Shelfster

Shelfster is a free site that allows you to bookmark and annotate websites while researching. You can create a document, edit it with a simple drag/drop of links, or type in your document as well.   Then save it online (as part of the free account you create) or download it as a PDF.
Shelfster also has an iPad and iPhone app.

Classroom Integration Ideas:
Shelster can help students organize their internet research.  Shelfster will soon integrate with Google Docs, which could allow students to share and peer edit their research.

Cite This For Me

Cite This For Me is a free website that helps students format reference lists or citation pages. Students fill out each box to create a reference list.  They can sort them alphabetically, and download the formatted reference page.

Classroom Integration Ideas:
Cite This For Me is a great resource for students doing research, especially if it is from online sources such as podcasts, websites, and online videos.

Alphabet Zoo

Alphabet Zoo is an iPad app great for practicing the recognition of the alphabet sounds. Each letter is associated with an animal and an a sound. The animal picture and sounds help kids recognize the sounds of the letters of the alphabet.  When a letter is touched the first time, the user hears the name of the letter.  The second and third time the letter is pressed the user hears the sound that the letter makes.  The fourth time the letter is touched the letter changes into a picture associated with that letter.

Classroom Integration Ideas:
This app would be a great for younger students make the connection between the name of each letter and the sound associated with that letter.

Word Dynamo

Word Dynamo is a free site from Dictionary.com that estimates how many words you know. By answering ten questions, the site will calculate a word score, which adjusts as you learn new words. Word Dynamo also includes a word challenge that has up to 20 levels customized for your skill level, a library section, and a vocabulary game that allows you to match terms and definitions.

Classroom Integration:

Word Dynamo is could be used by any grade level, especially as a vocabulary center, as students learn to add new words to their vocabulary.  Because it utilizes student feedback, it will continue to challenge students to increase their skill level. 

Password Bird

Password Bird is a free website that asks you three questions then generates a password for you based on your responses.  The passwords include numbers and letters. If you don't like the password it generates, click the link for a new password.

Converticious

Converticious is a free site that offers a simple online unit converter. 

The site lets you convert temperature, volume, distance, data bytes, weight, area, speed and time.  

It's easy to use, simply select the converter, enter your value, choose the units to convert to, and you'll get you're conversion. 

It also contains a list of all units and their symbols and a regular calculator.

My Botanic Planet

My Botanic Planet is free site that helps elementary students learn about plants.  It includes standardized lesson plans and related interactive games for students to explore basic botany.

File Sharing Sites

A few more free file sharing sites to check out:

Simple Share gives you 5 GB of free storage that lets you upload entire folders as well as individual files. It does require a registration.

Fyles gives you up to 9 GB of file sharing with no log in.

goPileus gives you 1 GB of free file sharing space. You can upload files and have them available for download during 30 minutes. Any person you share the relevant links with will be able to get them.

Word Hippo

Word Hippo is a online dictionary, thesaurus, and translator.  You can find synonyms, antonyms, etc. 

Snapify

Snapify is a free Google Chrome extension that allows you to highlight a word, phrase, or image marker on any webpage, then by clicking it or "Snapping it", Snapify will then open up its search box with results from Google, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc.  What makes this unique, is that you can visit other websites and pages without opening new tabs or leaving the current page you are browsing.
The search results appear in a window in the same tab.  You can also open external links on a given page within its box.
By following the link, and downloading the extension on your CHROME browser, you will easily be able to use this handy tool on any webpage you visit while browsing in Chrome.

Kiedos.com

 Kideos is a free site that is filled with online safe, kid friendly videos. They are organized by age groups (such as 0-2, 3-4, etc.) and abide by COPPA compliance.

Google Swiffy

 Swiffy is a Google Lab addition that let’s you upload a SWF file (Flash file) and convert it to HTML5 which allows you to use flash content on devices without a Flash player (i.e. iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch).    Swiffy works directly from your web browser. It works in Firefox, Safari and Chrome, and the Mobile Safari.
This could be the answer all iPad and iPhone / Touch owners have been waiting for to view Flash videos.

Juxio

Juxio is a site that allows you to build your own posters free using a simple drag and drop interface. Posters may be created from templates that range from educational to birthdays.  They can also be built from scratch where you add your own text and images. Posters can then be printed or saved, and can be shared or marked private.

Kidipede

Kidipede is a free kids' online encyclopedia, that's a great resource for elementary and middle school students to use when researching for reports.  Browse by topic, country or even era and you will be able to get detailed information on subjects ranging from architecture to ancient science.

