edCenter to minimize advertising and create books in your own teacher-friendly class environment. Use the edCenter to register students and establish privacy settings for your class. No student emails are required.On the Create Books page, choose from using a blank book, starting from a file, or using a template. Choose "school" to see projects from other classes or a sample created by you or a student team working in advance along with you. Explore ready-made themes (seasonal, topical, etc.) or use "open theme." Choose book dimensions (match layout shape to any uploaded files, such as PowerPoint slides). Enter settings and description of your book (editable later), including who is allowed to "see" it: everyone, just friends, or private. Again choose a "theme" - more of a category where Bookemon will list your completed book. A logical option is "school." Experiment with tools to upload files (within file limits), add images, add text, etc. Written help is offered as you go, but there is no video demo. SAVE often. Turn margins on to avoid chopping content. To share the book, you must "publish" it (i.e. finalize).
Once published, locate the book under "My Books" and use options to share (by email--and see the URL to copy from there), "Make a new edition" to create a new version--also useful for treating the original as a template for later books), Post to Other Sites offers embed codes. The BEST option is to click the book COVER which opens a new window without ads or "stuff," and copy the ADDRESS of that window to paste into email, etc. You can also mark that clean window view as a Favorite on a classroom computer!
Use your edCenter settings to manage social networking features. This will avoid the "public" Bookemon features such as opportunities to share address books, use social tools such as Facebook to share your books, etc. Teacher-controlled edCenter accounts are probably the easiest option for managing within school policies.
With younger students, have them begin their work in PowerPoint then upload for whole-class books. See an example, created by the TeachersFirst Edge editors . The example is full of ideas for classroom use from Kindergarten to high school, including science concept tales, poetry books, general writing, math problem solve-its, and more. ANY grade can use this tool, depending on the amount of direction by the teacher. (By the way, the correct answer to the problem in the sample book is c. 27.) Another idea: have students create personalized books for their parents or grandparents for special occasions (Mother's Day, Father's Day, or Grandparent's Day).
Use the mobile device features offered in your BYOD classroom to make and share books, PDF's, and more. Tip: Use this site for a guided introduction to social networking as a class, an excellent teaching opportunity for digital citizenship in the context of a project.
This is one of the best creative tools for gifted students to go above and beyond regular curriculum. Don't let the "juvenile" appearance fool you. Even older students can write and include images to create and share books of any length. Any independent research or writing project can become an interactive book. Even advanced science experiments and lab reports can be shared online using this tool. Once you have one book, you can use that as a template for others. Inspire your gifted students to create literary magazine or even a personal online "portfolio" of writing, artwork, or photography presented in interactive book form.
Edge Features:
Includes an education-only area for teachers and students
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log in (NO email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be shared by URL
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
Comments
This is one of my all time favorite creative tools. Very versatile. Great for making "buddy books" or for teacher-created learning "books." Make one as a whole class to summarize a science unit in primary grades. I even use it personally to make fee online "gifts" for children I know. I did purchase one print version, and it looked great.Thinking, PA, Grades: 5 - 10
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boomy - Boomy Corporation
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Offer students the option to explore their creative side with boomy. Ask students to make soothing music to play during study and quiet times, have them create audio to accompany their class presentations, or challenge students to make music that sets the mood for dramatic moments in literature. This site is an excellent way to appeal to your musically inclined students. Enhance student learning by asking them to share ideas on how to create different types of music by recording their screen using Free Screen Recorder Online, reviewed here. Have students share tips and advice on how to create different moods by adjusting settings within music created with boomy.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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BotLogic - Dolphin Micro team
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Demonstrate how to play BotLogic on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Let students explore and play on their own using classroom computers or other web-enabled devices. Use BotLogic to teach logic, problem-solving, systems thinking, and, in some cases, collaboration. BotLogic is perfect for differentiation, allow students to move through levels at their pace. Share this on your website for students to use at home, too. Teachers of even very young gifted students can turn them loose with these challenges when they have already mastered math or science curriculum.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Bounce - ZURB
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
Create a detailed and guided "web quest" for students. This way they cannot be confused about what they should be looking for on a page; they can simply look for your comments and find their information. Help special education students and others keep track of and organize what they have found on the web for research projects. This would be an excellent tool for showing and teaching reading comprehension. Assign students a web article or story and have them notate it with their pre reading questions, main idea sentences or summaries of what they have read. They can share their links with you as an assignment submission or for others to view. Use Bounce for students to critique or analyze bias or misinformation on websites as part of an information literacy unit. Students could also use a picture of an animal or plant and add the taxonomical information to it in science class and create a "web trail" of insects using Bounce as an alternative to an old fashioned insect project. Collect and annotate from all over the web!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Braineos - Braineos.com
