Today I am sharing a guest post that I wrote for Inspired Classroom: 34 Free Productivity Tools That Will Help You Eliminate Expensive Software. These are my favorite free productivity tools to use in the classroom. Here is the first paragraph, hopefully it will convince you to go take a look at the full article 🙂
Software can be an expensive burden for schools to carry year after year. This expense can result in a decreased use of technology because schools can’t purchase the tools that make the technology worthwhile. Lack of budget doesn’t have to stop you in your tracks. There are thousands of free technology resources and online tools that will keep your students learning even without a large software budget. Below are a few of my favorite free online productivity tools that offer excellent alternatives to their expensive software counterparts.
What it is:Bemused is another site from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. BeMused helps students be excited, aware, informed, amused, and involved in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Through videos and activities sections students can discover more about the museum and gallery. Students can get involved by visiting the Your Say section or submitting their own artwork to the online Gallery. Students can watch videos including an introduction to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and short poems created by kids inspired by the issues surrounding slavery and Olaudah Equiano’s life. The online gallery holds beautiful artwork created by students. Your students can create and submit their own artwork for the online gallery. The activities section has interesting quizzes and activities about art, history and museums. In one activity, students try to find the faces in famous works of art as quickly as possible. The Your say section gives students an opportunity to talk about history, art, and museums. Students can add to an existing topic or start their own topic for discussion. Currently discussions include what would you like to see in an art gallery?; who is your favourite artist?; and Is graffiti art?
How to integrate BeMused into your curriculum:Bemused is a good place for students to be inspired by art and history. This site encourages student interaction. Students can join into forum discussions about art or history and even submit their own artwork to the online art gallery. In the video section, students can watch a video of student created poems centered around history. Use the video for classroom inspiration. Your students can create and write their own poetry inspired by history. If your students have visited many of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery sites, they may enjoy challenging themselves to the quizzes in the activities section of the site.
Tips:BeMused was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using BeMused in your classroom!
What it is:Bedazzled is another site from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In this interactive magazine, students can discover more about style, fashion, and accessories from the past to the present. Students will learn what clothes say about them (and what they say about people in the past), look at accessories throughout history, read an interview from a jewelry designer and learn how to make their own jewelry, learn about what fashion tells us about different cultures, view actual pieces of fashion and accessories from the museum, and learn about what jewelry was used for and represented in the past.
How to integrate Bedazzled into your curriculum: Do you have students (read: fashonistas) who are absolutely positive that they don’t like history? Introduce them to a love of history with the Bedazzled interactive magazine. Your students will be drawn in by the fun fashion magazine and will be intrigued by the way that fashion can be used to learn about history. Allow your students to explore the pages at their own pace as a center activity on the classroom computer or in a lab setting where each student has a computer. The magazine is an entertaining read but also packed full of history. After your students read through the magazine, challenge them to choose an accessory, fashion item, or jewelry to learn more about. Ask them to find out what was happening in the time period that the piece is worn and how the item can help them better understand the people of the time period. Take it a step further by asking students to write a fictional short story about the person who wore the item using historical facts that they learned in their exploration.
This interactive magazine is a great way to show your students that history is more than a collection of dates and facts. History is about stories, it is about people just like them. Give your students that connection and the love for history will begin to blossom. This site would have hooked me as a child!
Tips:Bedazzled was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Bedazzled in your classroom!
What it is:Alien Adventures is another site from Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. The premise of the site is that an alien king has sent two aliens, Borg and Zunk, on a mission to find out about Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Students join the aliens to discover information and activities about the collections there. Students will learn how to create a masterpiece, find hidden messages in portraits, learn about landscapes, and learn about signs and symbols. Students can also play history games like the curator collection game or the extraordinary Earth game.
How to integrate Alien Adventures into your curriculum: Alien Adventures is a fun way for students to explore a museum and learn more about art and history as they interact with fun activities and games. I love how museums are creating such wonderful websites for students to explore and enjoy learning more about art and history.
Can’t swing a visit to an art gallery or museum this year? Don’t let your students be deprived of the experience, visit the online offerings for the next best thing. Allow your students to explore the Birmingham collection online with the help of some aliens and then, come back as a class to talk about what they saw and learned on their “trip” to the museum. If you don’t have enough computers for each student, use a projector or interactive whiteboard to explore with the aliens as a class.
