The Printliminator

Tired of printing 3 pages of ads and graphics when you only need a portion of one page? Here's another "Bookmarklet" to try.

From the site: "The Printliminator is a bookmarklet with some simple tools you can use to make websites print better. One click to activate, and then click to remove elements from the page, remove graphics, and apply better print styling." 

Remove graphics, un-wanted ads, extraneous sections for a cleaner, easier to read print-out.

Free Sounds: Soungle

As they say on their website: "Soungle is a free site, developed by Southern Codes, for finding all kind of sound FX and musical instruments samples on our mega online library."  You can perform a keyword search with the results displayed ten to a page. Clicking on play icon allows you to hear the sound.  There is a wide range of sound effects. A short description of the clip appears above every sound, followed by important info such as the frame rate, duration and bit rate. "Remember, all of our sound effects and samples are royalty free for downloading." Great place to find clips for student projects.

"Word Magnets"

Remember how much fun playing with fridge magnets used to be? This Flash app lets you create fridge magnet word tiles, in any colour you want, and allows you to re-arrange them on the "virtual fridge" door. What I like is that the background design can be changed: Venn diagrams, graphs, columns, range arrows...etc. etc. I think this app would be a great tool for Smartboard users. You can access the on-line version by going to the Triptico Word Magnet site, wait a moment for the "page advance arrow" to load, (lower right hand corner... "NEXT >") and then proceed to the app. (You can also click on the message in the middle of the screen to download a paid version with many great new features.) Great for an anticipation guide exercise.

There is also a short demo clip on Russell Stannard's site (Teacher Training videos) that might give you some ideas.

How to find good educational videos: WatchKnow

"Wikipedia co-founder launches online educational-video library." Sounds promising, doesn't it?
Larry Sanger, who co-founded the Web site Wikipedia, has launched a site that provides free access to a library of educational videos for students ages 3 to 18. (Most of the clips are from Youtube, it seems, but they are organized in a more 'teacher-friendly' way.) It even gives you the option of filtering for "age appropriateness". Time will tell if the feature works, but it's a great idea!

The site -- www.watchknow.org -- features links to more than 11,000 videos in 2,000 categories that include history, math, science and other subjects. Sanger described it as "YouTube meets Wikipedia."

Videos connected to kids' books (Lit->picture books->)
http://www.watchknow.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=13294

Copyright "friendly" images

We've all had the problem of searching for the perfect image for a presentation, site or blog, finding it and then not being certain about whether or not it can be used. One solution is to search within images that are already "shared" by their creators. Take a look at "Copyrightfriendly" to view a list of media collections with "generous copyright licensing". As it says on the site "[t]hough you may not need to ask permission to use them when publishing on the Web for educational purposes, you should cite or attribute these images to their creators unless otherwise notified!"

MagSearch - what's on the "free" internet?

While not exactly a Web 2.0 app, I stumbled across this great site for searching the "free" magazine content that is out there. Available as part of the "Virtual LRC", (created by Michael Bell, former chair of the Texas Association of School Librarians), MagSearch allows the user to search articles in a variety of "student relevant" magazines, and via a directory of social/environmental issues. It's worth a look.

Create your own mini digital books

I'm always on the look out for interesting web-based apps that can be used on a Smart Board. While Bookr doesn't qualify as an app exactly, it's a fun way for a teacher or teacher-librarian to create content for primary kids, and even allow older kids to develop their own material. (And it's great fun to use a Smart Board or LCD projector to show it to the class.

Taking images from Flickr, the user assembles a multi-page, digitally flippable mini book. Tell a story, illustrate a poem, make an ABC book... be creative! Text can be added to some or all of the pages. (It's even possible to have an image on one side and text filling the facing page.) The final product can be shown from a "bookr" page or embedded onto a class website or blog. Lots of fun.

Here's a sample I "whipped up". (Click on the page corner to flip, or on the black bar at the bottom of the book to open it in full size.)




Ans here's a brief video demo:

French Language "tapes"

This is not exactly a "web app", but for those teaching French, either in the core program or even Immersion, it's great to have good language models that kids can listen to. For teachers too, especially if you find yourself doing your own French, and you're not a French specialist! The site is called "IE Languages" and features audio from a number of European languages.

The French section (which interests me) has an extensive list of topics, verbs and expressions. While the emphasis is European, rather than Canadian, there's a lot of variety and could be very useful. Here's a listing from one of the units:

101. Camping
102. Special Uses of Devoir
103. Cosmetics / Toiletries
104. Medicine and Hospital
105. Present participle
106. Abbreviations / Slang
107. Past Infinitive
108. In the Ocean
109. To Die
110. In Space
111. Possessive Pronouns
112. Simple Past
113. Make-Believe / Fantasy
114. Religion
115. Music and Art

Writeboard - another collaborative writing space

If you liked Etherpad (posted last week), then you will probably like Writeboard as well. Setting up a space is much like the other service: 1) Pick a name for your "board", 2) assign a password, 3) and give an email address. You can then email people you want to join, or in the case of a class, simply give out the URL and password so students can log on and begin collaborating.

The "tour" page lists the features of this web-app, and there are a few! For example, you (and others with the PW) can edit the writeboard, (or mark it), export it as plain text or email it. There doesn't seem to be a limit on the number of "invitees". Version tracking is quite good: every time you save a change to a writeboard, a new version of that writeboard is created in the sidebar. (They use an ingenious "dot" system to keep track of the size of the changes.) Not only can you merge and compare changes, but you can discuss the document by leaving remarks in the comments area.

