Free Technology for Teachers

Learn About Chromebooks Through Project Chromebook

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Last month Google announced that 27,000 or more Chromebooks were headed into U.S. schools. If you or someone in your school heard that announcement and became curious about using Chromebooks in your building, you should take a look at Kevin Jarrett's new blog, Project Chromebook.

Project Chromebook is an on-going record of a 60 day trial of 25 Chromebooks in two fourth grade classrooms. The blog covers topics like deployment and administration of Chromebooks as well as information about Chrome apps for education.

While exploring Project Chromebook one of the things that I learned about Chromebooks in education is that you don't have to sign a year-long lease with Google, there are other options like month-to-month rentals of Chromebooks. Month-to-month rental is the route that Kevin's school took. If you're not 100% sure that Chromebooks are the right solution for your school a short-term rental makes sense to me too.

If you're curious about what it looks like to deploy Chromebooks and use them in the classroom, Project Chromebook is a blog to which you should subscribe.

From Ideas to iBooks - Great Advice

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

One of the most popular posts earlier this month was about the free iBook Hot Apps 4 HOTS published by Lisa Johnson and Yolanda Barker. I was just looking at Lisa's blog and discovered that she has outlined the steps taken to get Hot Apps 4 HOTS from an idea to an iBook. The blog post includes Johnson and Barker's Blog Talk Radio episode in which they discuss the process.

Applications for Education
If you're thinking about publishing your own iBooks or having your students publish iBooks, Hot Apps 4 HOTS: From Inception to ISBN could be very instructive for you.

Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

My assistant tells me to write faster.

Good morning from Maine. Despite the outcome of the SuperBowl, everyone at the Free Technology for Teachers World Headquarters had a good week and I hope that the same is true for all of you. As I do every week, I've written a short list of the week's most popular posts. If your RSS reader or email inbox got too full this week, this list provides a good way for you to quickly discover some of the week's ed tech highlights.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. Three Browser Extensions Every Teacher Should Try
2. Stocks, Dividends, and Inflation Explained in Under Two Minutes
3. 30 Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers
4. 15 Resources for Safer Internet Day
5. 7 Tools Students Can Use to Manage Group Projects
6. ThinkB4U - Web Safety Tutorials from Google
7. Gooru - Great Collections of Math and Science Resources

Would you like to contribute to the Fifth Anniversary Classroom 2.0 Book? If so, we're still accepting contributions. Contributing to the Classroom 2.0 Fifth Anniversary Book could be an excellent way to have your ideas read by a large audience.

Please visit the official advertisers and marketing partners that help keep this blog going.
LearnBoost provides a free online gradebook service for teachers.
MasteryConnect provides a network for teachers to share and discover Common Core assessments.
The Worth Ave Group offers insurance plans for school technology.
Fifty Sneakers offers a great service for creating multimedia online quizzes.
ABCya.com is a provider of free educational games for K-5.
Lesley University offers quality online graduate programs for teachers.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County offers graduate programs for teachers. In February I will be holding a free public webinar through UMBC.
Ed Tech Teacher offers professional development services for schools. I will be speaking at their winter conference on March 3.

How to Subscribe to Free Technology for Teachers.
If you aren't subscribed you can do so via these links.
Subscribe via RSS. Subscribe via Email.
Like Free Technology for Teachers on Facebook.
Find me on Twitter or on Google+

Are you looking for a keynote speaker or workshop facilitator?

Click here for information about what I can do for you.

Some of my upcoming presentations that are open to the public are:

A public webinar on February 20th for the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

The EdTech Teacher 2012 Winter Conference on March 3.

NCTIES March 7-9, you won't want to miss the Best of the Web Smackdown I'm doing with Steven Anderson.

My other blog, Android 4 Schools is gaining subscribers every week. If you're an Android user, please check out Android 4 Schools and let me know what you think.

Mentimeter - Poll Your Audience

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:45:00 +0000

Yesterday, in my Ed Tech Teacher webinar 30 Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers I demonstrated Socrative. Socrative is currently my favorite tool for using cell phones, tablets, and laptops to survey an audience. After the webinar I was contacted by a company called Mentimeter who offers a similar product.

Mentimeter allows you to pose a question to your audience and get instant feedback on that question through cell phones, tablets, and any other Internet-connected device. Mentimeter doesn't have has many features as Socrative or Poll Everywhere, but it is free and very easy to use. In the video below I provide a two minute demonstration of Mentimeter.

