Brainstorm in a Bubble?

http://bubbl.us

Bubbl.us is a great tool for the visual learner! Students can use bubbles as a way of character mapping, brainstorming a topic, creating a flow chart, or even just to remember the order in which something occurred. Background color and font can be changed for each bubble to help with organization or coding. After creation, a link is provided for sharing with others.

Need a Voice?

www.voicethread.com

Use Voicethread to create read alongs for your students, record instructions for an assignment, tell students about exciting upcoming activities, or create a talking scrapbook!

Students can even use this awesome tool to create projects such as book reports, tutorials, or for use on collaborative assignments.

Need a Good Book?

www.ala.org

The Young Adult Library Services Association puts out a list of Top Ten Books for Teens every year. This years books won't disappoint! Consider highlighting a book of the week with your students in a weekly update or on your course announcement page, doing a read aloud, or even hosting a book talk on one of the books for enrichment! Maybe students will find a new favorite author. Click on the link below to see the complete list of books!

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/bestbooksya/topten2010.cfm

Do you have the next Stephanie Meyer or JK Rowling in your class?

Encourage your budding authors to visit the online writing resource http://www.lightningbug.com.au/. Lightning Bug offers ideas, suggestions and encouragement to students an aesthetically pleasing, safe environment. Who will get published next?

Virtual Library FUN!

www.shelfari.com

Create a virtual bookshelf to show your students what you are reading, what their classmates are reading, or what they should be reading! You can even post reviews of books. Once you create your virtual bookshelf, you will receive a widget to post on your course page or share with your students. Students can click on the image of the book from the virtual shelf to take a sneak peak inside the book and see if it's something they would be interested in reading.

Words in a Cloud??

http://www.wordle.net/

You provide the text and wordle will do the rest! You can have fun with the fonts, color scheme, and layout. Use a wordle to generate interest and excitement about an upcoming lesson, to create an online word wall, or to expose your students to important terms.

Free Dictionary and much, much more!

www.thefreedictionary.com

Add a customized widget to your course announcement page, weebly, or any site for that matter! Your students will be exposed to a "word of the day", "article of the day", and much, much more! You can choose which items you want to include on your widget and you can even customize the layout and color options. Expose your students to new words every day!

Learning Visually

www.stixy.com

Are you a visual learner? Do you like seeing your work organized in a way that is meaningful to you? If you answerd "YES!", then stixy is the site for you! Students can upload images and documents, post notes, and share their work with other classmates. Stixy can even be collaborative allowing for students to share what they have created and have others add to it. Teachers can use stixy as an online discussion post or sharing spot! Visual learners are able to arrange their work in a way that is meaningful and memorable for them! Once you've created your stixy, you are given a URL address to share with others.

Online Document Storage

http://www.calameo.com/

Wanna save all of your documents in ONE place? Calameo is a FREE site for document storage. You just need to create an account and you're all set!!

Calameo can be used to store graphic organizers, exam review sheets, visual aids/sample assignments, lists of vocabulary words, course assignments, and so much more!

The best thing about Calameo is the ease in which you can share your information.

You can use an embed (html) code to share it with students in your course or

you can send them the URL address to access it directly. I have sent the URL to parents so they can access the graphic organizers as needed for their student.

Do you like to BLAB??

http://www.blabberize.com/

Blabberize is an awesome and fun tool that works much like the famous jibjab cartoons we all like to make during the holidays! You can upload a picture of anyone, crop the mouth and start talking! The cool feature is that you can record using a built in microphone on your computer, upload a soundbite, or even record using your telephone. How versatile!! Blabberize is a wonderful way to teach phonetics, fluency, and intonation. You can even have your students record themselves and send the file to you! I like using blabberize to have a vocabulary word of the day or for a read aloud in my classroom.

I hope you'll use this tool today!!

Do you like to play games?

http://classtools.net/

Classtools.net is a site providing FREE, customizable templates for creating interactive learning games/tools for your students. The site has many sample files categorized by subject area or you can make your own! This site is ideal for the visual and kinesthetic learner and it's super fun!

Need help highlighting text??

http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/

Awesome highlighter is a wonderful site that allows you to highlight important text and then share that with your students using the URL provided.  This site is wonderful for helping students learn how to extract important tidbits of text from what they are reading.  Reading online can be fun!!  Reading comprehension will improve because students are actively engaged with the text when highlighting.