Tips:Alien Adventures was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Alien Adventures in your classroom!
What it is:The Pre-Raph Pack (don’t you love that name?) is a brilliant site about artists, the techniques they used, a timeline that spans 100 years, and a collection of images from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. First students discover the Pre-Raphites (that is artists who were before Raphael). Students will learn about the influences, the different styles that emerged, the early and late style and the lasting influence that these artists have. Students can learn more about the individual artists which are easily categorized and searched by last name. Next, students can learn about the different painting techniques that were used from the wet-white technique to the use of bright and vivid colors. The timeline lets students explore each time period of the almost 100 year Pre-Raphaelite movement. Finally, students can see the collection of paintings themselves. The collection is easily searchable by category.
How to integrate The Pre-Raph Pack into your curriculum:The Pre-Raph Pack is a comprehensive look at the Pre-Raphael art movement and the collection at Birmingham. Students not only get a peek at the artists themselves, they learn the history, technique, and what the movement meant to art.
This is a well put together site for use in any art class, but the in-depth look at the artists and the history makes it a great site for any classroom. Art is a medium that can absolutely hook a child on history. They begin to see that art has gone through evolutions and that it is deeply reflective of the times. If you have a student who is struggling with history, introduce them to a little art history and see if you can’t help them make different connections with the stories. I have said this many times before, but history was a hard subject for me. I saw it only as a collection of dates, facts, places, and names that I couldn’t get to relate to each other. It wasn’t until I met my husband and he started talking history, that I realized that history is all about story. The Pre-Raph Pack is a site that can help your students begin to connect the pieces in history.
Use the paintings on this site as writing prompts, ask students to write about the story they think is happening in the painting. The collection includes everything from history and medieval, to religion and myth, to portraits, literature, and landscapes. Each of your students will be able to find a painting that speaks to them.
Tips:The Pre-Raph Pack was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection. They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Pre-Raph Pack in your classroom!
What it is: Yesterday as I was scanning through my Twitter stream when I came across this tweet from my friend @jasonshmidt123: “Holy buckets of love, this is cool! RT @plugusin: Checking out Wiggio: http://wiggio.com/ for collaborating.” Now, any time buckets of love are involved I am intrigued- I had to check it out. I must say, Wiggio is a way cool tool for collaboration. Wiggio is a completely free online toolkit that makes it easy to work and coordinate with groups. Wiggio is SO very simple to use and has a very straight forward interface that makes it easy for even those who are low-tech. Wiggio lets you share and manage files, manage a group calendar, poll your group, post links, set up conference calls (including voice, webcam, shared whiteboard space, and screen sharing), chat online, send out mass text messages, and send voice or email messages to the entire group. Wiggio has a lot of features that remind me of Google Groups but some additional features that truly make it a “holy buckets of love” experience. Everything is in one place, handy and easy to use!
How to integrate Wiggio into your curriculum: I can see a lot of possibilities of Wiggio in the classroom. Use it to create a class group with student families each year. Keep families up to date with the latest happenings in your classroom, volunteer opportunities, and class projects that will need some parent support. Share all important documents, videos, and resources that you use in your classroom for easy access from home. (I can’t tell you how many, “I’ve lost the permission slip could you please send a new one?” I get in a year!). Keep all those documents in your Wiggio group file and parents will never have to worry about lost paperwork again. Live meeting opportunities mean that you can hold a virtual parent university where you catch parents up on the new math/reading/science/writing curriculum. Teach your parents everything from reading strategies to use at home to working through math problems together. Parents would love a little support in this area! Offer virtual conference opportunities for parents who are unable to make it for a live conference due to long-term illness, job travel, or in multiple parent homes.
Use Wiggio to create student groups where you keep students up to date with classroom happenings and resources. Offer your students a study hour where they can meet with you virtually for a little extra support or mentoring. Remind your students of upcoming assignments by creating to-do’s. Collect digital assignments using Wiggio files.
Students can create study groups of their own for collaborative projects. As they work together they can meet virtually, share resources and links, and create a schedule to keep themselves on task.
Working with a class outside of your school? Maybe in another state or country? Wiggio is the perfect platform for connecting them, they can work together with shared space and chat live from your classroom.
Wiggio can be used with teaching staff to keep teaching teams organized and give them a place to share resources, ideas, and share a common calendar of events.