Applications for Education
If your school has been considering purchasing one of those expensive clicker response systems give Mentimeter and these three other alternatives a try before making a purchase.

Character Scrapbook - A Tool for Student Reflections on Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Scholastic's Character Scrapbook provides a nice template that elementary school students can use to write about and reflect on the characters in their favorite stories. The template is quite simple to use. Students enter the name of a story and the name of their favorite character on the first page. On the next pages students list ten attributes of the character. The Character Scrapbook also allows students to create pictures of their favorite characters.

As you can see in the image above, Scholastic's Character Scrapbook doesn't limit students to human characters. Students can write about and create images of animal characters too.

Applications for Education
Scholastic's Character Scrapbook could be a great tool for getting students to think about their favorite stories. The Character Scrapbook has an easy print option so that you can print and display all of your students' works in your classroom.

Learn Chemistry - Videos, Lessons, and an Interactive Periodic Table

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Learn Chemistry is a production of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The purpose of Learn Chemistry is provide educators with resources for teaching chemistry lessons to students of all ages. The database of instructional resources has more than 2700 entries organized according to topic, age of students, and media type.

A couple of resources for middle school and high school lessons that stand out are the Faces of Chemistry video series and the Visual Elements Periodic Table. The Faces of Chemistry is a set of short videos that explain how chemistry is an integral part of three fairly common activities; hair coloring, farming, and car exhaust control. The Face of Chemistry videos are targeted toward students between eleven and fourteen years of age. The first video in the series is embedded below.

The Visual Elements Periodic Table is an interactive display of the Periodic Table of Elements. Click on any element in the table to reveal important information about that element. Many of the element information pages include short videos.

Applications for Education
Whether you teach elementary school, middle school, or high school students, Learn Chemistry seems to have something for everyone. Check out the Learn Chemistry Wiki to see materials developed by other teachers, share your own materials, and find partners for collaborative lessons.

Vocabulary.com - Extensive Lists of Vocabulary Practice Activities

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:30:00 +0000

I've written about a lot of vocabulary development websites in the past (here are seven good ones) so I was kind of surprised when I realized that I have never written about Vocabulary.com. Vocabulary.com offers hundreds of vocabulary practice lists and activities for students in elementary school through graduate school. In all there are more than 40,000 questions available through Vocabulary.com

When you sign up for Vocabulary.com you will be given an assessment quiz in order to give you suggested lists with which to start your practice. After completing the assessment you can use the practice lists suggested by Vocabulary.com or choose your own lists from the huge gallery of practice activities.

Vocabulary.com keeps tracks of your progress for you and, if you care for this sort of thing, gives you a virtual achievement badge.

Applications for Education
The Vocabulary.com activities that I tried reminded me very much of the SAT. The activities were a mix of fill in the blank and analogy activities. Students using Vocabulary.com receive instant feedback on each question that they attempt. Overall, Vocabulary.com could be a good site for students to use in preparation for the SAT.

Teaching Channel - Best Practice Videos and Lessons

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Teaching Channel is a collection of videos of teachers demonstrating their best practices. The videos are categorized according to grade level, subject, and topic. You will find examples of classroom management techniques and examples of teachers carrying out their best lesson plans. The lesson plan videos are accompanied by documents detailing the lessons. The classroom management videos are accompanied by tip sheets.

If you register on the Teaching Channel website you can download videos, take and save notes on each video, and take advantage of a lesson planning tool to organize your lessons.

Applications for Education
Teaching Channel could be a good place for pre-service teachers to see some good modeling of instructional methods. If you're a veteran teacher looking for some new ideas about how to teach a particular topic, the Teaching Channel could have what you need.

Custer's Last Stand - Video, Timeline, and Map

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:30:00 +0000

As some of you know, I don't have a television at home. Instead, my screen entertainment comes through whatever I find to stream online. This evening I was browsing the American Experience website when I found the full-length video of Custer's Last Stand. If you're a teacher of U.S. History, this is a resource that you should bookmark.

Watch Custer's Last Stand on PBS. See more from American Experience.

Applications for Education
In addition to the full-length video, American Experience offers a teacher's guide complete with twenty discussion questions and seven offline lesson plans. To accompany those lesson plans you will find a timeline of Custer's Black Hills Expedition and a Google Map about Custer's Black Hills Expedition.

