10. TinyURL - The reason this is #10 is because I had already heard about and used it before this class, but I still think it's really awesome. If you've ever asked your students to go to any sort of website in class, you know how many of them can't type in an address. TinyURL makes everything so much easier by shortening that address into something manageable for them.
9. Google Apps - Okay, this one requires a lot of explanation to do it justice, so I'm not going to do it justice. I'm just going to say that there are many different apps (Blogger, Drive, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Play, Sites, & many more) and there are so many things you can do with them-educationally or personally.
8. Genius Time - This is more of an idea than anything. It comes from Google and how the company gives it's employees 20% of their work time towards studying and researching anything that they find interesting. Obviously, this is where their creativity comes from. Giving students Genius Time to work on research, project, and/or presentation of their choice is extremely interesting to me. I've given my students freedom to write whatever they want for the past couple of weeks in a writing workshop, and I've seen them do awesome things. I can't imagine what they would come up with if I let them go on anything.
7. Screencast - These are so cool because if you're ever sick, you can give the screencast to your sub and she/he can just show it to the students during class. It's just a video recording showing whatever you're doing on your computer screen and also the voice recording behind it. Students would be able to see your explanation about something on the computer, and then they could actually get some work done during class.
6. Backchannel - I was a little weirded out about Backchannel when my prof originally told us about it, but now, I think it's a great tool for discussion. It's like a constant feed of student discussion. If you're showing a video during class, students can be typing to each other and discussing important information while they're watching the movie. It would be great to keep kids' attention while a video is playing and also to see what they're actually getting from it.
5. Dropbox - Okay, so I know there are many ways of transferring data from one device to another, but I was really wanting to find a way to do that through the cloud. I dislike thumbdrives or flashdrives because I lose them all of the time, and if I have everything on my computer, why not use the cloud to transfer my files? When I found Dropbox, everything got easier. It automatically takes my files, photos, and music and stores it in the cloud so that I can access it from anywhere. I love it! The only downfall is that the free version doesn't have a whole lot of storage.
4. QR Codes - Boom! This is an even better option than TinyURL. You say you want your students to find a Google Form? Walah! You can make a QR Code, post it on your board, have students scan it, and it will take them directly to the form. During our writing workshop days, I have my classroom blog QR Code posted around the room so that my students can just scan it and be brought directly to my blog. They love it. I love it. We love it. This is my what it looks like:
3. Diigo - Do you ever get sick of your bookmarks tab? You know, that little pull down button that you have every cool website saved on but you can never find because it's all jumbled and confusing? Well, Diigo changed all of that for me. Now I have an account that I can get to from anywhere and it is organized by tags and folders. It's also collaborative so you can make a group and share it with your coworkers (awesome for PLCs).
2. Blogs (Blogger) - Ooooooh babay! One of my favorites! I always thought that people who wrote blogs had to be in love with themselves. I mean, a blog is like an online diary that you let other people read, right? Wrong. Blogs are awesome. A lot of the ones that I follow now are related to education. It's nice to know that there are people out there just like you that want to become better teachers. It's also nice to be able to learn from the mistakes that they've already made, from the successes that they've already had, and just to feel like you're not alone.
I also have started writing my own blog, duh. Right now, it's about education. I don't know what it will end up being, but I like it.
I asked my students to create their own blogs and we've been monkeying around with them. They like it because they can share their writing with other classmates. I haven't really delved into it much yet, but next year I want to start my students with blogs and get into it a lot more.
1. Twitter (TweetDeck) - Okay, I'm doing it again. I'm blogging about Twitter, again. I won't go into this in depth AGAIN, but I just want you to know that Twitter is an awesome resource. Love it.
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