XMind - Social Brainstorming

You know the old standard brainstorming charts that your students having been making since 4th grade? You know what I'm talking about, the one is the big oval/brain looking thing with a bunch of lines coming off of it. Yeah, now you remember. Anyways, that's so 4th grade ago. XMind is an open source, and yes that means free, program that makes brainstorming fun. Go ahead, call it brainstorming 2.0.

According to their website, using XMind/XMind Pro with XMind.net's sharing service is a revolutionary way to enable both team brainstorming and personal mind mapping. With this major upgrade, we bring Web 2.0 concepts on community sharing into a popular desktop application.

The best part about this is that they have it for all platforms, Windows, Mac, Linux, and even a pack-and-go for your usb! (which is my favorite things are in the world now a days!)

WayBackMachine

Do you ever wonder what Google looked like, lets say 7 years ago? Can that simple but distinctive logo and white background really change that much...click here for the answer! Magic? No, it's WayBackMachine.com unbelievable archieve of sites! WayBackMachine lets you browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. All you have to do to start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible.

So tell your kids that yes, the internet is still new technology and show how it has progressed so much through each month, year, etc. and there was no facebook or myspace then...they might think that's why the internet was created for.

Splashup

So there are a bunch of programs that try to big Photoshop, but there has not been one that has fulfilled the full capabilities...well maybe gimp does, but you have install that onto your computer. What about if your at school and you can't download and install software onto your computer? Well Splashup is to your rescue!

Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites such as flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, photobucket, and facebook to name a few, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress. So go ahead and try it out and see what you do!

Printable Paper

College ruled, wide ruled, graph, Cornell note, dot, penmanship, columnar, and legal paper. Do you have all these available for your students? Do you even know what half of these are used for? More than likely you don't have these and don't know what half of these are used for. But lets say you need your students to use Cornell note styled paper and your school supply closet doesn't have it. Well guess what, printablepaper.net is to your rescue! Printable Paper has hundreds of papers you can download and print for free. They have graph paper, lined paper, financial paper, music paper, and more. Printable Paper has been featured by LifeHacker, and many other "helpful" sites across the web.

Tube Leecher

Have you ever gone on YouTube and was like...I wish I could show this in my classroom, but those 'darn' internet filters will block it! Then you think, I wish I could download that file, and you search high and low to see if you can the video from YouTube. Afters hours of searching, well hopefully you give up at 5 minutes, you come to the conclusion that it's not possible. But suddenly a great site is found, Tube Leecher!

Tube Leecher lets you plug in the standard http link to the YouTube video and lets you download it directly to your computer. So, you still need to be able to go to YouTube, but not you can download the file at home, and birng it to school. Now the only catch is that you need to download and install flvplayer flash player to open the videos. But you can always convert them so you can play with windows media player. Now I'm not saying this is 100% legal, but if it's public, it's for everyone right?

eCalc - Online Scientific Calculator

Oh the beauty of high school math and the love of the TI83 calculator. But do you have an extra $130 laying around to dish out for it? Well we all know it's nice to have in class, but what about transporting it from school to home and back? eCalc has came out with their own version of the TI83, but hey guess what....it's FREE! (hey that rhymed!) eCalc is a free online calculator that supports many advanced features including unit conversion, equation solving, and even complex-number math. The calculator is designed to work directly in your browser and requires no special plug-ins.

You can even download this thing so you have it directly on your home desktop, well that's if you're running Windows that is. And...get this...hold on to your chair...they have recently came out with a version that goes right on to your flash drive. eCalc compiled eCalc basic calculator into a standalone .exe which allows you to run the calculator from a flash thumb drive, or right from your desktop without requiring any installation. Download Portable Calculator (Standalone exe version) So go crazy and plug and chug those numbers in.

Dynamic Periodic Table

My background is not in chemistry, I don't teach it, only took it high school, and to me, it's pretty confusing! But if I was teaching chemistry....hmmm the dream...just kidding, no way Jose...I found a site that has the best darn periodic table known to man, well at least known to me. It's called the Dynamic Periodic Table, and it's a fully interactive periodic table online. It's so interactive, I'm amazed every click. If you want to find out a particular element, click on it, and it gives you all the information in the world about it. It also breaks it down by column or row. So lets say you click on the first column, it breaks it down as the Alkali metal group, breaks down each one. Just like that, BAM you're on your way to becoming a chemist! The Dynamic Periodic Table even lets you turn on and off the names and weights, so if you have to test yourself, it's as simple as a click!