DocumentaryZ - Another Place to Find Free Documentaries

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:30:00 +0000

In the past I've shared some lists of good places to find and watch free documentaries online (here's one list). Today, I learned about another place that teachers and students can find and watch documentaries online. DocumentaryZ offers hundreds of documentaries organized into two dozen categories. Many of the videos are served via YouTube, but some are not. If you're fortunate enough to work in a school that allows you to access YouTube, DocumentaryZ is worth bookmarking.

Applications for Education
If you're looking for a documentary to use in your classroom, take a look at DocumentaryZ. I do have one word of caution, the Health and Sexuality categories do include some topics that may not be appropriate for all students. Therefore, it would be best to use DocumentaryZ for your own searches rather than letting students search the site on their own.

The Impact of One School Principal

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:01:00 +0000

Vicki Davis recently wrote an article for The Atlantic about her decision to leave the business world to become a teacher. Those of you who, like Vicki and myself, worked in other fields before teaching will probably relate to Vicki's story.

On the same page as Vicki's story is an interesting infographic about the mathematical influence of one school principal on a community. The infographic has some interactive elements that will allow you to see how that one person's influence projects over one year, five years, and ten years. I can't say that I agree with everything in the infographic and The Atlantic doesn't disclose the source of their statistics, but it's still interesting. I would like to see the same type of infographic showing the influence of one teacher over five, ten, or more years.

30 Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Earlier today I presented a short webinar about some of my favorite Web 2.0 tools for teachers. The webinar was on behalf of Ed Tech Teacher for whom I facilitate in-person workshops from time to time. This summer I'll be working with them quite a bit. You can see the list of their summer workshops here. A recording of today's webinar will be available here shortly. If you just want to know what tools I shared in the webinar, you can view the slides below.

30 Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

View more presentations from Richard Byrne

If you're interested in having me work with your staff on the use of these tools, please visit my work with me page.

FreeFoto - Free Images for Student Use

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:00:00 +0000

FreeFoto.com is a collection of images developed by Ian Britton. FreeFoto offers a mix images that are available for free and for a licensing fee. Students can use the images on FreeFoto for free provided that they adhere to the student use guidelines. Visitors to FreeFoto can search for images by keyword or they can browse the galleries. The galleries are arranged by the locations of where the images were captured, by natural subject (sunsets, seasons), and many other subjects.

Applications for Education
The next time your students are looking for images that they can use in videos or slideshows, FreeFoto.com could have what they need.

Piazza - Not Just Another Message Board System

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Over the years I've reviewed quite a few services that offer teachers the ability to create private message boards for use in their courses. Here's a handful of those services. Today, I learned about one that tops all of those services.

Piazza is a free service that teachers can use to create message boards for their courses. Piazza message boards offer more than just the standard question and answer format found in the old free Ning packages, but not quite as many features as a paid service like Blackboard. Some of the highlights of Piazza are tracking of student use, options for having multiple instructors and or teaching assistants in each course, and collaborative editing of messages. Piazza also offers the things that you might expect like basic announcement posting.

When students response to a question posted by a teacher they can work with other students to edit that response. So rather than having a bunch of similar responses to sort through students can work together to develop a cohesive response. Teachers can weigh-in directly on each student response with a simple thumbs-up or they can actually comment and edit student responses. And like any good message board system, responses to messages in Piazza can be threaded.

To help instructors keep track of unanswered questions from students, Piazza offers great filtering tools. When they sign into their courses, just like in email, they can click to instantly see the latest unread messages, latest replies, and latest unresolved questions.

Applications for Education
For educators that are looking for a little more than a bare-bones message board system, but don't have the resources for a system like Blackboard, Piazza could be the end of that quest. To help teachers and students stay connected from just about anywhere, Piazza offers free Android and iPhone apps.

I learned about Piazza through Jessica Cam Wong's excellent Make Use Of post about the service. She wrote about it from the perspective of a student.

Infogr.am - Create Interactive Charts and Infographics

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Infogr.am is an online tool for creating interactive charts and graphs. Soon you will be able to create interactive infographic posters on Infogr.am too.

There are four basic chart types that you can create on Infogr.am; bar, pie, line, and matrix. Each chart type can be edited to use any spreadsheet information that you want to upload to your Infogr.am account. The information in that spreadsheet will be displayed in your customized chart. When you place your cursor over your completed chart the spreadsheet information will appear in small pop-up window. Your Infogr.am charts can be embedded into your blog, website, or wiki. I've embedded a sample below.

