So I thought I'd sift through the 321 in the list and try to make sense of it, and this blog is a summary of anything I thought particularly useful, as well as links to particular websites that have extremely good value tools.
Infographics
The first section of the list is entitled "Free Tools to Create Infographics For Teachers" - what is an infographic? (I imagine a chorus here). As far as I can tell an infographic is a digital graphic comprising images and text, that is a shorthand way of putting across a complex set of information or concepts. Here is an example of an infographic about internet use:
Infographics can be simple charts, but often they have a great deal more information and include images and some text - they are designed to grab attention and get the person focused on some key information.
In the list of websites provided in the "321 list" for infographic tools, there are some that are mainly chart creators, including diagrams and flow charts as well as others that will do a bit more, similar to the one above. One that I think is particularly interesting is Chartsbin which enables you to create interactive maps instantly, online, with no installation and no coding requirements. It works with iPad and iPhone and they are working on an app for other devices. I have not explored it fully but I am guessing that by "interactive" they mean you can create some kind of point and click activities on maps.
Text to Speech Tools
In the list there are 19 free text to speech tools. These may be of interest to anyone teaching people with low levels of literacy, or English as a second language, or possibly people with a disability such as sight impairement. Some of them simply convert text on a screen to speech but others have additional features such as avatars.Digital Story Telling Tools
Digital story telling is a fun way to get students to demonstrate their skills and understanding, and also a way you can get across information in a more engaging way than a straight lecture or block of text.There are 21 apps listed for this. I found MakeBelief Comix the most straight forward and easy for creating simple non-animated cartoons on the web and sharing them via email or social networking.
MapSkip looks intriguing, making "the world a canvas where we can share our stories and photos" - it has a map of the world and I gather you can add your own stuff there to tell a story about where you were born, have lived, have travelled etc. A great one for the LLN people!
There are many others that look really fun and exciting, all free - so I encourage you to explore them all and decide for yourself which you would like to try.
Podcast tools
Podcasting is broadcasting audio or using audio to transmit content in your e-learning. There are 15 podcasting tools which enable you to record audio, upload it and share it.Audacity is the one I use all the time to record and edit sounds. It is a good cross-platform program that allows you to edit sound then export it as MP3 which is a file that is easily shared.
The others allow you to do this but they also have features such as the ability to upload to a platform for sharing and providing a continuous feed to specified recipients.
Survey, Polls and Quizzes
We have access to quiz and survey creations on our Blackboard LMS. However if you want to try something different and possibly more engaging, there are 27 options in this list. Survey Monkey is the most well known and it does have a free version.PollDaddy is another popular site. The list includes a number of web-based form-creation sites, including FormsontheFly
Again, it is a matter of exploring and finding the ones that you may like to try - if you see a place for surveys and quizzes in your delivery, this may be of interest to you.
Screen Capturing
Have you ever wished there was an easy way you could just photograph or video your computer screen when you are trying to help a student located away from campus? This list has 17 free screen capture tools that will do just that. I often use CamStudio which isn't listed here, but it seems to download and run fine on my work PC. It will capture either a still photo of your screen, or a video clip of your screen and if you have a headset with a mic, it will capture your voice. So you could create mini lessons on how to use certain applications on your desktop, and upload these to Blackboard or share in some other way.I haven't looked at those on this list, but there is sure to be something amongst them that will work for you. I did find that ScreenR, which is very popular, would not run on my work computer due to firewall and security issues.
Social Bookmarking Tools
I will have come clean here and confess I have never really got my head around social book marking. It is, I think, a way to organise all the resources and links you find valuable on the web, into categories that make it easy to find specified sites, and possible to share with groups of people that you wish to target. They list 30 on the site, and I have not tried any of them apart from Diigo, which I do belong to but so far have not really used its full potential. And I should, because my bookmarks are extremely disorganised! Please, please, try some of them and help me use mine to better effect!Online Bibliography and Citation Tools for Teachers
If you are engaged in university study, or if you require your students to correctly reference their work, these sites may be of interest to you. There are 14 tools there and they may make it much easier for you to do in-text citations and end-notes, bibliographies and reference lists.Sticky Notes Tools for Teachers
There are 13 of these apps listed here. They can be used either for your own organisation, for note writing and reminders, or you can use them to collaborate with others. You may find a good tool for your students to use to collaborate in projects. Spaaze is an example of a sticky note page that has great additional features to make it useful for project management and collaboration.Google Note Board is a Google Chrome app which is not on this list, but it is one that seems to be really easy to use like a digital pinboard to share ideas and notes with others.
Photo and Image Editing
These tools are getting to be essential in an age when much of our teaching uses technology such as mobile devices or the web. We are using our cameras and tablets to record using photos and video, and we are creating digital content that includes video and images. So it is important to know about any apps that will help us do no-fuss editing and file conversion. There are 30 apps listed here, and they include graphics creation and drawing tools, as well as simple editing tools.If you look at back at a recent blog here, I had a link to a video created by Guy Truss of SW Institute of Technology, which had him drawing a graphic about e-learning as the focus for conveying concepts. He used his iPad on a stand to record this. However, the video part of it could also be done using a simple digital drawing tool and screen capture to record. For example, CoSketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images.
Pixlr is the best web-based app I have seen for editing images. To re-size, enhance or add effects to images, this is the easiest to use that I have come across. However there are many others in the list that do similar things.
GoAnimate is also listed, but it could just as easily have been included in the section on Digital Stories. It is a great website for creating animated cartoon stories.
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