Coolest Tools of 2010

Time to reflect on some of the coolest tools...

Diversions
Sporcle.com - A place to go for mentally stimulating diversions
Keep your mind active and use it to master one of many timed quizzes on your favorite topic. An added challenge is in the spelling skills required. Remember, it's Sporcle with a c, not a k.

Fruit Ninja HD if you need a 2 minute break and have easy access to an iPad, try this app. to experience the joy of slicing fruit and watching it splat. Although it is best played on an iPad, you can also get it for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Networking
ePals / twitter / delicious
It took a long time for me to figure out how to use Twitter, but after publishing a collaborative learning project in ePals and connecting to Twitter through ePals I received 22 inquires about the project in one day and I also found a few people talking about the project in Delicious. Wow, now I get it!

Collaborative Learning Space 
Wikispaces offers a free and simple educator platform with plenty of possibilities for engaging students in virtual work because it includes widgets for easy integration of user-friendly web 2.0 tool.

Primary Communication Tool 
Still Blogger, a quick and easy tool for frequently updating content and maintaining a web presence.

 Best Blogger Gadget: Picture gadget w/link

Publishing Student Work 
VoiceThread and an avatar provide a great way to launch student work so it is live and worldwide.  A bag of avatar resources can be found in my Bag Stream tab.

Staying Organized
EverNote is a well-organized place in the cloud accessible from any computer or Apple mobile device.

Presentation Tool
Prezi,  a nonlinear presentation tool that requires the designer to redefine and construct knowledge in the process of building it. The end product is quite engaging for an audience.

Social Bookmarking Tools 

With so many choices available I've used my favorite tool, Bag the Web, to put together a bag of social bookmarking tools to find the right tool to match your brain.
Check out the Bag Stream tab at the top of this blog for more bags of useful tools.

Muti-Media Tool for Students

Glogster.edu is still a great and free tool which allows students to create multi-media posters from the resources available on the web. Student account management features make this a very versatile and safe tool.