Applications for Education
The only drawback to Infogr.am for student use is that they must have a Twitter or Facebook account to sign into Infogr.am. Otherwise, Infogr.am could be a great tool for students to use to create displays of data that they have gathered. I signed up for the beta of the Infogr.am infographic service and am looking forward to trying that out too.

H/T to TechCrunch for the beta info about Infogr.am.

Videos - How Candidates Raise and Spend Money

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:00:00 +0000

The amount of money that Presidential candidates spend on their campaigns is just mind boggling to me. Chances are good that it's mind boggling to your students too. CNN's Explain It To Me series has a couple of videos explaining how candidates raise money and what they spend that money on.

Here is How Candidates Raise Money.

Here is Campaign Spending. One of the statistics in this video that might help your students understand how much money is spent on campaigns is that Kobe Bryant would have to play for 29 years to earn as much money as President Obama spent in 2008.

On a much lighter note, and use your discretion before using this in your classroom, the Colbert Super Pac Coordination Resolution With Jon Stewart actually does include some good explanation of a couple of finer points about political super pacs.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Applications are Still Being Accepted for Google Teacher Academy UK

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:30:00 +0000

The Google Teacher Academy is held periodically at various locations throughout the world. I had the privilege of attending GTA when it was held in Washington, D.C. in 2009. This spring there will be a Google Teacher Academy in London on April 4th. If you're interested in becoming a Google Certified Teacher, applications are being accepted until February 16th.

On a few previous occasions I have written about applying to GTA and the experience. If you're interested in my advice about GTA, here are some of my thoughts:
Overcoming the Video Hurdle of Applying to GTA
Advice for Applicants
Why Google Apps for Education? Why GTA?

Free Bike Tours for Teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:21:00 +0000

Image Credit: Ian Britton Free Foto

My lifelong friend Steve Thompson runs a company called Crate Works that builds travel cases for bicycles. This morning he sent me an email about a free travel opportunity for teachers. Experience Plus Bicycle Tours gives away bicycle tour packages to teachers every summer. The tours are in Europe, South America, and Central America. If you're a cycling enthusiast, teaching at least half-time in the United States you're eligible to apply. Applications are due by March 30, 2012.

Two Tools for Reading ePub Files in Your Browser

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:15:00 +0000

ePub documents are everywhere now. But if you don't have an ereader, you might feel like you're missing out on something. Fortunately, there are some tools that you can use to read ePub documents on your laptop or desktop. Here are two tools that I have used to read ePub documents on my laptop.

EPUBReader is a Firefox add-on that will allow you to read ePub documents within your browser. EPUBReader downloads ePub files and displays them directly in your browser. The video below offers a short demonstration.

Magic Scroll is a Chrome web app that you can use to read ePub files on your desktop or laptop even if you do not have an internet connection.

If you want to convert webpages into ePub documents, dotEPUB is a good Chrome web app for that. I previously wrote about dotEPUB in October. Here is a video overview of dotEPUB.

Applications for Education
Both of these browser add-ons could be good to have installed on your school's library computers or computer lab computers. If students are conducting research and encounter an ePub document, they will be able to access it without the need to send it to an ereader.

A History of Timelines & 5 Tools to Make Your Own

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Through Brain Pickings I discovered a neat set of timelines called the Cartographies of Time. The Cartographies of Time are historical map and timeline mash-ups. I've embedded one of my favorite images from the Cartographies of Time below.

The Cartographies of Time made me think that it would be fun to have students create their own creative timelines like this one drawn as dragon, but if you would like to have your students create a more "traditional" multimedia timelines, I have a short list of good tools for that too.

Better World Flux allows users to create animated visualizations of development data. To use Better World Flux (no registration required) all you have to do is select a data set from the menu provided and select a country or countries from the menu provided. From there Better World Flux creates an animated data visualization for you. The visualization will change as the years on the timeline at the bottom of the visualization change. This way users can see growth and recession of a statistic over time.

Using XTimeline students can collaborate, just as they would when making a wiki, to build a multimedia timeline. Timelines built using XTimeline can include text, images, and video. XTimeline will accept dates in A.D./B.C. format.

Using the annotation and spotlight tools in YouTube's video editor your students can create a sequence of educational videos in a "choose your own adventure" style. Your students could create short videos about a series of events and link them together. In a very sequential course like U.S. History you could have students making videos and linking them together throughout a semester or longer. Click here or here to find directions on how to link videos together.