Natural Motion Endorphin

We all know that today's students don't go home, do their homework, practice the piano, help with dinner, clean up, and go to bed. It's more like come home, flip on the Xbox 360, Wii, or PS3 and PWN people online in games. What is there learning going on in those games? I say 100% YES! I myself is a avid video game player, and trust me, you learn a lot in, it might not be on the ACT, but you do learn.

When trying to look for software to try to get my students involved with animation, I found a company called NaturalMotion who created a software called Endorphin. Endorphin is a software that is the industry's first Dynamic Motion Synthesis software. At the heart of endorphin are its Adaptive Behaviors, which - unlike animation data - are completely interactive. With Adaptive Behaviors, 3D characters essentially animate themselves. Move two Football players close to each other and one will automatically tackle the other one, realistically trying to grab hold of his legs and bringing him down . Or not. It really is up to you. endorphin allows animators to direct scenes in real-time in a way they have never been able to do before. You can change parameters or change behaviors and see the results instantly on the screen in front of you. When you're done, export animation data in one of the many formats, ready for use in your game or VFX shot.

The best part Endorphin is that it is FREE for education, and all you have to do is download the software and register it. So go ahead and download it, heck it even comes with free video tutorials on how to make it work! This software is one of a kind, and it's completely free for the education version! How cool is that!

20Q

Do you ever want to amaze you class? Well you probably already do, (or like to think you do by teaching them everyday.) But what about good old fashion, jaw-droppin' amazement. I picked a 20Q few years back after one of my professors in college showed it to me. I had to get one, I was hooked, then all my roommates where too. Now, they have all sorts if different 20Q's now that you can purchase. But they also have a FREE version online. Which I think is great!

Go ahead, and see if you can beat it. It's amazing, I just tried it, and it picked the breed of my dog! All in 20 Questions! (hence the name 20Q). Enjoy...and amaze yourself and your students! Oh and just a FYI - 20Q was 2004's Toy of the Year!

Phun - A 2D physics sandbox!

I know I'm always looking into ways to get my students more involved in learning. The best thing I've found is that students learn the most, when they're having fun! As classes get harder, I've found it's harder to engage students in fun ways...but then I came across a website called Phun.

Phun is a free game like 2D physics sandbox where you can play with physics like never before. The playful synergy of science and art is novel, and makes Phun as educational as it is entertaining. Click below to download PHUN for PHREE!

And if you're not already excited about Phun, just watch this short video!

The eyeballing game

You know you've done it. You want to put something up, but you don't want to measure it, and then it's a little off. Well, you think it might look good, but everyone else thinks is looks like terrible. So before you jump into just eyeballing that frame you want to put up on the wall, play the eyeballing game.

The game works by showing you a series of geometries that need to be adjusted a little bit to make them right. A square highlights the point that needs to be moved or adjusted. Use the mouse to drag the blue square or arrowhead where you feel it is 'right'. Once you let go of the mouse, the computer evaluates your move, so don't let up on the mouse button until you are sure. The 'correct' geometry is also shown in green. To avoid the need for extra mouse clicks, a mouse button up counts as the move being finished, so be careful.

So go ahead and try it...I dare you! And as a warning, it's addicting.

Floorplanner.com Beta

Looking for a way to rearrange your room, without moving all the desks just to realize that you like what you had the first time? Not everyone was born to be an interior designer, architect, or I guess you can say a classroom specialist. What I'm trying to get to is that floorplanner.com is a free website (that is currently in it's beta stage) that lets you design your room and set it up different ways BEFORE you move everything. Now I'm not saying that thing is 100% fool proof, but it is saving you time, and a big headache.

