FREE TOOLS IN EDUCATION

Tribute to Steve Jobs - The Man with the "Midas Touch"

2011-10-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help writing this post as a tribute to an all time great CEO. No words can explain what he did to all us. He revolutionised the way people use technology. A creative genius that he was, he created magic twice in his life time - first when he founded Apple and second when he returned to Apple. A great visionary and innovator, he ruled the minds and hearts of digital generation - people who grew with technology in their hands. He, for sure, could be credited with bringing in "technotainment" and "edutainment" where the people realised what technology could do for them. Though he may have lost the battle to cancer but for all of us he remains a winner always....Hats off to the Genius !! May his soul rest in peace...Few links dedicated to him..Click on the text to view article

We will miss you Jobs !!

Free Educational Resource/ Website - 2

2011-10-07T23:46:00.000-07:00

Sharing about few genersal educational websites that could be used to engage the children and utilised for project work as well. The sites are

NASA - http://www.nasa.gov/
National Geographic - http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
Discovery - http://www.discovery.com/
Brittanica - http://www.britannica.com/
BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/

Hope you enjoy the sites !!

Free Educational Resource/ Website-1

2011-10-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

Starting with the series "Free Educational Resource/ Website" where I would be sharing about many free interesting, comprehensive and highly useful educational websites that would help and benefit educators and students.

First in the series is Learners TV, http://www.learnerstv.com/ - a wonderful site having a huge collection of videos, courses, presentations, notes and animations. You name it and you will find it on this website. The collection is regularly updated and well thought of.

So, look no further and enjoy the collection on this site !!

World Teachers' Day - 5 Oct

2011-10-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

World Teachers’ Day, held annually on October 5th since 1994 - when it was created by UNESCO - celebrates teachers worldwide. Its aim is to mobilise support for teachers and to ensure that the needs of future generations will continue to be met by teachers.

The theme for this year is "Teachers for gender equality"

Wish all a very Happy Teachers' Day !!!

More info on the same is available on the following links

In India the Teachers' Day is celebrated on 5 Sept in memory of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. It is all about celebrating "being a teacher".

Free Plagiarism Tools

2011-09-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of few useful Plagiarism tools that i discovered while preparing for a teacher's workshop on the same theme. The list contains tools that not only check for text-lifting but also duplication and blog post lifting. Hope readers find it useful.

Free Software for Students by Autodesk - 30 products for download

2011-02-23T00:45:00.000-08:00

I am back after a hiatus !

Sharing about free softwares for students by Autodesk. The softwares could be downloaded at http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=download_center . There are about 30 softwares available for download from the site. Its out and out meant for students only and cannot be used for teaching. Read the instructions before starting to download/ use the software(s).

Indeed a wonderful range for students.

ONLINE FILE EXTENSION INFO UTILITY

2010-01-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

Somewhat related to my previous post on free online utility on file extension, here is another one. FILE INFO, www.fileinfo.com . With very neatly placed categories on the home page, this is a good online utility to find about any file type ( on extension basis).

A good time saver utility !

ONLINE UTILITY TO OPEN ANY FILE

2010-01-17T11:24:00.000-08:00

Got to know about this highly useful utility, OPENWITH, www.openwith.org. There are times when one gets stuck with a file having an alien extension. This is where this online utility would come very handy by providing one with the free programs that would help open the particular file. With the Category and Description option, it is indeed a helpful tool.

A very useful time saver utility indeed !

ANOTHER ONLINE SURVEY AND POLL TOOL

2010-01-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

In my quest for a perfect tool, tried my hands at another online survey and poll tool, Glow Day.
With its range of page based poll options, it is indeed a good tool and i tried in on my website as well. The tool offers the following options

text poll
picture poll
video poll
results in a graph format, which could be embedded in website, blog, etc.

Though the tool may not have a very appealing user interface and not so friendly login/ sign in option, still is useful.

A good tool to try !

STICK FIGURE TOOL - STYKZ

2010-01-15T02:14:00.000-08:00

For all the stick figure animators, Here's another Stick Figure Animation Tool, STYKZ. Must say, its an excellent tool and better than the other stickfigures. A very neat tool and with a rich user interface. It is a multi-platform tool.

