Featured: 2-17-2014 myHistro

Create stories that are displayed on maps and geo-located interactive timelines with myHistro.

 

You can watch and read thousands of user-created timelines at myHistro or create your own dynamic timeline mashup with text, video, and images.

 

 

Combine maps and timelines seamlessly into unique presentations, convert any public timeline into a pdf file, or export it into Google Earth format (kml) for offline storage. Completed timelines can be embedded into blogs and websites for sharing.   

 

Features of myHistro:

• Archive with several hundred historical timelines to choose from.
• Collaboration tools, ideal for class activities.
• Secure content management.

Three privacy levels to choose from let you decide what others will see. You can keep your timeline private, make it public, or keep it between you and those you choose.

 

  

 View a slide presentation: myHistro Basic Guidelines For Teachers

 

There is an official free myHistro application for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch with simplified functionality. In this version you can create new accounts, add new stories, add new events, and manage existing stories and events.

 

Currently myHistro supports YouTube videos and pictures in JPEG and PNG formats. It does not require Flash.

 

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Featured: 8-22-2013 Kid in Story Book Maker

Create visual stories in support of learning, social modeling, and early literacy with Kid in Story Book Maker.

Place your student’s picture on every page of the story using Kid in Story Book Maker’s templates. It's easy and fun to make any child the star character. You can also write your own custom story or modify any of the templates.

Kid in Story Book Maker was specifically designed to benefit children who use visual narratives to complement auditory directions, model task analysis and expected social behavior, reinforce routines and to engage struggling readers.

The free Kid in Story Reader allows teachers and parents to share stories they create with students, friends, and family via email or Dropbox.

 Watch the Kid in Story Demo

Kid in Story Book Maker is available from the iTunes App Store for $6.99 (USD). It is compatible with iPad and requires iOS 5.1 or later.

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Featured: 8-13-2013 Flowboard

Flowboard is a free iPad app that lets you create side-scrolling presentations with text, images, video, and links.

 

 

 

Create each screen of a Flowboard using simple touch gestures. Add buttons, videos, and galleries for interactivity. Present your Flowboard and let others explore, using the interactive features, on your iPad, online, or offline.

 

Create Flowboards with content on your iPad or from the cloud. Add photos and videos from Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive; pictures from Facebook or Instagram; and use Google Image Search, as well.

 

Flowboard automatically saves your presentations locally as you make changes, and you can save drafts to the cloud, so your presentation is always safe.

 

 

Present straight from your iPad, connect to a projector, or mirror using AirPlay. You can share your Flowboard to other iPad users and the web by a URL that can be posted anywhere.

 

 Watch a Flowboarddemo from TechCrunch

 

Flowboard is free to download and use (Requires iOS 6.0 or later). Premium increases your monthly upload quota to 1GB, with bigger file upload sizes, and the ability to upload PDF files. Currently, a subscription for Flowboard Premium is $5(USD) per month. 

 

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Featured: 6-27-2013 Macaulay Library

The Macaulay Library is the world's largest and oldest scientific archive of bird, animal, and other natural audio and video recordings.

The Macaulay Library's mission is to "collect and preserve recordings of each species' behavior and natural history, to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings, and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts."

Teachers can use the accurate depictions of nature from the Macaulay Library to illustrate the natural world and create exciting interactive learning activities.

Lessons for elementary, middle, and high school use rich media including sounds and videos from the Macaulay Library to spark student interest in understanding biological adaptations. Teachers can download individual lessons or units addressing science standards about waves, forces, and motion.

 Watch a sampling of Macaulay Library video

The Macaulay Library provides training, equipment, and resources to help document the diversity of nature with sound and video. Field techniques and the technical knowledge required to record the behavior of birds and other animals in the wild are taught through workshops and informal training sessions.

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Featured: 6-3-2013 Empressr

Empressr is a free online visual storytelling and presentation application that lets you create, manage, and share rich media presentations.

You can upload your own media such as video, audio, images, and animations to your Empressr media library, import them directly from other sites like Flickr, Google, and Photobucket, or link to digital content from elsewhere on the web.

Empressr supports many popular file formats, including: jpg, gif, bmp, png, mov, flv, avi, swf, and mp3. The size of uploaded items is limited to 10MB.

You can upload a PowerPoint file to Empressr and use each of its slides as a picture or use it as a fully editable presentation (with some loss, however).