Floorplanner says it is the easiest, quickest, and best looking way to create and share interactive floorplans. Using point-and-click, drag-and-drop tools, you can make your floor plan in minutes, and rearrange it as often as you want. Then you can save, send, and print your designs to share them, or place them on your own website. So go ahead and be crazy! Hey even incorporate this into your classroom somehow...it's easy for me, I'm a drafting teacher.

ididwork.com

So if you're like me, you want to know what your students are doing each day. Especially in a situation like myself, where I'm in a computer lab with 28 computers, and a list of assignments due throughout each week. Anyways...the best thing I have found to use to keep students on their toes is a website called ididwork.com. It's a free way for your students to keep a log on what they accomplish each week. It also allows them to email you their daily, weekly, monthly, etc. etc. production. So this can be used on projects, everyday worksheets, and pretty much anything else you could give out. It also has an option of getting in contact with other peers and see what kind of work they are doing, so say you're doing a group project, instead of the awkward phone call to see what Johnny is doing, just go on to ididwork and check out his progress, then give him that attitude because he waited last minute to finish the project!

Fantastic Contraption

We all know that Physics is a pretty hard class, and the number of students in high school that actually take it, and well, understand it, is even a smaller number. Well developer Colin Northway has created a free online game called Fantastic Contraption. It's a fun Physics based puzzle game. The main object of the game is to create your machine in a given area and push your pink wheel into the pink box. Each level has basic parts you can build with. Each level gets harder and harder, with a total of 20 free levels to play from. If you like the game so much, you can put up $10 and get the full game, which then allows you save games and build levels. I'd much rather have kids go online and play this game rather than find proxy servers and try to get on their mySpace.

Task2Gather.com

It's all about timing...right? That's what you tell your students, you remind them, you have 2 weeks left until your project is due, 1 week, 3 days, tomorrow! And you're guessing about 75% of your students wait until that last week or so to start. Well Task2Gather is a great way to keep kids on track! Task2Gather is a free service for online task and project management. Manage all your tasks and projects online with Task2Gather and invite your student's parents, teachers, students, and anybody else to participate in the project. So now Johnny's parents can't say, "We never knew about this project!" Hello McFly! It's been assigned for over 2 weeks! Once again this is all free, you just need a email address!

Randy Pausch

On July 25th, Randy Pausch passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Dr. Pausch is famous for his last lecture on Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, and just a FYI, Pausch was a computer science teacher, but had a incredible outlook on life, family, and just about everything else in the world. Take time and watch this quick 4 minute video, and please, if you have a little over an hour, watch his full last lecture.

See more of his videos and information about Randy Pausch at his homepage.

Songza.com

Every want to start that Monday off in the right way with a little music? Your going through your collection and it hits you....you're too old and the music you like, the students hate! Don't worry, Songza is here to save you! Find that new smash hit with a quick search and then play it, or actually make a short play list to play for the first 10 minutes of class! Now, Songza says all songs found on the website are legal according to their FAQ page. Think of it as Rhapsody or iTunes without the signing up and it's completely free! Ahh...the great songs of AC/DC at 7:30 AM...school can't get better than that, can it? Enjoy!

Jing Project

Have you ever thought...wow I wish I could just record what I'm doing on my computer so I don't have to keep on showing the same thing over...and over...and over again? Well Here you go, the Jing Project has came to your rescue. Jing is a always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video by either download or using screencast.com all from your computer to anywhere. This software is so simple, just download, install and, wham-bam-thank you ma'am, it's ready to go! It even allows you to only capture specific areas of your screen as well as snap shots. So plug in your mic, opps I forgot, it has mic support so it even records what you're saying! And get this program running ASAP. So good bye to the headache of answering the same question over and over and over...just say check out the class Jing! Check out the examples below...

Blog Video Example

Top 20 Growing & Disappearing Jobs

They say that students today will have 12-15 jobs by the time they are 34, does that scare you? I know sometimes it makes me wonder what we need to do so they only have 2-3. Forbes.com wrote an article about the Top 20 Growing and Disappearing Jobs in 2008. The lists compiled by jobs that are from any education level, high school diploma to doctorates. Some of the top 20 Up and coming jobs are, by no surprise to me some of the top up and coming jobs work with operating oil drilling machines and repair. As well surgeons, nurses, fabricators, and here's a weird one, alarm installer

As for the top 20 disappearing jobs, this list comprised of engine and machine assemblers, milling and machinist, seamstress, forest conservationist, and sorry for all you actors and entertainers, your jobs are slowly going away too. So go help your students and show all of them where the jobs are at, but as we all know, in another 5 years this list can completely change!