Time Toast is easy to learn to use. To add events to a timeline simply click on the inconspicuous "add an event" button and a simple event box pops up in which you can enter enter text, place a link, or add a picture.

Animaps wasn't built specifically for creating timelines, but it could be used for that purpose. Animaps is a service that was built for the purpose of allowing users to create animated Google Maps. The basics of creating maps in Animaps is very similar the process for creating maps in Google Maps. The main benefit of using Animaps over Google Maps is that you can create a tour of your placemarks that plays through according to the timing that you specify. Another benefit is that you can build in colored shapes to expand and contract to demonstrate patterns. You can also import images to your map from Flickr, Picassa, and Facebook. Click here to watch a demonstration of Animaps in action.

Bending the Rules for Good

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000

On Monday Chris Brogan wrote a post, Throw Away the Maps, that reminded me of an analogy that I've often made in my own presentations, but have only hinted at in blog posts until now. In Throw Away the Maps, Brogan tells readers to work toward something larger and more meaningful than your job description.

I love to watch re-runs of M.A.S.H. whenever I get a chance (not having a television at home, that's not very often). I've always connected with Alan Alda's character Captain Hawkeye Pierce. Hawkeye was the best surgeon in camp, but not the best soldier in the Army's eyes because he had a tendency to ignore Army rules if they were in the way of delivering best care to his patients or if they were in the way of being a humanitarian. As educators there are times when organizational rules might stand in the way of providing the best educational experiences for our students. When that happens will you choose to be like Hawkeye?

I often use the above analogy in response to questions about cell phones in schools. You can read about some of my experiences with cell phones in schools here.

ThinkB4U - Web Safety Tutorials from Google

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Revealed today through their Public Policy Blog ThinkB4U is a new series of web safety videos and tutorials from Google and its partners. Using the "choose your own adventure" aspect of YouTube video editing, ThinkB4U offers interactive videos to educate viewers about things like protecting online reputations, avoiding scams, research and critical thinking, and responsible text messaging.

ThinkB4U is divided into three basic sections; students, parents, and educators. Each section addresses nine different topics related to safe and responsible use of the Internet and cell phones. The sections include short videos about the topics, a short written lesson, and some interactive games on the topics of responsible use of the Internet and of cell phones.

Applications for Education
The Educators' section of ThinkB4U offers lesson plans from Common Sense Media and the National Consumer League. There are lesson plans designed for elementary school, middle school, and high school use.

You're Invited! Do You Want to Write a Guest Post?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Update: I have taken down the submission form as I had more than 50 submissions in 13 hours. My apologies if you were not able to get your submission in. Those of you who put your submissions in will hear from me in the next 24 hours.

At some point in each of the last three years I've opened up some time for guest bloggers to contribute to Free Technology for Teachers. Last year that time was in April. The two previous years that time was in February. This year I'm going to open up some days around President's Day (U.S. Holiday) for guest bloggers. February 20 (Monday) through 24 (Friday) will be "guest blogger week." (Yes, I realize it's not quite a week). My goal is to feature three guest bloggers each day of the week while Morrison (my dog in the picture) and I are on an ice fishing vacation.

If you would like to be a guest blogger on Free Technology for Teachers during the week of February 20-24 here are the details on what I'm looking for.

1. I'm looking for people who have not written guest posts for me before. I want to give new people a chance to have their voices heard.

2. I'm looking for people who are willing to share examples of how they have used technology in their schools as a teacher, teacher-librarian, media specialist, or administrator.

3. I'm not looking for list style posts like this one, I've got that covered.

4. If you're a paid representative of a company, thank you for your interest, but this is not an opportunity for you to promote your product or service. Click here if advertising is what you're after.

5. People who can heed this advice from Darren Rowse about guest blogging.

What you can get out of this:

1. Exposure to an audience of more than 43,000 subscribers. Past guest bloggers have reported seeing significant upturns in visits to their blogs and or Twitter profiles after guest posting here. Even if you're just starting to blog or be active in social media, please don't let that discourage you.

2. My undying gratitude.

3. If we meet up at a conference like EdCamp Boston or ISTE, I'll buy you the beverage of your choice.

If you've read all of the above information and are interested in guest posting, please complete the form below. I will close this form once I have filled all of the guest posting slots. If the form is up, I'm still accepting submissions.

Update: I have taken the form down as I had more than 50 submissions in 13 hours. My apologies if you were not able to get your submission in. Those of you who put your submissions in will hear from me in the next 24 hours.

