Time Zone Converter

Time Zone Converter is pretty much as straightforward as it gets when it comes to calculating time differences. There are two clocks. The one on the left displays your local time. The one on the right will do the conversion for a number of major cities. If you simply need to know the time elsewhere in a hurry, this easy-to-use website has you covered.

BBC Dimensions - How Big Really

How Big Really is a site where you identify an event or object (The Great Wall Of China, a battle, etc.), then type in a zipcode, and then it will overlay the dimensions of that event or object to the zip code you picked to see how it would size up in the area you selected.

Zinepal - Create Your eBook

Zinepal is a way to bring the news to students by “clipping” online articles. This is a wonderful site for those making the move to ebook readers. Zinepal turns existing web content into printable PDFs. In four easy steps, you can finalize your own ebook. It's an easy way to repurpose your existing web content using eBooks and printable PDFs.

Yolink

Yolink is a search accelerator, that searches not just a page, but also the links contained within that page. This makes finding contextually linked information super simple. You can add it to your browser or as a gadget to a blog, as I have done on the right side of this blog. Try it out by typing in a topic and if that keyword is anywhere in my blog, you will see immediately where it is located.

Top Sites for Booking And Annotating

1. Diigo - Excellent site for bookmarking and annotating w/ the ability to create student accounts, simply the best!!
   
2. Delicioius - Probably the most popular bookmarking site on the web w/ lots of educators to be found!!
   
3. iCyte - Similar to Diigo w/ the ability to annotate and then share or embed into a site.
   
4. Rooh.It - A great way to highlight content on the web and then share w/ others and add comments!
   
5. Digg - A popular way to bookmark w/ the ability to share w/ others, comment, and even generate a widget for a website.
   
6. Trailmeme - An innovative site w/ a beautiful user interface for annotating web content and generating a unique user interface/path to follow.
   
7. School Noodle - A great way for teachers to bookmarks sites and then share these resources w/ other educators!!
   
8. Krunchd - A nice way to take a collection of sites and create one unique URL for all of them.

Join.me

Keeping in the sharing theme lately, another nice free service site is
Join.me, which allows Mac and Windows users to quickly share their screens with each other and work together. To use Join.me you do need to download the Join.me client. Once you've downloaded the client you can start sharing your screen with anyone you like. Just give your nine digit access number to your collaborators to give them access to your screen and to converse with you.

dushare - Real-time P2P file transfers

Lately, I've been creating larger video files that I need to send my coworkers. I came across an easy to use site called Dushare. This is a site for visual learners as there are not many written directions. Just follow the steps presented in symbols and you can load your file up in a very short time. Then copy the link and email it to a peer. Once they open the file you will be connected and can monitor that person's progress in downloading the file as well as chat directly with the other person. Dushare is a nice alternative to share files that may be too large to email to someone. Dushare is a free service and requires no registration.

Type Racer

Type Racer is a quick, fun way to practice keyboarding skills using a racing game as the premise. You can even invite friends to race/type against you. Would make a make a nice addition to teaching keyboarding at the Middle School level.

Vimeo - Alternate to Youtube

After creating a fairly large how-to video for my teachers, I was frustrated by the uploading process by such sites as Teacher Tube and You Tube, as well as the overall quality of the video resolution.
Thinking I would have to completely recreate my video, I tried VIMEO, another video sharing website. My large video uploaded extremely quickly and the interface is easy to use. Since I really only wanted my teachers to see this video, I chose the option of a password which I mailed with the URL to the video. Teachers then only had to type in the password and it opened up. What is most amazing about Vimeo is the quality of the video clarity. Unlike the other video sharing sites, my video did not lose any of it's original resolution in the transfer process.
Using the free service of Vimeo, each user is given a 500MB upload quota per week.
One downside is that VIMEO may be blocked as it is initially was at our district simply because it was a video sharing site like You Tube, but it one site worth opening up the filter for.