Edutopia

We've all known George Lucas as the great maker of Star Wars movies, but did you know he's a HUGE advocate for education? Edutopia, Lucas' website and magazine has a goal of " Kids today" and they believe that "No previous generation has experienced anything like the current pace of transformational societal change. Yet, in light of extraordinary advancements in how we interact with each other and the world, our system of education has been frustratingly slow to adapt." The George Lucas Educational Foundation was created to address this issue. Our vision is of a new world of learning. A place where kids and parents, teachers and administrators, policymakers and the people they serve are empowered to change education for the better. A place where schools have access to the same invaluable technology as businesses and universities -- where innovation is the rule, not the exception. A place where children become lifelong learners and develop the technical, cultural, and interpersonal skills to succeed in the twenty-first century. A place of inspiration, aspiration, and an urgent belief that improving education improves the world we live in. They call this place Edutopia. And we provide not just the vision for this new world of learning but also the leading-edge interactive tools and resources to help make it a reality, so go ahead and sign up, be wild and spend that $35!

WiX.com Beta

I love the old saying, out with the old, in with the new! And the reason I love it is because of the things we can do now as teachers to get students to learn in a different way. Much of the student population have grown up on computers, using them for social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, as well as using them for important things such as writing reports and doing research. My point is, is that why don't we take the love of MySpace that students have (trust me they go around every filter possible to get on that site at school) and incorporate it into the classroom. I'm not talking about MySpace itself, but the opportunity to create layouts and template that they could use as a report, that is a functional website, created by them, and could then actually be imported into MySpace (if they wanted to...but probably not.) or put on the teachers website or blackboard postings.

WiX.com is free and completely lets you build your own web page. Now, if your not too good or have no idea of HTML or any other web design language, that's alright! They have template you can change, modify, edit, and all other great ways to help customize each site. So stop making your students create a lame poster board, and have them create their own website or MySpace layout (and no, it doesn't need to be on MySpace to view)...out with the old and in with the new!

CamStudio.org

I teach CAD/Drafting, and it's about 98% on the computer, I've done demonstrations to the entire class, instructing all 27 students at the same time, but what about for the couple knuckleheads that aren't paying attention, or the students that got lost after you said, click on the icon that says SolidWorks. Anyways, I thought how can I have these students catch up without me going to help them because they weren't paying attention. CamStudio has solved this problem, it's a free streaming video software able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

So take your lessons to the next level and make them into something to share with everyone, put it on the network for all teachers to use, heck, if you have a web page or have a blackboard account, make these available to directly stream so students can watch and work at the same time. They are the generation of multitasking right?

GanttProject

I'm always trying to find ways to find new ways to help students stay on task when they are working on a project, especially when they're 2-3 weeks long. GanttProject has came up with a great program that can help students stay on task, in a cool and FREE way! With GanttProject you can break down your project into a tree of tasks and assign human resources that have to work on each task. You can also establish dependencies between tasks, like "this task can't start until this one is finished". GanttProject renders your project using two charts: Gantt chart for tasks and resource load chart for resources. You may print your charts, generate PDF and HTML reports, exchange data with Microsoft(R) Project(TM) and spreadsheet applications.

Adobe Photoshop Express Beta

Photoshop...it's this generations Microsoft Paint, but on steroids. Now most students probably don't have a legit version of Photoshop on their home computer due to it's expensive price, but we can change that. Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop Express, a free lite version of your typical Photoshop. You can edit, tweak, manipulate, color, and pretty much anything else you want to do in this version, plus when you sign up, you get up to 2 gigs of free storage for your photos. This site can also hook right into your students Flickr, Facebook, or their own Adobe photo storage. If your school can't afford the software, well now you have a free version to use, and trust me, it's a whole lot better than MS Paint.

