Vocabulary Spelling City

Is dedicated to helping students, teachers, parent-teachers, and school systems. Is an award-winning site with ongoing introduction of new features, many based on input from existing users.

Fatures:

• A REAL person who says each word and sentence
• Free home pages for teachers and parents to save lists
• Teacher training videos
• Free printable handwriting worksheets
• Free teaching resources with lists and lesson plans
• Twenty-five games to play online or to print such as:
• Alphabetical Order, Unscramble, Parts of Speech, HangMouse, Crossword Puzzle, WordSearch, and Vocabulary Test.
• A free forum and newsletters
  
  

Teachers: We have Parent Letters available as a PDF for you to print and send home with your students’ spelling word lists.

Voki

What is Voki?

Voki is a FREE service that lets you:

• Create customized avatars.
• Add voice to your Voki avatars.
• Post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile.
• Take advantage of Voki's learning resources.

What is Voki Classroom?

A classroom management system for Voki

• Students do not need to sign up!
• Add and manage your Classes & Students!
• Lesson pages automatically created!
• Customized appearance & instructions!
• Get unlimited email support!

Benefits:
-Speaking
-Characters for education
-Engage students to introduce technology
-Enhance language
-Great for homework

Linkedin

LinkedIn is the social network for business. Use it wisely to make powerful networking contacts.

Benefits:

-Easy setup
-Reach a specific audience
-Learn how to use it:
 -Get and receive advice
-Find collaborators
-Learn about your industry
-Recruit staff

Features:

• Building a network of connections with no limits on size or numbers
• Reconnecting with any member of the LinkedIn network, provided that he knows you and agrees to connect to you
• Creating a professional and detailed LinkedIn profile
• Giving and receiving an unlimited number of recommendations
• Joining or creating up to 50 different LinkedIn Groups
• Requesting up to five introductions at one time (after someone accepts an introduction, you can request a new introduction in its place)
• Performing an unlimited number of searches for LinkedIn members in your extended network.

Edmodo

The safest and easiest way for educators to connect and collaborate with students, parents, and each other.

• Create a blended learning classroom
• Join global learning communities
• Discover and share valuable resources
  
  
  Benefits:
  Edmodo does not require private information from students. Students join Edmodo at the invitation of their teachers using a unique code the teacher generates within their Edmodo account.
  Once invited to join Edmodo, students can only access groups to which they have been invited by their teachers.
  Students cannot be “friended” or contacted by anyone outside of their Edmodo group.
  Students in Edmodo can post messages to their teachers, or to their entire Edmodo group, but students cannot send private messages to each other.
  Teachers maintain full control of their Edmodo groups and can delete posts, monitor all activity, review student posts before they go live, and even set individual students or groups of students to “read-only” access.

Assignments: Are created by teachers and distributed to their students using the assignment post feature. Teachers can title their assignments, identify a due date, associate a description or prompt, and include attachments from the web, computer or Edmodo library.

Quizzes:  Quiz features include the ability for teachers to create quizzes, edit and load previously created quizzes, provide a quiz description, set the time limit for a quiz, and preview a quiz before sending it to their students (group).

Planner:  Enables teachers to manage personal and group-based events and tasks. By creating an event or task, teachers can help students keep track of upcoming assignments, events, projects, school activities, professional obligations, and more.

Pixton

Create comics quickly and easily with this free site! Choose starting scenes, add new frames, change characters and add text. At this site, students can create, share, and "remix" comics. The "remix" link allows students to add their own twist to ready-made comics. Students can read comics created by others and also make comments on them. Other highlights of the site include a featured author and blog. The free version of Pixton is open to the public. There is also a fee-based version for schools (with teacher and student registration levels and safety tools) with a 30-day free trial period available. Be aware: the Pixton for Schools (if continued after 30-days) will cost $1 per student.

Pros:

-Colorful, expressive, creative

-People oriented

-Wide emotional range; preset expressions

-Wide range of increasingly realistic characters which can be easily modified

-Props are numerous and keep increasing

-Can use templates or start from scratch

-Can remix comics to create new ones

-Can easily create series

Pedagogical applications:

Pixton allows students to apply content knowledge and generate new forms of analysis. Students can imagine new scenarios for historical characters, recreate past events visually, and interpret primary sources through a comic strip. It helps foster creative thinking in the classroom through the ability to create original characters, or to develop unique forms of historical analysis.

Foreign language classes - create stories in the English language and then have it translated to the foreign language by other students in the classroom and vice versa. Language Arts classes - use comics to write summaries of current events, respond to reading assignments, express problems, and create works of humor.

Storybird

    A platform for writers, readers, and artists of all ages.
Storybird lets anyone make visual stories in seconds. We curate artwork from illustrators and animators around the world and inspire writers of any age to turn those images into fresh stories.

Completely free!

Benefits: Storybird is a user-friendly Web 2.0 application that offers teachers in a digital classroom the opportunity to spark creativity and improve writing skills in students. Storybird uses templates and drag-and-drop graphics that even a 5-year-old can use. Many picture themes are presented by Storybird as a starting ground for the digital story. Storybird includes privacy settings. Storybird allows users to purchase a soft or hard cover book version of their digital story. Although Storybird seems to be built for younger students, some themes may lend themselves to older, more creative, students.

Pedagogical Applications:

Storybird is excellent for many writing assignments. It’s an engaging site that will help bring even the most hesitant writers out of their shell.

Storybird can also just be used to have students write on their own. The fact that the work can stay unpublished until it is finished allows it to be worked on over several class periods.

Pinterest

The visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas.

Benefits:

Discovering new things

Inspiration

Sharing

Making contacts

Building a portfolio of things you like

Building a portfolio of your work (e.g. a photographer creating a board of their photos)

Pedagogical applications:

1. Locate amazing images for your lessons. Pinterest is a very visual resource, which is what makes it such a great place to look when you’re trying to find images for a lesson or a lecture. There are tons of material that is historical, contemporary, art historical, or just plain interesting to look through.

2. Have students pin project ideas. Pinterest can also be a great place to get students working. Teachers could have students pin ideas on a board that relate to a particular project they’ll be working on.

3. Use pinning as part of a lesson. Of course, pinning itself could also be an educational experience. Students could have to pin items that fit a certain set of criteria as part of a lesson.