Have ambitious parents? They can use Wiggio to collaborate and work with other parents for fundraiser events, coordinating volunteers, and special days.
I am currently using Vyew as my virtual classroom meeting space but Wiggio offers so much more functionality all in one place, I think for the next round of virtual class I will be making the switch! To quote Jason again, “Holy buckets of love, this is cool!”
Tips: Wiggio has a demo area where you can play with all of the features yourself without registering or creating an account. Note to all web 2.0 companies…this is a really nice feature, I wish you all would do it 🙂
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Wiggio in your classroom!
What it is: Sharing the web with students can be a challenge. Websites can often have urls that feel unending, students can copy down a url incorrectly, students type with different speeds, or characters show up in the address that they are unfamiliar with. Complicated urls can single-handedly convince teachers to ditch a wonderful web resource for something easier to manage…like a worksheet. Sharing websites with your students doesn’t have to be a challenge. Symbaloo EDU and Weblist are two of my favorite ways to quickly and easily share websites with students.
Symbaloo EDU is fabulous because it was created with educators in mind. Symbaloo lets you gather all of your favorite online tools and sites into a webmix about the topics you teach. Symbaloo web mixes can be published and shared with colleagues, students, and parents. Symbaloo can be used by students or teachers to create a personal learning environment. With Symbaloo folders can be created that contain sites and resources that are related. Symbaloo can be used year-long, just continue adding sites and resources for your students throughout the year. Everything that you have used all year-long will be in one easy place for students to access.
Weblist lets you pull together and organize content on the web. Create a list of urls centered on a theme and it is combined into one easy to navigate url. The list can be saved as a bookmark or a homepage. What I like about Weblist is the visual aspect. Each website is saved as a snapshot of that website with the website name and a description below. The visual organization is perfect for younger students who may not be able to navigate links designated by text.
How to integrate Symbaloo EDU and Weblist into your curriculum: Symbaloo can be used by students to create their own “textbooks”. As students search the web for resources based on subjects or inquiry questions, they can save what they find and create a virtual e-book of sorts. Symbaloo can also be used by students to organize all of their online work in one place. Students can add links to the slide shows, documents, videos, images, etc. that they create online. Symbaloo becomes an e-portfolio. Teachers can also use Symbaloo to create a customized “textbook” for their students complete with articles, maps, video, images, and interactive content.
Weblist is great for quickly sharing a collection of sites with students. Weblists are fast and easy to create (you don’t even have to login or register first!). Weblists are perfect for sharing a collection of sites in a computer lab setting or with colleagues. The visual interface of Weblist is perfect for students. Students can easily travel from one site to another because the web page is embedded in the Weblist, the url never changes.
Want to get really crazy? Combine Symbaloo and Weblist. Create folders for your students on Symbaloo so that there is one central url to go to. Have Symbaloo link to your various Weblists. This combines the great organization and collaboration aspect of Symbaloo with the awesome visual interface of Weblist. It is a powerhouse of learning for your students created by you. Cool!
Tips: Don’t forget that both Symbaloo and Weblist make for a great way to share online resources with your colleagues!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Symbaloo EDU and Weblist in your classroom!
What it is: Juxio is a new visual way to create and communicate. The web application lets students take their own images (or images from Flickr, FaceBook, or Picasa) and add them to an image stream or panel. Text descriptions can be added to the stream to describe the images. Streams are where text and images get placed. Streams expand in width as elements are added. A Jux (Juxio creation) can be expanded vertically by adding additional streams. This is useful for organizing content into categories or for comparison. Each stream can have its own header to add meaning or depth to a Jux creation. Events are used to visually segment streams. For example, students might have an animal stream of pictures that is segmented into the events “mammals” and “reptiles”. After students create a Jux, they can save it as a PDF file, print it, or share it online via email, Facebook, Twitter, or url.