Your presentations can be shared in several ways. You can make a presentation public on the Empressr site, email the link, use the share button to get an embed code, or choose to auto-embed into a number of social network sites like Facebook, Blogger, or WordPress, or place it on your own site. 

 Watch an Empressr tutorial

The Empressr team is located in New York and San Francisco. Empressr was developed to give users the ability to include more dynamic content like streaming video and Flash in presentations.

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Featured: 5-20-2013 EdCanvas [Tools]

Drag-and-drop resources to create a dynamic EdCanvas that will help you effectively teach your lesson while increasing student engagement.

EdCanvases are useful for organizing, presenting, and sharing online resources with your students and colleagues.

If you are implementing a flipped classroom, EdCanvas makes it possible to easily gather and annotate online resources, including rich multimedia, into lessons using just one link. EdCanvas is also a handy tool for Web quests, project-based learning, and class presentations.

Mix assessment with your content. Quickly create a quiz on any empty canvas tile by clicking “Add Quiz". They are instantly and automatically graded, providing you with a detailed and easy-to-use report.

With an invitation from you, students can create canvases, too. Create a class for your students, then invite them by entering their email addresses. Your students will receive an invitation to sign up for Edcanvas. You will be able to see all the canvases they create.

 Watch the video: Edcanvas Basics

EdCanvas for Schools offers reports and data to improve learning, real-time collaboration for students and teachers, a parent portal, shared resources pool for teachers, Common Core-aligned content and canvases, unlimited file storage and uploads, and more.

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Featured: 1/24/2013 NANOYOU [Science]

NANOYOU is a project funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Program that aims to increase young people’s basic understanding of nanotechnologies (NT) and to engage in the dialogue about its ethical, legal, and social aspects.



Nanotechnologies are the design, characterization, production, and application of structures, devices, and systems by controlling shape and size at the scale of individual molecules, nanometer scale.  

Through a variety of NANOYOU resources such as videos, presentations, posters, picture galleries, and art projects related to nanoscience and NT, you’ll be able to learn more about nanoscience and nanotechnologies. As well as being able to use the tools developed by NANOYOU, you will also find some nanotechnologies resources available from other websites.

From the web portal students can actively participate in virtual dialogues, experiments and games. In the virtual Nano Lab, users will be able to become a researcher and do experiments online as well as finding resources for hands-on activities. Games such as the nano-memory game and the jigsaw puzzle can enable students to see how solutions to human needs have changed over time, and which solutions NT offer us for the future.



NANOYOU plans to have a very strong school program on nanotechnologies which will be completely adapted to the educational needs of students aged 11-18. The NANOYOU school program focuses on information and communication technology, energy and environment, and medicine.

NANOYOU offers Teacher Training kits for different age groups, as well as for science centers. The modules are available to all teachers interested in organizing educational activities within their schools, and includes background materials, literature, and specific case studies.

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Featured: 1/22/2013 Storyboard That [Storytelling]

Storyboard That is an innovative tool to help visually communicate ideas and concepts to quickly tell a story.



Storyboard That was designed to be fun and easy to use, implementing a simple drag-and-drop interface with hundreds of pieces of clip art that can be used.



Storyboard That is a great tool for students to collaborate. Students can discuss what they want their story to say, how to structure it, and what imagery to use.

Watch the Storyboard That Intro

Storytelling by creating a story in Storyboard That can be fun and exciting. The experience of rapidly creating a storyboard that looks good and tells a story from the students' point of view can be stimulating and thought provoking.

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COD - 8/14/2012 - Zamzar [Tools]

Zamzar is a single location where you can convert your songs, videos, images, documents, and more into a multitude of different formats. 

The aim of Zamzar is "to provide high quality file conversion for as many file formats as possible."

Click here to see a list of all the file types supported by Zamzar.

You can convert files from your computer on Zamzar's main conversion page by clicking the "Browse" button, browsing to your file, selecting the desired conversion type, entering your email address, then clicking the "Convert" button. The email address will be pre-filled for users with a Zamzar account and the converted file will be placed in your Zamzar inbox as well as being sent to your email address. 

You can also convert files directly from other websites (including YouTube). Go to Zamzar's Download Videos tab and paste the URL of the video to convert.

You can also convert files using email. Attach the files you want to convert to a new email, or forward an existing email. You can attach as many files as you want within the size limits.

Converted files may be downloaded as many times as you like. However, the files of free users are deleted from the system after 24 hours.

