DuckDuckGo - A Simplified Search Engine

http://duckduckgo.com/

Duck Duck Go is a creative and simple to use search engine. When you enter a search term that can have multiple meanings, Duck Duck Go alerts you to that and asks you what you really want to search for. For example, if you enter the search term "titan," Duck Duck Go will tell you that "titan" could mean different things such as:





Duck Duck Go also provides brief information summaries when you search for topics. This is handy if you're not really looking for a lot of information about a topic, but are just in need of a quick synopsis of a topic.
And for real fun, click the I'm feeling Ducky icon

to get a random selection choice of the word you entered.

Freeology - Free Printables for Teachers

Freeology is a site that provides dozens of printable forms teachers. Freeology offers dozens of free graphic organizer forms, calendars, awards forms, and coloring pages. Teachers can also take advantage of Freeology's free math worksheet creator and free wordsearch generator. All of the forms on Freeology can be downloaded as PDFs.

Dabbleboad

Dabbleboardis a free virtual whiteboard, quick and easy to use. You can easily use it as a virtual classroom.
You can add text, images, shapes from the program, or your own documents.
Then you can share and/or collaborate in real-time.

Click here to see example of how you can use Dabbleboard in the classroom.

Kidblog

Kidblog.org
A colleague of mine brought my attention to this site. I've had teacher requests in the past to create a blog that students could comment and create posts, but most sites involved email addresses which is a hassle to create for elementary students. Kidblog.org doesn't require email addresses to create a class, and best of all it was built by teachers, for teachers.

Kidblog meets the need for a safe and simple blogging platform suitable for elementary and middle school students. Most importantly, Kidblog allows teachers to monitor and control all publishing activity within the classroom blogging community.

It's easy to create a free account and set up a class. Each student that you enter into your class can read other post in the class, comment on posts, and create their own.

Screencasting with Jing

Ever wondered how people show you so clearly what is happening on their computer? Well, they are using a technique called screen casting, also known as video screen capturing.

Check out this blog post here and learn how how to start screencasting in 7 minutes. This video will show how to install Jing and make a screencast.

Some great tips for first time screencasters:

* Do a walk-through first of all so you're practiced
* Speak slowly and clearly
* Record the audio in a quiet room (you can clearly hear other background voices in Jez's example above - best avoid this if you're doing work for clients!)
* Don't wiggle the mouse to highlight something, prefer to use an editor later to add highlights or spotlights
* Just Do It - don't worry about it, just make a recording and repeat it if it wasn't good enough. Soon you'll have something online that Does The Job

Create Your Own Wall Posters

Create your own wall size posters for the classroom using either

Blockposters.com
or
Wallpostr.com

Both sites enlarge any picture so that you can print it out on multiple sheets of paper and create a huge wall-sized poster. Just upload a picture and select how many pages wide it should be. Your image will be divided into multiple pages so you can print each page on your printer! After it's printed, hang each sheet up in a grid pattern to make your custom poster.

Word Clouds

Word Clouds (also known as ”tag clouds”) are a unique and powerful visual depiction of words.

There are many sites that you can use to create word clouds.
Wordle, Tagul, and Tagcrowd are some of the most commonly used sites.

You can paste or type in the words you want to use and then create.