How to integrate Juxio into your curriculum:Juxio is a fantastic online tool to use for online visual creation. Students can mash-up text and photos to create their own Jux that can be used to organize information or display understanding. Use Juxio for animal classification, vocabulary, historical time lines, changes over time, to tell a linear story, or display any information in an organized fashion. Take pictures of a science experiment for students to turn into a Jux, they can start at the beginning of the experiment adding captions to each picture. Text boxes can be added for students to type in their hypothesis at the beginning of the experiment and to add a concluding statement at the end. Take pictures of a school field trip and create a Juxio to tell the story of what happened on the field trip. A Jux can be created individually by students in a computer lab setting, or by a whole class using an interactive whiteboard. Class Juxio’s can be created to display new learning, each student contributing to one Jux. The finished product can be printed and saved in the classroom with the URL sent home so students can access the learning from anywhere. Use Juxio in place of a traditional Friday newsletter. Take pictures of students throughout the week, add captions explaining what learning happened during the week and add a stream for upcoming events and reminders. Anytime you add student pictures to a newsletter, the chance that a parent takes the time to read it goes way up!
Tips: Juxio requires an email address for sign up. In addition, students must be 13 or older to obtain their own account. If you teach younger students, create a class account where you are the owner. Students can create a Jux using the class account and save it with their name in the title.
Juxio offers the option to purchase the finished Jux as a poster. Prices are very reasonable and can be used for customized classroom decoration. Cool!
If your school has access to an iPod Touch or iPad lab, Juxio can be downloaded directly to the device as an application.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Juxio in your classroom!
What it is:Animation Chefs is a fun website/blog that teaches kids how to create their own animations using stop motion video techniques. The Animation Chefs teach how to create animations using a “secret” recipe. To create animations you need two things: a camera and a computer. Animation Chefs aim to help young producers of stories and animation learn about the latest and greatest ways to get their content created. The blog will continually be adding tips, tricks, and tutorials for creating online animated videos.
How to integrate Animation Chefs into your curriculum:Animation Chefs is a great place for students (and teachers) to learn the tricks of stop motion animation. Students can use this site to learn new techniques and get advice for creating their own videos. My students loved creating their own videos. Any time I mentioned a video project, the students would ask daily when we would start with it. Our students have grown up in the video generation and this is one of the languages they want to learn to speak in. Visit Animation Chefs as a class to learn about stop motion animation, for inspiration, and to learn new tricks. If you have students that are particularly intrigued by using video to tell a story, this is a great place for them to learn the tricks of the trade. Often we as teachers shy away from lessons that we aren’t familiar with. With Animation Chefs, even if you aren’t familiar with creating stop motion animation, you can provide a fun learning experience for your students. How can your students use stop motion videos for learning? Students can tell any story, illustrate their learning, explain a difficult concept, reflect on learning, or create videos for younger students/grade levels. In my computer classroom, I had students take a picture of themselves every single time they logged into the computers during the school year. We put all of the pictures in a “me” folder on their desktop, labeling each picture with the date. The last week of school, we created a stop motion video with all of the pictures by putting them into iMovie and setting the picture clip to 1 second. Students added music that they created in Garageband and a title page. The end result: each had videos of their school year where they could watch themselves “grow” up. This works especially well in second through fifth grade where the changes in a years time are marked.
Tips:Animation Chefs has a Twitter page, if your class is on Twitter, they may be a good tweep to follow as a class.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Animation Chefs in your classroom!
What it is:Flixtime is an online tool that lets students create 60 second video slideshows. Slideshows can contain videos, pictures, text and music. The interface of Flixtime is easy to use; it looks a lot like the timelines used in iMovie and would be a great way to introduce students to the idea of video timelines and a separate sound track. With Flixtime, students can adjust the screen resolution of their video and choose a speed for their slideshow to play. As I used Flixtime, I couldn’t get over how much like Animoto it is. If you need an alternative to Animoto, this is your tool!
How to integrate Flixtime into your curriculum:Flixtime is a great tool for telling a story. Students can use Flixtime to tell a story about their learning, to illustrate a science experiment, to create a video timeline of a historical event, to illustrate vocabulary, to create an auto-bio poem, or to create a custom public service announcement. Flixtime is an easy way for students to create something new and demonstrate understanding on any topic. My students have used video slideshows to create math story problems for a buddy to solve, they turn out great and sure beat the dry story problems from math textbooks! Flixtime videos can be saved on the student Flixtime account, embedded in a class blog/wiki/website, emailed, and even downloaded!
Tips: Flixtime requires an email account for sign up. The email account doesn’t need to be verified which means that students can sign up with a temporary email account from tempinbox or mailinator. If you teach elementary students, create a class Flixtime account where students can create and save videos. This ensures that you know what is being posted and puts the videos all in one place for easy viewing.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Flixtime in your classroom!