Grades
5 to 12In the Classroom
Have students or groups of students create flashcards for study. Provide the link to this site or ready made flashcard sets for study as needed. Create flashcards for vocabulary words in all subjects, math facts, or any other material that needs to be learned.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Break Your Own News - Jon Cresswell
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
This site contains some ads that may be distracting; however, a quick lesson on avoiding them and engaging with only the desired content is all that is needed to keep most students from following advertising links. Add a link to the Break Your Own News Generator to your lists of other tools to use with images for many different purposes. One excellent tool for organizing and sharing resources with students is Padlet, reviewed here. Create columns in Padlet to organize different resources and then add links to make it easy for you and your students to find what they need. For example, engage students at the beginning of a new lesson or unit by creating a breaking news image to introduce the content. One example might be for a science lesson featuring simple machines with a headline sharing a runaway object that leads into your study of inclined planes. Extend learning and ask students to become creators and share breaking headlines to discuss new information they learned, share important information about story characters, or create a made-up headline about historical events. Include breaking headline images as part of multimedia presentations built using Google Slides, reviewed here, or Canva Edu, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Breaking News Generator - Russell Tarr
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Assess students prior knowledge by creating a Breaking News piece to introduce a new unit. Replace paper and pencil and ask students to fill in an interactive KWL chart from Holt, reviewed here, or discuss in small groups what they know about the topic. Transform student learning by using their "Breaking News" in presentation slides by downloading the image from your computer. Then upload the image to a slide presentation creator such as Slides, reviewed here. Suggest to students that they do the same for their presentations. Use as a timeline of events for lab experiment, a novel study, historical event, and more. You might want to think about using this tool as a storyboard for digital storytelling as this tool could work well for storyboarding.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Brisk - Brisk
Grades
1 to 12In the Classroom
Use Brisk to quickly adapt and differentiate text or content by reading level and language needs or to translate text into the native language of multilingual learners and generate comprehension questions. Differentiate text for special needs students or gifted students based on their ability. Use the quiz creation tool to quickly generate quizzes that include multiple choice or short response questions based on the website's information. After generating quiz questions, copy and paste them into an online quiz creation tool such as Formative, reviewed here. Use Formative to engage students through teacher-paced or student-paced activities.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Brush Ninja - Ben Gillbanks
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Use Brush Ninja in a variety of ways. Share this site with students and give them time to explore and experiment. When working with troubled students, use this site to let students share their thoughts and emotions through an animation. This is an excellent site to use with students who love art and enjoy sharing their learning through creative expressions. Take a look at the images created by other users in the gallery as inspiration for how to use animations. Ask students to create animations demonstrating science concepts like erosion, weathering, or chemical reactions. Use this site to have students create animations demonstrating events from stories, share their thought process in math, or animate an event from history. Have students include their animations when creating multimedia projects in an online tool like Sway, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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bubbl.us - Kirill Edelman and Levon Amelyan
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Click "Start Here" to type the subject of your concept map. Hitting your Enter key creates a new level (branch) within the map. Tab creates an additional branch on the same level as the current topic. Experiment with the small icons on each "element" to change colors, drag, make new connections, etc. Save and set sharing (read-only or open access) in the area at the right. You can "send" a read-only link via email or copy the embed code from the Menu at lower right), but you cannot find the URL directly from your map. "Send" it to yourself via email to copy the actual URL.There are countless possibilities at this mental mapping site. Demonstrate the tool on an interactive whiteboard or projector, and then allow students to try to create their own graphic organizers. Use this site for literature activities, research projects, social studies, or science topics of study. Use this site to create family trees. Have students collaborate together (online) to create group mind maps or review charts before tests on a given subject. Have students organize color-code concepts to show what they understand, wonder, question; map out a story, plotline, or LIFETIME; map out a step-by-step process (life cycle); map a real historical event as a choose-your-own-adventure with alternate endings(?) based on pivotal points; plan a "tour" for a "thought museum." Use this mapping website as an alternative to a traditional test, quiz, or homework assignment in literature or social studies: have students demonstrate their understanding by completing a graphic organizer about the main points. To minimize the number of maps on a free account, have students screenshot or print their results to turn them in. See more ideas in the linked example above!