Timetoast.com

Ahh the beaty of the great Timline. We've all made one and have seen the standard poster board with printed and photocopied pictures sloppily glued on. From the bad handwriting, to the pictures falling off, and the occasional no name poster, we've all have had problems! Well of course, the web has came to our rescue again and a site called Timetoast Timlines has been created. You have to sign up, but it's free, and trust me it's worth it. Students are able to insert pictures, write information in short statements and then you can click the + symbol and the information can be expanded. Like always, this can be used in pretty much any subject you can think of, even Math ( you could give the timeline on how to do equations or something goofy like that to help students remember). This thing is pretty cool, one of my favorites actually...enjoy!

edu20.com

Are you looking into other ways to teach your every day regular class? Well instead of things being "new and improved" people think they're tech savvy by calling it "2.0" So today's teachers and students can take their education to the next level by edu 2.0. This site could be used as an assistant to the everyday class. You need to sign up, but of course, it's free. Edu 2.0 also has teacher resources, postings, and ways to connect your students to students around the country. It took a little time to get a hang of the set up and all, but once you start, this site could really help students use technology with any class!

Mixwit..com

We know that today's students are plugged-in, volume turned up, I need music for everything I do type kids. Well why don't we use that to our advantage and have students create projects by making play lists that students can share with the class that is revolved around a subject. To achieve this great idea a website called MixWit Media Playground is a perfect and sleek way of doing so. This site is still running in Beta, so there can be some problems in it, such as some of the music that I added in my example wouldn't work at first, I'm guessing some type of copyright issue, but that's not my problem.

I think the best way is incorporate this into a project or classroom would be a doing genres of music in history in classes by breaking music down by 60's, 70's, etc. Or my favorite, a good icebreaker for the beginning of the year! Every student has to listen to some type of music. It could be from what they listen to on their 80 gig iPod, or whatever their parents play. Music usually shows you who they are outside of the classroom. My students can't believe that I listen to mellow music like Micheal Buble as well as the newest Lil Wayne. You can learn a lot and connect on another level just by listening to what they like!

By the way, I think this site is awesome!

eBooksquad.com

We all know how much of a problem text books can be in the classroom. From students loosing them left and right, spilling food and drinks on them, and writing great messages like, do you want to know what Mr. Steve does in his spare time? Turn to page 45....ok now turn to page 103, 22, 297, etc. etc. etc. you know you've wasted 10 minutes to see the final answer. Anyways, eBooksquad is a great website that searches the net for eBooks, and all the books it finds, are of course, free! I wouldn't say that it has every book possible, but it is definatly a cool site if your looking for examples from books, tutorials, and other basic things.

Find X

PlanningWiz

Since I'm a drafting, architecture and mechanical engineering teacher, I think have a weak spot for sites that are geared towards my subject area. PlanningWiz is a website that anyone can use and the best part is that you don't need to have any form of experience in drafting or architecture to start drawing up plans of you classroom, home, apartment, or office!

This can be perfect for multiple content areas, some that come to mind for me is in my drafting 1 class, to show the basics of floor plans and room design, to life skills classes or planning their apartment or a cost analysis of furniture needed. Your imagination on how to add this into your curriclum is the only thing stopping you! Don't we want to include math into ALL subject areas, this site is perfect for it since it uses metric and imperial for measuring (it's on the bottom corner of website).

humyo.com

Computer storage has came a long way, from the big old floppy disks, to the great invention of zip disks, well that actually wasn't a great invention but it worked, and now usb flash drives. Most companies, schools, and even some homes have networks where files can be stored and be accessed on any computer, while in the building that is. Humyo fixes this problem of accessing these files by creating a free online storage system that can be accessed anywhere you want, in or out of the building, up to 25 gigs of media files and 5 gigs for non-media files. If you want to upgrade you can and get some added security, an "H" aka humyo drive on your computer, no ads, 100 gig of storage, etc. etc. for a little cost of $5 a month, not bad to back up your files!

Fewer Pursuing Tech Degrees - TIME Article

We all know that kids are good at using computers and they're starting younger and younger, actually my 3 year old nephew can navigate through YouTube to watch cartoons without a problem! Anyways, instead of yelling at the "computer slackers" for not keeping up with their homework in Slavic studies because their creating a program for Ubuntu, instead we need to encourage them to finish with a degree!

