Online Education Links and Free Opportunities

I am preparing to present at an education conference in April, so today I was beginning to create a PowerPoint presentation with Web links of helpful Web applications and applets to give to the school administrators and educators.

As I began to type the links and the technology teaching tips, I thought about how far our society and our profession has come in my lifetime. Just think! E-mail was developed 40 years ago, and now people text message on their phones all the time! Our students are 'digital natives' who are more inclined to edit and create dynamic video presentations, than to watch them!

In order to better assist my educators, I wanted to make sure that the applications on my presentation list were free, or available at very little cost, and easy to download or use. Although, many people already know about these sites, some educators and administrators have not had time to search the Web to find useful, credible application sites.

Here is my Top Ten List for free tech opportunities for educators:

1. Google Docs and Applications for Educators and Students (See this video for more info: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJT3pagjd8s) The Google Apps are a group of EXCELLENT Web applications for collaboration and more...
2. Open Office: Openoffice.org (open source Microsoft Word program with its own version of Word, Excel, etc.)
   
3. PDFHammer (Edit PDFs) *more open source education tools are found at: www.schoolforge.net
4. Moodle.org: (Open Source Learning Management System)
5. Wikipedia, Wikispaces, Wikieducator.org (read about more about wikis at: http://wikieducator.org/Main_Page )
   
6. Audacity (open source audio editor and recorder )
7. Avidemux (open source video editor)
   
8. Jing (record screen and audio activity on your computer – free; and create AVI video files using its built-in SWF producer for a small fee)
9. Dropbox.com (A file system for educators who have multiple computers).
   
10. www.Toobla.com - (File sharing area online - runner up: SlideShare).

These are just a few of the hundreds of online and down-loadable applications which educators can use to save time, enhance their instructional skills, and hopefully use to engage their students along the way.

Until next time, see if you can add some technology skills into your instruction this week!

Fondly,
mej