BLOG TOOLS


Thanks to Kirsty Lowdon for her presentation at the OCR Annual A L Media Studies Conference 2014

Audio tools

Create and upload your own podcast or find a variety of free podcasts.

Video tools

WeVideo is an online video editing program that you can use collaboratively with others. It is easy to add effects, music and narration to a personal or group project. WeVideo also takes the hassle out of sharing by providing options for popular social media sites.

If you want to include a YouTube video that isn’t entirely appropriate or relevant, use Tubechop to cut out all of the excess and only keep what you want to show.

Organisation tools

Google Calendar is great for planning lessons, exams and keeping track of assignment due dates. It’s fast, intuitive, and only requires a Google account. It also has the ability to sync with some smart phones.

Remember the Milk is a free online to-do list and task manager. It’s cool because you can use it from a number of different platforms including Gmail, Twitter, iPad, iPhone, Android, and more.

A lot of students have a hard time giving class presentations, but Cueprompter helps to relieve some of the nerves. Copy and paste your script into the box and it displays just like a real teleprompter. Plus, it’s free to use.

Photo storage

Photobucket is a popular website that can be used to store and share your images and videos for free. It’s a handy tool for transferring files between your home and work computer.

Like Photobucket, Flickr is another free image hosting service that allows you to access your files from any computer with an internet connection.

MediaFire is a free file and image hosting website. It is nice because you can upload and download your documents from any computer with an internet connection and only you have access to them.

Sharing tools

SlideShare is one of the most popular ways to upload and share PowerPoint presentations and other documents. Again, this is a great tool for transferring documents between your home and school computer without having to carry around a flash drive.

Scribd is a web 2.0 document sharing site where you can upload, store and embed various types of files. It’s another popular option for moving files between your home and school computer.

Enjoy 10GB of free file storage at 4shared. Since everything is stored in the cloud, you can access it from any computer with an internet connection.

AuthorSTREAM is another one of many websites that allow you to upload a PowerPoint presentation and access it from any computer with an internet connection. It’s nice because you can select the privacy settings you want for your PowerPoint.

Writeboard allows you to create sharable, web-based text documents that let you save and view every version of your content. It can be used as an individual or collaboratively which makes it perfect for group assignments.

Mindmapping/Brainstorm/timelines/graphs tools

As one of the largest and most popular flashcard creation websites around, Quizlet allows students and teachers to customize their own “sets” of flashcards. You can manage access to the flashcards you create and share them with other students.

With Dipity, you can find, create and embed interactive timelines. The best part is that you can add photos to customize the look of each timeline. This website is very useful for providing you with a visual representation of a sequence of events.

Timetoast is a great way to share the past, or even the future...
Creating a timeline takes minutes, it's as simple as can be.

You can use Gliffy to create attractive and professional graphic organizers like Venn diagrams and flow charts. Unfortunately, to receive full access to their services, you have to pay for it. However, you can sign up for a free 30 day trial.

Use Bubbl.us to create colorful online mind maps. It’s great for class discussions and brainstorming sessions

Use Create-a-Graph to make attractive graphs for free. Choose from bar, line, area, pie and simple XY coordinate graphs.

Mindomo is an online mind mapping tool. You can collaborate in real-time with others and share/embed what you’ve created. You get 3 free mind maps.

Tricider is great for online brainstorming and voting, and can be used to gather feedback from other students on class projects and awards. You can even embed and share your topic which makes it easy to get responses.

Tagxedo is an great word cloud creation tool. You can turn customized text, websites, blogs, twitter accounts and more into stunning designs based on the frequency of words found in the medium. There are numerous designs and color schemes to choose from that can be saved to your computer or shared.

Wordle.Create beautiful word clouds from text that you provide. Like Tagxedo, it gives prominence towords that appear most frequently. You can save, print and share your creation.

Filming the screen tools

Screencast-O-Matic is an online screen recorder with a one-click recording feature. You can use it from your browser on either a Windows or Mac computer.

Screencast is another media storage website. With a free account, you get 2GB of storage and 2GB of bandwidth a month. You keep the rights to everything you upload and you can determine the privacy settings for each file. From there, Screencast makes it easy to share and embed your media. Screencast also works seamlessly with TechSmith’s screen recording Camtasia software.

Screenr is one of the best instant screencast tools available. It’s free and you can record on your PC or Mac, play it anywhere—even on your iPhone—and there’s nothing to download (as long as you have JAVA installed on your computer).

Image and video comment tools

VoiceThread’s group conversations are stored and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world. It allows you to create multimedia slideshows with images, videos and documents. Others can view the slides and then leave text, audio or video comments.

Blabberize is a fun web 2.0 tool that allows you to upload a picture (of a person or animal), select its mouth, and make it talk by adding an audio file. 
Image editing tools

Create your own comic strip for free. You can write in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Latin. After you’re done creating, you can print your customized comic or email it to yourself.

Pixlr is a free online photo editing tool. It’s like PhotoShop, but much more affordable!

PicMonkey makes creative tools for photo editing and graphic design.

Presentation tools

Prezi is a really neat cloud-based presentation program that allows you to zoom in and out. If you don’t mind your slides being public, you can sign up for a free account with 100MB of storage.

Use Animoto to easily create presentations and videos with your own images and music, or choose from a library of stock files. Teachers can apply for a free Animoto Plus account.

Use Diigo to highlight text and images on webpages that you’ve found and then access them at a later date from your Diigo account. You can also create sticky notes if you need to write additional comments. When you return to the website, all of the annotations you made are still there.

Glogster is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters, or Glogs. A "Glog", short for "graphics blog", is an interactive multimedia image. It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content.

ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books.

Scrapbook tools

Padlet (formerly WallWisher) is basically an online message board where you post “Sticky Notes.” You can make one for yourself to help you remember important events and dates, or create one for a class. You can even choose to approve each sticky note before it is created so that you can monitor what’s being said.

Scrapblog is an online, flash-based multimedia scrapbook editor. It allows you to quickly combine your images, audio, and video into ‘scrapblogs’.

Feedback tools


Poll Everywhere is an inexpensive and quick alternative for clicker response systems. Create your first poll in 30 seconds without having to sign up. Students simply text their answer to a predetermined number and, voila! Poll Everywhere is free if your class size is fewer than 40 students.


Managing blogs

With Edublogs, you can create and manage your own teacher blog as well as student blogs. You can customize designs and include videos, images and podcasts. Best of all, it’s safe and secure.














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