The students in Debbie Creticos's and Lucy Divis's 2nd grade class learned about alliteration through painting and writing on the computer. Their work is impressive and delightful.
They used Pixie 2 to create the work, then uploaded the images to Google...
Google Presentation for Guided Student Learning
Google Presentation is a versatile tool. Since a presentation can be published online and linked to a blog or website, perhaps a good use of this tool is for guided student learning. After all, this Cool Tool is really only a blank page.
I'd like to...
Prezi: Online Presentations with a Twist
Prezi is an online presentation tool that's quite exciting, and certainly a welcome change of pace to the traditional slideshow. Prezi abandons the concept of using slide after slide to display bulleted text, and instead uses one giant canvas to hold...
Google Presentation for Student Portfolios
Compatibility with PowerPoint combined with the ability to easily publish slideshows online makes Google Presentation a Cool Tool for creating and maintaining student portfolios. I know of two innovative teachers in D97 who are building these portfolios,...
How's Your Web Presence?
Blogger Flicker Twitter Facebook Picassa Glogster SecondLife WikiSpaces GoogleSites GoogleDocs Del.icio.us VoiceThread YouTube Diigo GlobalSchoolNet... the list goes on...
If you are using Web 2.0 tools, then you do have a web presence. Have you googled...
Drawing & Painting: Kerpoof Studio
Kerpoof Studio is another tool for drawing and creating on the computer. It's kid-friendly, and again, no sign in is needed to use the tool in it's most basic form. But, Kerpoof does offer free teacher accounts which are certainly worth the trouble of...
Drawing & Painting: ArtPad
Drawing and painting can create a bridge between the ideas in a child's head and the blank piece of paper. Students are generally pretty movitivated and engaged when drawing and painting on the computer, and many are very good at it. In an effort to...
Using Avatars to Teach Internet Safety
Using educationally appropriate online tools with students opens up a world of possibilities, but it's important to communicate a clear and consistent message about Internet safety every time you introduce a new tool. If students hear about Internet...
Back To School: Cool Tools Preview
It's time to get back to school, which means it's time for me to start blogging regularly about Cool Tools again. I spent a good chunk of my summer using cool tools with fabulous teachers who were eager to use the tools in innovative ways. We discovered...
VoiceThread - Online Conversations Around Media
VoiceThread is an online tool for having conversations around media. The possibilities for use in the Classroom are tremendous. This powerful tool is not free, but you can sign up for a trial account to get your feet wet.
Internet safety is a very...
Glogs: A SlideShow of Samples
We have created several glogs as samples for teachers and can think of many more to create. These launchers are easily accessible tools to guide and differentiate student learning in a variety of ways. They are visual, fun to create and extremely versatile.Glogster's...
Glogs as a Collection of Resources
Glogs offer educators the opportunity to collect carefully chosen web resources and create an attractive package for students in order to guide the learning.Here is a Memorial Day Resources blog.View the Memorial Day Resouces B...
Glogs as Curriculum Launchers
Glogs seem to have many uses in the world of education. In this case a glog is used as a curriculum launcher, to help build background knowledge through video, and guide student learning. It includes a WebQuest for differentiated learning opportunities...
Glogster: Online Multi-Media Posters
Glogster is a cool tool that lets you create online posters, rich with multi-media. Instead of using poster board and ink, creators gather information, synthesize it, remix it and then create something of their own that is environmentally friendly.
Glogster...
Jing Video Tutorials
Jing is a free tool from TechSmith that allows you to capture the screen on your computer to create a video tutorial. You do have to record your voice to narrate your video tutorial, but after a little practice this becomes more comfortable.Here is...
Develop Keyboarding Habits with Three Cool Tools
Effective and efficient computer use is essential to students today and keyboarding skills provide an important foundation. For this reason, I am focusing attention and effort and helping teachers and parents assist students in developing keyboarding...
Google Reader: A Closer Look
Google Reader is a cool tool that allows you to collect information posted on your favorite blogs and keep it organized and updated until you have time to read it. Here is picture of the Google Reader screen.
Please notice the option to Add a Subscription...
Subscribe to Blogs: Let the Information Come to You
For a brief moment, I'm going to elaborate on an idea introduced to me by Helena Bowers at the Illinois Computing Educators conference. She described The New Digital Divide in great detail, but the one idea that encouraged me to start this blog can be...
Safely Blogging with Students
There are three very good reasons to consider using a blog as a tool to teach writing, online communication, safety, and etiquette all within the context of your curriculum.
The teacher has the ability to monitor everything published on the blog, with...
Something Fun: Visual Bookmarks
MyClusta has created a cool tool called Visual Bookmarks, which is attractive for a few reasons. Creating a page of visual bookmarks is a nice way to build a collection of special bookmarks you want to keep handy, and the page can be fun to create. Also,...
This Week's Cool Tool: GoogleDocs
Types of GoogleDocs:There are four types of GoogleDocs to use. The documents are collaborative, which means they are easily shared, stored and potentially published online.Document: This is a basic word processing document that integrates with Microsoft...
Wordle Fun
Last week I had the pleasure of wordling with many people in our school district in one way or another. It was fun! If you are still thinking about wordling, please take a minute to view the list of great things to wordle, and let me know if you are...
About This Blog
I decided to start this blog as a way to keep others informed about all of the Web 2.0 tools that are rapidly emerging. In all honesty, I hesitated to start it because I am already using various tools to publish on the web and collaborate with others,...