The features are just too many to list. So pasting a screenshot from the site itself.

Enjoy the Tool !!!

ONLINE TEACHING TOOL

2010-01-14T22:52:00.000-08:00

EDOBOARD is an excellent online/ live teaching tool with lot of support built in to facilitate teachers/ tutors. Signing and Starting a Class is very simple. The tool/ site offers many wonderful features such as

Web Cam
Chat
Board Captures
Shared Scribble Board
Equations, Graphs, other tools.
Exercises, public and private
Calendar
Shared images and files

Indeed a wonderful tool. So, don't waste time and get started soon.

COMPREHENSIVE RESOURCE ON 21ST CENTURY SKILLS

2010-01-13T00:22:00.000-08:00

These days "21st Century Skills" is the buzz. With every educator talking about building "21st century skills' in learners, it is very important to have a proper understanding and clarity about the same. Mentioned here is indeed an excellent and a very comprehensive online resource on "21st Century Skills".

21st Century Skills is an excellent site with a number of highly useful resources. There are a number of downloadable resources ranging from Frameworks to Guides. The site features various publications and guides to download and use.

A must visit for anybody wanting to know and learn about 21st Century Skills.

VISUAL THINKING TOOL

2010-01-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

Sharing about a Visual Thinking website/ tool, WebSpiration, an online site that allows to create various visual tools like Idea Maps, Concept maps, etc. It is a good collaborative tool to visually brainstorm, organise, comprehend, communicate information, ideas, concepts, etc.

A very user-friendly site with lot of support and help for the users. A special section for Educators to highlight how educators could benefit by using the tool. Then there are menu options like 'Visual Thinking' to help you better understand the concept and philosophy behind it, 'Tips and Tricks' which very nicely explains how one can use it for different purposes like Brainstorming, Project Planning, etc. Another menu option is 'Examples' which highlight ready made examples of using the tool.

A good tool to try and use as "Visual Thinking" definitely has a better impact on learning.

ONLINE SURVEY CREATION TOOL

2010-01-05T09:18:00.000-08:00

Tried Survey Monkey, a free online survey cum questionnaire tool. The tool is quite handy and useful. Though restricted in many options, the free account still offers a range of features to to help build/ create a good survey or questionnaire.

Be cautious to use the free account in the following ways :

no. of questions as the free account restricts it to only 10
some additional options like splitting, etc. available only with pro version
few more
the survey ( at least the free one) is totally public, no way you can protect it or make it private

The tools does have the collection and analysis option.

Overall, a useful tool.

TOOL FOR QUOTING WEBSITE

2009-12-27T08:42:00.000-08:00

Here'a an interesting tool to quote any website. The online tool is kwout, http://www.kwout.com/

It is quite a simple tool to use. The beauty of this tool is that it allows you to take screenshot of any part of the webpage in the form of an ImageMap. This means the portion sut out from the webpage is retained with all its hyperlinks intact. Simply paste the link of the website you want to quote in the space provided and there it goes to display the mentioned website/ webpage for extraction.

Now, with the introduction of 'kwout everywhere', it surely helps quote anything on the website (blog, etc.) much easier and with a purpose. Look out for kwout everywhere on this blog of mine as well.

HIGHLY USEFUL RESOURCES BY 3M

2009-12-23T20:26:00.000-08:00

Writing about two highly useful reosurces by 3M.

In these times of "Climate Change", it becomes essential that the younger generation understand "living". The first resource is on Sustainaable Living, 3M Worldly Wise. Indeed a great site with separate sections for Teachers and Pupils. "Town Plan" is a great way to make pupils understand various concepts like Carbon Footprints, Renewable Energy, Recycling, etc. The Students also understand the applicability of these concepts in our daily living. It is real fun to browse through the " Town Plan" and understand things that matter to us for a "Sustainable Living". The teacher section has a range of Activity Worksheets to help teacher deliver the concept to pupils.