Comments
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Bubble Test Form Generator - Answer Sheets - Catpin Productions
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Are your students in trouble with the bubble? Provide them with a daily double bubble form. Introduce your students to the many different styles of testing early in the school year. Create forms that mirror graphics, a feelings chart, fact/opinion, music staffs, and many other options. Go beyond the bubble and have students analyze assessment results. Tired of grading? Use the registration marks to create forms for automated testing machines. Students can self-correct using test keys. Get instant results for faster analysis. Give your younger students regular practice with bubbles by creating a "lunch count" bubble sheet students fill in "packing" or "buying" or a daily attendance check in sheet.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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bulb - Bulb, Inc.
Grades
2 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use bulb for student portfolios in any subject. Set up an account with your teacher name, email, password, and some basic information. Once you and your students' accounts are set up, share how to get around bulb on an interactive whiteboard or with a projector to get students started. When you (or your students) create group pages, anyone you invite can publish to the group. However, students will also have their own account and can keep pages private. Science teachers could have students write up their lab reports in a portfolio, and history teachers could set up portfolios for student report writing. Have teens and older students upload work throughout the year to create their own "me-portfolios." Create portfolios (with permission) to share younger students' work with parents and students during conferences. Use this tool to show finished projects or to show changes in a project from start to finish. Make a work prototype site and upload examples of exemplary work to share with students to set expectations for completed products before beginning a project. Create a link to this tool on your class website for students to share projects and information. (Get parent permission before posting students' work!) Have students take ownership of their own portfolios to show progress and products across several years. Have older students build portfolios to share as part of career and college preparation. Art teachers will want to share this as a portfolio option for their students.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Buzzsprout - Tom Rossi
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Even if you aren't ready to create podcasts, share the How To Start a Podcast page with your students with excellent tips for creating any type of speaking presentation, create regular or special podcasts to share on your class web page or wiki to read/listen to in class AND from home, adding a touch of blended learning to your classroom! Have readers (perhaps older buddies) enhance their learning by building fluency and recording selected passages for your non-readers. Don't forget to have them listen and critique their podcast! Launch a service project for your fifth or sixth graders to record stories for the kindergarten to use in their reading and listening center. Have students create "you are there" recordings as "eyewitnesses" to historical or current events. Make a weekly class podcast, with students taking turns writing and sharing the "Class News." Have students create radio advertisements for concepts studied in class (Buy Dynamic DNA!). Have students write and record their own stories or poetry in dramatic readings. Language students or beginning readers could record their fluency by reading passages and listening to themselves. Allow parents to hear their child's progress reading aloud, etc. Compare world language, speech articulation, or reading fluency at two points during the year. Have your Shakespeare students record a soliloquy. Write and record a poem for Father's or Mother's Day (or other special events) and send the URL as a gift to that special person. If you have gifted students who lean toward the dramatic, this tool is simple enough for them to create dramatic mini casts without needing a video camera.Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Comments
Great resource for podcast novices like me! I love the step-by-step instructions to help with creating a podcast as well as the helpful tips and ideas for a podcast. Can't wait to begin using with my K-5 students.Christina, , Grades: 0 - 8
The podcasting 101 information is incredibly helpful for anyone wishing to begin podcasting. It also establishes tips that can be helpful for any speaker (as the description says).Patricia, NJ, Grades: 6 - 12
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Calameo - Jean-Olivier de Berard and Mathieu Quisefit
Grades
2 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use this site to engage students in Writing for Digital Publication, an important part of the Common Core. In social studies or government class have individual students or small groups design magazines for the candidate of their choice. Remember those travel brochures your world language students used to make with glue sticks and scissors? Try this online tool instead. World language students can also create an interactive magazine telling a story in their new language. In science class students can design a booklet to explain cells, life cycles, or any science topic. Instead of a book report, try a digital magazine. Do an author study via a digital magazine. Create a poetry magazine. Have your ESL/ELL students create a bilingual magazine in English AND their native language. Create digital magazines for any subject or topic: explain an event in history, demonstrate different types of animals or habitats. Create an ongoing Calameo magazine of class activities.Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
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Calendly - calendly.com
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use Calendly to schedule parent or student conferences that meet mutual scheduling needs. Create events for professional development sessions. Have participants choose a time for attending or presenting at sessions. Share with your school's Parent Teacher Organization as an excellent scheduling tool for any event. Link this up with your Google Calendar and save time, emails, phone calls, and more!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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CamStudio - Free Screen Streaming Software - CamStudio
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use CamStudio to record instructions for using websites. Share how to perform problems, step by step directions for any project, and much more. Leave a video message for a substitute teacher or even the class! Create a video message to share with parents about current projects, clips from field trips, and more. Share on your class website for students to view at home. Allow students to record a video sharing their favorite websites or tips for solving math problems.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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