Encyclopedia of Life / Earth

Two related websites offer online references and databases like few others: Encyclopedia of Life and

Encyclopedia of Earth. Encyclopedia of Life has online reference sources and databases for every one of the 1.9 million species that are named and known on this planet, while Encyclopedia of Earth has references on Earth's natural environments, and their interaction with society. Both free sites provide expert-reviewed collections of content intended to used by students and educators.  

iPiccy

iPiccy is a fee all-purpose online photo editor.  You can add text and all many different types of effects to your photos. You can upload an image or grab its url address off the Web.  Best of all, no registration is required.

Zondle

Zondle is a new free site for educational games that supports learning. There are games to choose from in every subject area. 

SMART Board tutorials

Fusion Universal offers for free more than three dozen SMART Board tutorial videos. The videos cover everything from turning on a SMART Board to creating lesson activities.

Disaster Watch

Disaster Watch is free site that teaches kids to look for the signs of impending disasters and to be prepared when a disaster may be coming their way.  Good to use when teaching weather and works perfect with interactive whiteboards.

Fyles

I posted about several file sharing sites, before, but this may be the easiest to use yet. 
Fyles is free site that lets you share files.  This site is extremely simple and easy to use.
The screen shot above is what the home page looks like.  You simply drag and drop a file onto the web page.  You are then given a link that you send to whomever you are sharing the file with.  There is no registration required. There is a 2GB file size limit though. A password is provided for each file you share, allowing to later delete it off their servers if you want.

My Hurricane

		My Hurricane is a free web tool that tracks hurricanes and storms.  The world map displays hurricanes, their predicted paths, its position, maximum wind speeds, maximum gusts, and minimum pressure.My Hurricane is not only a useful site for tracking actual storms during hurricane season, but by using the historical track options, teachers can use this site for a multitude of areas, including practicing latitude and longitude coordinates.

Googlios

As our district is making the move to "Go Google",  I came across Googlios. This site  shows how free tools from Google can be used to create ePortfolios by creating a portfolio using a Google Site.
The site has examples of Googlios, how to get started, tips and ideas, suggested readings, and great resources if you are looking for ideas to use Google tools with your classes.

PDFtoWord

 

 

PDF to Word is a free site that allows you to upload a file convert and email it to yourself in seconds. Three easy steps are all you need.

1. Select PDF to convert

2. Convert PDF file to .Doc or .RTF

3. Email file to yourself (or someone else).  

Fraboom

  Fraboom is a free online children’s museum that includes interactive books, games, vocabulary words, and live online classes.  There is also a section called Fraboom TV that has short cartoons that teach vocabulary words.

Present.me

Present.me is a web service that lets you create effective presentations through your PowerPoint files.  What makes this site unique, is it lets you add a narrative to the presentation. Once you upload your PowerPoint, you can record a narrative through your webcam and microphone as if you were presenting you slildeshow. The final presentation then appears with your webcam recording on the right and slides on the left. A filmstrip view of the slides is also given on the bottom of the presentation. Although there is a paid service, PresentMe offers a free plan that lets you record up to 10 recordings per month; each of these presentations can be 15 minutes long.

4 Free Photos

4 Free Photos is site with images that can be used under Creative Commons licensing. Some images are free while others can be purchased from Shutterstock.  You can download more than one image at a time by using a feature called lightbox. This is similar to keeping them on a clipboard before you are ready to finish your search and download all the images you have selected.  You can also keep those images stored in your lightbox if you complete the free registration for 4 Free Photos.

BooNote

BooNote is a free site that is easy to use for bookmarking. It lets you organize your sites, and add notes to for each one.  It does require you to register on the site to use it. 

Word It Out

 

Word It Out is a free site that creates word clouds out of any text that you paste into the word cloud generator. You can change the word cloud to the color and size you would like.  You can also choose to "Word It Out" meaning you can have the word cloud take out any word of the text that you don't want included.  This is great for when you are pasting large amounts of text into the cloud such as a presidential speech.  Thanks to Free Technology For Teachers for bringing this site to my attention. 

Ge.tt

Ge.tt is an easy to use site that lets you share files. You don't have to register either if you want to use it for quick transfers (Ge.tt storage is temporary unless you register.)  After you click which file you want to share, you are given a link to send to the person you want to share the image, doc, zip files, etc. with. 

Civil War Interactives From The Washington Post

Here are two new Civil War interactive sites both from the Washington Post.

