jsholes' blog

 

Piet Mondrian, Compostion II in Red, Blue, and Yellow (1930)

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Artpad.art.com

“Artpad” is a great site to create digital images with that are true-to-life to what real paint can do on a canvas.  It also has the potential for those who create work to e-mail the image to others.

http://artpad.art.com/artpad/painter/

Cacoo.com

Cacoo.com is a web tool that is free of charge for limited usage.  It will allow you to create diagrams of all sorts.  It also allows you to share your diagram with others and edit it in “real time” with each other.  Cacoo does not require a download to use it.  You simply create your free account (which is fast and easy) and go.

https://cacoo.com/

Glogster.com

Gloster is a great tool for student K-12 that is interactive and is perfect for conducting Inquiry-Based Learning methods.  Although it is not free (not even to teachers) it does have reasonable prices that I feel are worth it.  It’s a great stepping stone for younger students towards the complexity of having a blog.  The interactive poster allows the students to compose text and images along with hyperlinks within the images to other sources of information. This is a great tool that can really help develop the sense of ownership in the student and challenge them with critical-thinking and problem solving issues.

http://glogsteredu.edu.glogster.com/

Prezi.com

Prezi is an online tool that gives a stylish alternative to creating a powerpoint.  One of the major differences of Prezi from your traditional powerpoint presentation is in the development of the layout and dynamics involved in the delivery of the information during the presentation.  The layout has pre-programmed color schemes that keeps the palette effective without causing the creator to get lost in the infinity of choices during the color composition.  The dynamics in the delivery of the presentation really has some unique ways available to “transition” from one thought to the next.  This  helps greatly in keeping your audience engaged. Prezi does offer a free account and has a special offer for teachers that gives more capacity and options for you.

http://prezi.com/profile/signup/edu/

Google Docs

Google Docs is a great tool for anyone who needs to create, share, and store information.  It qualifies as “cloud” storage where your information can be accessed from any computer rather than being saved only to your hard drive.  Word Processing, spreadsheet, and presentations are some of the features available that are  free for you to use.  This link below takes you to the “docs” for teachers specifically.

http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html

Blogroll.com

“Blogpoll” is a free online tool that is very simple to use.  Simply go to the website and enter the criteria for you poll or survey, and you will be given a code to embed it into your blog when you finish.  If you want to customize your colors and such it asks that you at least use “explorer” 5.5 .

http://www.blogpoll.com/