FreeToolstoImproveStudent+Learning-Motivation

=**Free Tools to Improve Student Learning and Motivation** = Instructor: Scott Staub Email me at staubs@lasd.k12.pa.us media type="custom" key="6390873"

=A Vision of K-12 Students Today=

media type="youtube" key="_A-ZVCjfWf8" height="518" width="636" Google Docs

**Google Docs--In Plain English** by CommonCraft media type="youtube" key="eRqUE6IHTEA" height="485" width="596"

Google Docs is a great way for you to store and carry your documents with you wherever you go or to collaborate with other teachers, students or friends. Google Docs allows you to create word documents, spreadsheets. presentations, forms, and even drawings. Let's set up an account.

Here's a nice Google Guide for Teachers resource that Mary Heuer shared with me.


 * Using Google Docs by Google** ([])

media type="youtube" key="IzgaUOW6GIs" height="340" width="560"

Take the [|Summer 2010 Free Tools Training Survey]

Webspiration

Use Webspiration to map out ideas, organize with outlines and visualize concepts and ideas. Webspiration unleashes your creativity, strengthens organizational skills, and transforms your ideas and information into knowledge. This is tool can aid you in your Learning Focused School classroom. It can create your student learning maps, your word walls, and visual diagrams. Webspiration can be embedded into a Wiki or Moodle course quite easily.

Visit [|Webspiration].

[|Webspiration Help and Tricks]

Check out [|my Career Planning Diagram]

Once you have the chart, map, or diagram completed, you can publish it and get the URL or embed code to place it in your Wiki, web page, or Moodle. You can print the chart or save it to a Word document. I'm not impressed with the quality of the graphic in Word. I also didn't have much luck with embedding it in my Wiki. It was too small to read.

Wallwisher

This is an online bulletin board site. Teachers can post questions or assignments and students can post answers to the question. Sticky notes are allowed 160 characters and the teacher can set up the wall to approve all notes before they are actually posted.

Visit [|Wallwisher].

[|Frequently Asked Questions] for Wallwisher. [] Use the Wall below to post your responses to the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill.

media type="custom" key="6390933"

Wordle

Wordle creates word clouds that can be used as a graphical title or a way to analyze a student's writing or compare two poems or speeches. Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Visit [|Wordle].

media type="custom" key="6391147" width="512" height="512"

A Free Graphic Editing Program: [|Paint.net]

Glogster

Simply put, Glogster is a kind of online poster. It goes way beyond the standard poster boards of days gone by...it is a fancy multimedia creation that can contain text, images, music and video. Caution! The commercial version of Gloster at www.glogster.com can contain inappropriate words, images, and music for an educational environment. I highly recommend the EDU version at www.edu.glogster.com

Visit [|Glogster](the EDU one).

[|Why Glogster EDU?]

media type="custom" key="6391335" width="80" height="80"

Portaportal

Visit [|portaportal]

Great site to share URL web addresses with others especially younger students.