Battles and Casualties of the Civil War

 
Civil War Timeline: Fury Unleashed


Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for first posting these. 

Pics4Learning

Pics4Learning - This free copyright friendly site consists of thousands of photos hat have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers.  Students and teachers may use ANY image in the Pics4Learning collection. And the photos are organized by topic.

5 Free Paint Apps for iPad

5 Free Paint Apps for iPad

SketchBook Mobile Express App, which has been described as professional-grade free paint app for iPad. It includes the color wheels that contain all primary colors and the customizable color swatches, the dynamic symmetric drawing mode, flood fill, photo import and several levels of undo/redo.

MyPaint Free App  is a free iPad painter where you can start to develop a new art work directly from scratch on a black canvas. You can paint with all sorts of colours, scribble and even edit a photo directly from your library.

Kids Paint HD App is a great app that can keep kids busy on the iPad. The user interface on this free iPad paint app is so simple, containing random colours and brush sizes which make for easy painting from the scratch.

Doodle Kids HD App  allows you to create wonderful painting effects on a black canvas with full screen.

Drawing Box Free App for iPad,  is so easy to use as all it requires you to do is to pick up a brush, choose a color and paint away. Paintings made can also be saved in the gallery in real time and shared with friends and colleagues.

UploadingIt.com

I've been a on bit of a "free file sharing sites" run lately, and I've found another great one.
UploadingIt.com is an excellent free file hosting website. You do have to create an account, but you get 20GB of free storage space and can store any file smaller than 200MB. Files can be organized into folders. You can also play audio files through it's online MP3 player, while image files can be viewed in the built-in modifiable Flash slideshow, or get the embedded code to use on your blog.

Civl War Resources

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.
Below are some great resources, most notably the 
A Civil War Interactive Timeline from The New York Times

Other great resources include:

150 years later: Civil War anniversary stirs controversy  an interactive site from The Associated Press
The Civil War is from Mr. Nussbaum
Civil War: 150th Anniversary is from The History Channel
Faces of The Civil War is a Washington Post slideshow
Decisive Battles of the Civil War is a U.S. News interactive
How Stuff Works has many Civil War related videos

Watch Know

Watch Know is a collection of thousands of educational videos that are divided into categories such as history, math, language arts, holidays, etc, or you can search for them through the search box. While many videos are hosted by YouTube, there are thousands of videos available through that come from other sources such as Teacher Tube.  There is a "classroom accessible" button that allows you to search for non YouTube videos.

SMART Notebook Search Engine

SMART Notebook Search Engine was created by Google Custom Search, and designed to help you find resources designed for teaching with SMARTBoards.

Vocabulary / Phonics Games

Vocabulary.co.il  is a site that offers several free vocabulary and phonics games including short vowel sounds, word scramble, word maker, and very fun hangman game.  These would be great to use in an elementary setting.  While this site has several advertisements on the page, none are too distracting from the learning games themselves.

Synonym Finder

Synonym Finder is a free dictionary of synonyms online and does exactly what it says – finds synonyms of a word.

Sendoid

Sendoid is  a new file transfer system that lets you share files as large as 1 GB.  Because Sendoid is a link-based service, your files are only passed directly between parties. Simply load the file you wish to share, and once it is uploaded use the unique one time link that is created to send to someone else to open and download your shared file.
 There’s no software to install for this use, but for files larger than 1 GB, you'll need to download the free desktop app. Once you download the app, and you no longer have any limitations on the size of file you can transfer.

View Pure

View Pure is a free and simple site that strips way all of the distractions of YouTube.
 With this site, you can watch YouTube videos without comments, suggestions, or promoted videos on YouTube. To use View Pure just copy the link of a video into the "purifier," click purify, and your video will be displayed on a blank white background.

Minus

Minus is a free file sharing service and supports all file types (pictures, documents, music, videos, etc). Once you create an account, drag and drop files from your desktop and folders directly to your browser to share the files. There are also desktop and mobile apps to use and a Chrome extension and web app.  There is a maximum file size of 25MB and you can only put 50 items in a gallery (folder). But, there is no limit to the number of galleries you can create.  There is even a way to share files as a guest without an account which could be useful for students who want to share a file with a teacher. 
Thanks to Jonathon Wylie and David Andrade for posting on this service.

If it Were My Home

If It Were My Home – This is a great site for social studies teachers.  At this site, you can compare your own country to some other country, you can find out what your life would be like if you were born in that other country as it compares the various aspects of two countries.