Peep and the Big Wide World - Educational Games for Children

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:30:00 +0000

Peep and the Big Wide World is a nice resource for pre-K and early elementary school that I learned about through Kevin Jarrett's most recent Last Week in Lab post.

Peep and the Big Wide World, produced by WGBH, offers a great collection of online games, videos, and offline activities designed to help students learn and practice skills in math and science. One emphasis of the games that I tried is recognizing patterns. In all there are fifteen online games available through Peep and the Big Wide World.

The offline or Anywhere Activities section of Peep and the Big Wide World offers dozens of activities designed to extend the science and lessons provided in the Peep and the Big Wide World videos. In fact, when you're on the video page you will notice that there is a suggested Anywhere Activity listed with each video.

Applications for Education
Peep and the Big Wide World looks like it could be a great resource for pre-K and early elementary school science and mathematics lessons. Kevin Jarrett is one of the first people I started following when I started this blog and I've always found his work to be insightful and helpful. If he's using Peep and the Big Wide World, I'm inclined to think that it must be good.

7 Tools Students Can Use to Manage Group Projects

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:00:00 +0000

Any teacher who has assigned group projects to students has at some point had to help those students organize and equitably distribute work. (Or has had to listen to students complaints about other group members not pulling their weight). Here are some tools that you can have students use to manage their responsibilities when working on group projects.

Pegby is a good website for organizing the tasks that you and or your team need to get done. Pegby is set up like a corkboard with index cards stuck to it. The corkboard has three columns to place your index cards on. A column for things to do, a column for things in progress, and a column for things that are done. Each index card can be assigned to a person, can have files attached to it, and can have due dates assigned to it. You can use Pegby as an individual or you can share your corkboard with others. Watch the video below to learn about Pegby.

Pegby in Two Minutes from Pegby on Vimeo.

Teambox is a free service that allows you to create and manage a collaborative workspace for team projects. Within your workspace you can create a calendar of due dates, chat with team members, send emails, and most importantly post and edit files. If you create a group on Teambox, you are automatically the administrator of the group. As the group's administrator you can send invitations for others to join the group, determine who does and doesn't have editing rights, and monitor all group member activities in the Teambox. Embedded below is a video overview of Teambox.

Teambox online collaboration software from Pablo Villalba on Vimeo.

Enter the Group is a new free service offering collaborative project management for groups. Enter the Group features a calendar, messaging, and file sharing for your group members. If you want to keep your project just between friends, you can create a private group. If you want the whole world to see your project, you can make a public group. To get started you can create an Enter the Group account or sign-in using your Twitter or Facebook credentials. Once you're logged in, click "create new project." Then specify some details about your project and invite others to your group. It really is quite easy to get started.

Todoist and its sister service Wedoist are easy-to-use task management services for individuals and groups. Todoist is the service for individuals and Wedoist is the service for groups. It takes just a minute to register and begin using both services. You'll notice with both services that the user interface is very clear and intuitive. When you create projects and assignments by default they are arranged chronologically, but reordering them is a simple matter of selecting an up or down arrow. To help you keep track of your to-do lists wherever you go Todoist offers desktop clients, iGoogle Gadgets, a Google Chrome extension, and three mobile applications. Todoist can also be integrated with your Gmail account. Embedded below is a video introduction to Wedoist.

Trello is a free service designed to help individuals and groups manage tasks. Trello's user interface features a basic virtual corkboard-like space to which you and your collaborators can pin task cards. Task cards can be arranged into columns such as "to do," "in progress," and "completed." You can name and arrange the columns however you see fit. Each task card on your Trello board can be assigned to individuals in your group. Trello allows you to create and be a member of multiple boards. The video below offers a detailed introduction to Trello.

Wiggio is a collaboration tool designed to make scheduling group meetings easier. Wiggio is also intended to be used as a resource for group planning of projects. Some of the excellent features of Wiggio include a group calendar, a mass messaging system that works with cell phones and email, and a group polling system. For groups that are working on projects together Wiggio offers a shared folder for files and links. Watch the video below for an overview of Wiggio.

Ta-da List is a simple to-do list creation tool built by 37 Signals. Ta-da List allows to you to create a to-do list in 30 seconds. Just sign-up and start building lists. Your lists will be hosted at a unique url assigned just to you. Direct your browser to that url to check items off of your lists or to create a new list. Your Ta-da Lists can be used individually or you can share it with a group.