Watch the video Converting files easily with Zamzar

The free Zamzar service currently allows you to upload a maximum of 100 MB of data allocated among up to 5 different files. Those with a Zamzar account can upload files up to 1 GB in size.

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COD - 4/23/2012 - Smithsonian WILD! [Biology]

The purpose of Smithsonian WILD! is to highlight the diversity of wildlife that exists in a variety of habitats across the globe as well as to showcase some of the research conducted by the Smithsonian Institution and its collaborators.

The more than 200,000 images highlighted at Smithsonian WILD! demonstrate the range of applications of motion-triggered 'camera traps' and how these cameras give us an opportunity to see an animal world rarely viewed by most people.

You can use the A–Z Index of Animals which is sorted by animal group, scientific, or common name to explore the site; or search by following the trail of animals that interest you.

It is the hope of Smithsonian WILD! that "while you are being entertained by the amazing photographs, you will also learn about the animals, their diverse habitats, and what is being done to conserve them."

Smithsonian WILD! plans to accept photographs from citizen scientists as well as professional researchers in the future.

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COD - 3/29/2012 - Shelfster [Writing]

Shelfster is a free tool designed to collect resources and place them all at your fingertips when creating a document. Your ideas and sources of inspiration are gathered together in one place, no longer lost or scattered in different locations.

Shelfster is sort of a hybrid of Evernote on the capturing and collecting side and Google Docs on the document creation side.

Shelfster's capturing tools let you clip text, capture all or parts of screens, bookmark sites, take notes, save online images, take snapshots, and record audio.

Features of the ShelfsterOnline Document Creator:

• Create new documents with everything easily at hand
• Access captured information and previous documents
• Drag-and-Drop images into documents
• Share documents and get feedback
• Export to PDF or HTML, download, or print documents
• Organize captured information and documents

Watch the videoShelfster - tools for writers

Try out the Shelfsterdemo

There are Shelfster desktop apps for both Mac and Windows, mobile apps for iOS and Android, browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, and a convenient bookmarklet for any browser.

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COD - 2/8/2012 - NatGeoEd.org [Social Studies]

The NatGeoEd.org beta site offers an expanded and updated library of National Geographic’s popular education content with a wide range of free educational resources that bring geography, science, and social studies to life for both teachers and students.

NatGeoEd.org includes a new feature called Audience View that allows visitors to see versions of materials aimed specifically at teachers, informal educators, families, students, or kids. Different versions include changes in look-and-feel, organization, and text. When you search for content, you can filter by audience to go directly to the most appropriate version.

National Geographic’s exemplary media and expert resources are integrated into NatGeoEd.org to provide you with engaging instructional materials. The available multimedia includes photos, videos, illustrations, diagrams, and cartoons. A new feature called a resource carousel provides all the media you need right at your fingertips.

Interactive maps with thematic data layers and customizable black-and-white outline maps are among the new mapping tools at NatGeoEd.org. FieldScope is a web-based mapping, analysis, and collaboration platform designed to engage students as citizen scientists investigating real-world issues.

A new search tool allows you to search by keyword and see results for NatGeoEd.org, for all of National Geographic, or for our Thinkfinity partners. You can filter results by grade and age, type of resource, and subject. To make it easier to use it flexibly and in a variety of ways, content on the new site is modular.

Note: At this time, NatGeoEd.org is still under development, so you can see only some of the planned features and content.

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Catch of the Day - Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History - 5/4/2011

The website of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is a portal to American history with numerous resources designed specifically for K-12 teachers and students.

Since1994, the nonprofit Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has supported the exploration and enjoyment of the history of America through a variety of programs and resources for students, teachers, and others.

Working closely with schools, the Gilder Lehrman Institute:

• organizes summer seminars and professional development programs for teachers
• produces both print and digital publications
• hosts lectures by eminent historians and traveling exhibitions
• administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in each state
• offers national book prizes and fellowships for scholars

The Gilder Lehrman Institute's Affiliate School Program provides access to resources and tools designed to enhance teaching and learning American history. These include an Affiliate School web portal with lesson plans, teachable documents, videos, podcasts, toolkits, and more. Free and discounted books, multimedia kits, and traveling exhibitions are offered as well.

Users can search a database of over 60,000 historic documents detailing the political and social history of the United States. The Collection includes manuscript letters, diaries, maps, photographs, and printed books and pamphlets from as far back as 1493.

Go to an earlier post about History Now, a quarterly journal for American history teachers published online by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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