According to a resent article in TIME Magazine, "Fewer college students are pursuing computer-related degrees at a time when demand is increasing and thousands of baby boomers are retiring from technical jobs."

So go ahead and push those slackers to get those basic high school programming classes and tell them that they'll be getting crazy paying jobs for something that they love! Whats wrong with that picture?

Livemocha.com

We all know that today's students are going to be working at a company that will speak more than one language. And because of this most schools have some type of standards for a foreign language implemented into their curriculum. But what about the students that want to learn a language that's not available? Livemocha Beta is a website that "blends self-paced lessons, a vibrant community, and interactive tools to help you talk to the world."

Of course this site if completely free and it lets students track their progress by using the tools inside of Livemocha. This could take an independent study to a whole new level for students and teachers!

HippoCampus.org

So I found this a while back, and it's a resource tool for all your core subject areas, actually its a great tool and it's called HippoCampus! Very similar to MIT's OpenCourseware, but this is set up for high school classes. You could easily use this site as a guideline when teaching in that subject area. It also has higher level classes such as physics and calculus and even college prep classes! .

openculture.com

Openculture.com is another free open courseware, but with a twist! The difference is that openculture feeds by linking you to iTunes or downloadable mp3 files. Today's students forget to bring their books, paper, and pencils to class, but always have their iPod with them. Openculture uses the students favorite tool (their iPod of mp3 player) and utilizes it to learn. This site has linked up with multiple colleges and universities to give you the an enormous amount of information.

Just think...instead of lecturing for 20 minutes in the classroom, have the students go home, download the podcast from iTunes, and have them fill in the note sheet! Now that's using some great technology!

MIT OpenCourseware

One of the best schools in the nation has TONS of information online, for free of course! the Massachusetts Institute of Technology aka MIT, has all their information, lessons, projects, practice quizzes, etc. online. The classes range from architecture, planning, engineering, health sciences, humanities, art, science, management and many many more.

I know what you might be thinking, it's MIT!!! But don't worry, I have used this website to help get ideas for projects, as well as to show examples. Not all classes at MIT are for geniuses! That's why they also created Highlights for High School open courseware, which focuses on AP Calculus, Physics, and Biology, as well as small projects you can do in classes such as introductions to robotics, electronics, theater design, and other subjects.

Lego Digital Designer

The amazing world of Legos! They've been around forever, but you probably remember having a big bin of them in the closet that you use to build houses, cars, monsters, etc. But who wants to deal with that mess anymore when you can go digital? That's what the Lego Digital Designer software is all about. It's a simple 3D software, almost like a basic CAD program, that lets you take already made pieces and put them together just as if you were doing it in real life! This is perfect for all grade levels. If particpate in FIRST Lego League, Lego NXT Robotics, or if you're teaching about simple machines using blocks and triangles. The number of things you can do with this software is endless!

This is a 4 min. video that gives you a quick runthrough of what you can do with this software.

Lego also has a Educators Link that provides free lessons and activities. You can actually search activities by grade level, age, and activity. This is great for the busy teacher or a starting point to build a lesson off of.

Johnny Chung Lee's Procrastineering

I have found this guy through multiple websites and the work he does is amazing! He's all about what this blog is about, technology on the cheap! Below are links to his website, as well as his blog. He hasn't updated his blog in a while, but it's still worth putting up there.

Johnny Chung Lee's Professional Homepage
Johnny Chung Lee's Procastineering Blog

My favorite thing that Johnny Lee has created is the Wiimote Whiteboard. Check out the video below.

Johnny Lee on www.ted.com

Technology on the Cheap!

Welcome to my Teacher Technology Source blog! I’m writing this to help teachers find ways to help incorporate the best technology while on a tight budget, and we all know our schools are always looking to save every penny possible.

I have found many different resources online on multiple sites, so I thought it’d be a great idea to put them all together onto this blog! So sit back, read, click, download, comment, and let me know what you think about my findings. If you find something you'd like to share, just let me know and I'll share it with everyone.