Twitter

Twitter
Many of you have probably heard about "tweeting" but today I heard about a new way of using Twitter. One faculty member in the College of Business at Notre Dame has his students use twitter to "tweet" about the readings prior to coming to class. Then he uses a script to create a tag cloud based on the student tweets. Clicking on a word in the tag cloud takes you to the student tweets where the word is found.

Jott

Jott is a voice to text service. Make to-do lists, note inspirational thoughts, post to Twitter, and more.

Poll Everywhere

Ever wanted to try polling in your class, but you didn't want your students to have to buy a "clicker" that they may never use again? Here is a possible (and free) solution:

http://www.polleverywhere.com/

Poll Everywhere uses text messages to collect polling data to integrate into your PowerPoint presentation. Your students can use their laptop, smartphone or regular cell phone.

Jing

Capture images, record video and share content instantly online. The latest tool from TechSmith (the makers of Camtasia) and its free! Check it out: www.jingproject.com/.

MeBeam

Need a free way to meet online? Check out MeBeam (www.mebeam.com) and set up an impromptu video room. Then tell your friends to meet you. That's all it takes!

Google Notebooks

When I am looking for information online, I usually end up with a ton of printouts or a bunch of bookmarks, or I copy and paste into a Word document. Well, I found a great way to create a notebook of information with images, text, my thoughts and notes, and to store it for later use. Check out Google Notebooks. You can also create notebooks to share and collaborate with other people. This would be great for teams who are researching about topics online. You can take a tour here.

Ning - Create your own social network

I read about Ning from the EduCause Learning Initiative (www.educause.edu/eli) and decided to try it out. Ning allows you to set up your own social network. You have probably heard about FaceBook and MySpace... Ning is the same concept but provides more flexibility for creating a network that is specific to your purpose. Think about creating a social network for your course... you could facilitate discussion, support collaboration, and provide students with a "place" to meet and work.

Acrobat.com

"Acrobat.com is a set of online services — file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor, and web conferencing — you can use to create and share documents, communicate in real time, and simplify working with others. It's free, so sign up now."

I played around with ConnectNow and had a great online impromtu meeting, shared some files, played with the video option, and the screen share. Overall it was easy to use and worked well. It is Flash-based and has a clean interface.

VoiceThread

Have you been looking for a tool that supports a conversation related to photos or video? VoiceThread (http://voicethread.com) may be the answer for you! It supports zooming in on photos, adding voice, text or video comments associated with a single or multiple photos, or with video. You can add comments from your computer or even from your phone. In addition, you can "doodle" on the video. Check it out!

Microsoft Office Interactive Guides

Are you lost with the new "ribbon" in Microsoft Office applications? Microsoft has created a Flash-based interface to help you... Go to: http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/training/HA102295841033.aspx and choose from the Interactive Guides and Mapping workbooks.

Welcome to the new Technology for Teaching Blog

I realized the other day that I need a place to "put" all the links to cool technology tools that I find. I don't know about you, but I am always getting emails from people with links to technology that can be used for teaching and learning. I tend to add them to my favorite bookmarks or save them in my email folders, but then I can't remember where to find them again.

So, this blog is a place to "put" these links, with annotations about how these tools could be used, how they are used, etc.

Stay tuned!