The second resource is 3M Streetwise, which is about "Child Road Safety" where there are three sections - for Pupils, Teachers and Parents. The resource has a range of options like Quiz, Science behind Safety, games, road safety knowledge, etc.
Though these resource are more applicable to UK and Ireland but still be relevant
for countries like India and others.

Hats off to 3M for such wonderful resources.

FREE CLIPARTS FOR TEACHERS

2009-12-18T08:37:00.000-08:00

Writing about an extremely useful site for free clipart images, www.fg-a.com

The site offers a good collection of free images with multiple categories and sections.

The site offers code to embed the cliparts blog, etc.

A good useful site

SITE WITH KID ACTIVITES

2009-12-09T01:25:00.000-08:00

Writing about a cute website, EdHeads, http://www.edheads.org/ with interesting activites for kids ( if i can say so !). Though the activities listed are few but are well presneted and delivered. Also, the site contains lots of useful and relevant website resources and lesson plans for each of the listed activities. I am sure the number ( of listed activites) would go up.

Indeed a very impressive and useful site.

SITE FOR WORD AND IMAGE CONVERTER

2009-12-04T01:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a useful site, DOC2PDF , http://doc2pdf.net for converting the following

word to pdf
image from one format to another. you may visit the link, http://image.doc2pdf.net/ for image converting.

After converting, the files can be directly saved to desktop.

Hope you find it useful !

ONLINE TEXT 2 SPEECH CONVERTER

2009-12-02T01:02:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for a simple, easy to use text 2 speech converter, here is a simple site/ tool - Spoken Text, http://spokentext.net. With its easy to use interface you may record text and save/ download it in various audio formats. You may record the text from among the following options

text entered
PDF document
HTML/ Website

Please ensure you take care of the following :

types of file supported
size of files supported
type of converted audio file to be downloaded

Quite a useful tool even for non-English teaching instructors/ teachers

Hope you enjoy using the tool !!

FREE VIDEOS FOR DOWNLOAD

2009-12-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting site, Next Vista for Learning, http://www.nextvista.org/ to download videos. Though the collection is not huge but the site looks clean with videos put under well identified categories.

A good site to explore for your subject needs and for some general topics as well.

Hope you like the site !

NASA IMAGES - AN EXCELLENT RESOURCE

2009-11-28T05:49:00.000-08:00

I write about an excellent resource site for NASA images, http://www.nasaimages.org more of a compendium on NASA. The site has excellent images and videos for download. The teachers could weave out entire projects fro children from this site.

Though i write only about tools that are neutral but couldn't resist writing about this excellent site.

Hope you find the site as useful as i have found it to be.

My Nominations for Edublog Awards

2009-11-25T03:36:00.000-08:00

My nominations for Edublog Awards 2009 are as mentioned below:

Best individual blog : Mathematicslearning

Best class blog : Social Science

Best resource sharing blog : Math Class

Best educational wiki : Exploring Geography

Best educational use of a social networking service : Passionate Teachers

Best new blog : Biology

EDUBLOG AWARDS 2009

2009-11-23T23:34:00.000-08:00

Hi,

The Edublog awards ( http://edublogawards.com) are back. Get set to nominate your favourite blogs/ wikis/ social networking, etc. and support them whole heartedly. Just remember to nominate them in the right category.

Also, lets be honest and support/ nominate only worthy blogs/ wikis/ social networks i.e. those who deserve to be nominated.

One imporant thing - you cannot self-nominate your blog/ wiki/ social network, etc.

Narinder

HAPPY TEACHERS DAY

2009-09-05T02:12:00.000-07:00

Wishing all teachers in India a very "Happy Teachers Day". Wish there were more such days to celebrate for teachers. This small piece does deserve a place in this blog on technology as "Teaching/ Teacher" is incomplete without the "Learner". Teaching is more about relationship (teacher-pupil) than anything else. Any amount of technology is useless unless there is acceptance from the learner and there is the right impact on them. Lets pledge on thid day to mould our teaching-learning to how learners learn rather than how we teach. Sharing with you a beautiful poem about Teacher ( Author Unknown).