And you can even "subscribe" to the writeboard in RSS and be notified anytime anyone makes a change.

Etherpad - collaborative writing space

NOTE: Unfortunately, Etherpad has been acquired by Google and is no longer active! PiratePad is an open-source clone.


Piratepad (Piratepad.com) is a shared web-based writing space that students can use to collaborate "instantly". (Think Google docs without the set-up time.) Multiple people can edit the same document simultaneously, with any changes showing instantly on everyone's screen. When you visit the page, you have the option of creating a team site or a public pad. The public item is free, and you are setup as soon as you click on the button. Simply direct participants to the URL that is generated and you're in business! The Public pad will handle up to 16 people at a time. (So, for a full class, you'll need to create 2 public pads.) There is a Pro Edition with more features and better security for $8/user/month, and free for 3 users.

How could you use Piratepad in a class? Students could use it for "instant" collaboration on a script or outline. The resulting work can be emailed, posted on a class blog or saved in a Word document. (You could even paste the text into a Wordle generator to create a visual take on your brainstorming.) Get instant feedback on what is important, or bothersome or inspiring in a lesson by having all students type into a common Piratepad at the end of a class, or at the start, as a warm up.

Working with your Pictures

Many people (teachers too!) are using Flickr to store and share their images. What many don't know is that "Big Huge Labs" has a 'huge' number of extras that you can do with your pictures. There are a great many options for creating an assignment, or for creating image based material that will liven up your classroom or make your projects a little more fun! You can use photos from your Flickr account or upload them from your computer.

Here are some of the fun things you can do:

Make your own inspirational, funny, parody, sports or other motivational poster. (This is a great way to make "targeted" classroom decorations.) Make a magazine cover. (This could be a first page of a writing assignment or journalism unit.) Make a mosaic from individual images. (Art class?) Make a movie poster. (You choose the photo, titles, and credits. Great for Booktalks or Booktrailers.) Create jigsaw puzzles from your images. (Could be fun for the primary classroom...scan student art and use it!) Create (and print) a pocket-sized photo album. Make an ID card, press pass, name tag, etc. (For clubs, or role

playing.) Create monthly calendars from your class photographs. Turn your student pics into a trading card! (or draw characters from a novel and turn them into trading cards.) Generate a harmonious color palette based on the colors in a photo. (Perfect for an Art assignment.) Choose up to six images, print and fold to create a photo cube. Make a unique CD or iMovie disk cover. (Great for Garageband projects.) Add comic book style captions to your photos.

Check out the link and discover other intriguing applications.

Free font creation: Use your own handwriting

I have such bad handwriting/printing that I almost always use a keyboard. But sometimes I find that a personal note in Arial or Helvetica seems too "sterile" or stuffy for the context. And I've tried using some of the various handwriting fonts out there, but I know that they are not really my style.

Lo and behold, along comes a great little website that solves the problem. "FontCapture" allows the user to write out the letters of the alphabet once on a sheet that you can download, scan and upload the result and then get a font library that s/he can download and use to create truly "personal" messages. Printing/saving your manuscripts to PDF format gets around the problem of the recipient not having your unique font installed.

Some users have reported problems with the scanning, so you may need to fiddle with your settings before it works perfectly. Although, once you get your own unique font ("gordon" bold), it's all worth it!

For a student with written output problems, this might be a fun application that makes them feel like "one of the gang."

Web-based Sound editing - Myna

I'm always on the look out for interesting web-based applications, and when Bob W. from my district sent out a link to aviary.com I was quick to take a look. This site offers a complete suite of graphic editing software (image, effects, colour, vector): it's really quite amazing. I was really taken with the audio editor Myna (...everything is named after birds!) and found it to be remarkably like Garage Band. The layout and controls will seem very familiar to Apple users. For kids who are turned on by music editing, this is a great free app. (One caveat with this site is that you are able to see and hear other users' image and audio creations. Depending on the age level of your students, it might be problematic.)

There are great demo videos that show the power of these applications. Here's a teaser:

Text to Speech (Web based)

For those of us who have enormous quantities of text to read, the dream of being able to convert documents to mp3s and then being able to listen to them on an ipod is a compelling one! Yes, there is software that will do this for you, and there are packages that have uncannily human sounding voices to choose from. But what about web-based applications? SpokenText is a handy little site that allow you to upload a document, or paste in some text and get an mp3 output file. Very handy. The voice quality is not "stellar" but depending on what you're planning to to with the audio file, it's actually not bad at all! I can imagine a scenario where you have a reading-challenged student who needs to have a paragraph read to him, or you would like to send a kid home with a practice file, or you want to create a listening station in your class. SpokenText will take English, French, Spanish and German text. It could be another great tool for your teaching toolbox! (NB: You will need to sign up to use the service - it's free for a demo - and your files are only kept for a day, so you'll need to download them right away. Each demo account is only good for 7 days and 6 recordings. If you like it, it's $30 a year for a "real" account.)


ReadTheWords is another site with similar limitations. (Although, you can only have 30 seconds max.) There is a wider choice of voices, including a female French option in addition to a male voice. I've uploaded 2 samples in the audio players below.




En français!!

TidyRead - for a cleaner page

Here's another bookmarklet that will help clean up webpages and make reading and/or printing much easier: TidyRead. What I like about this applet is that you can resize the margins or font size on the fly. (There's a menu that appears across the top of the document.) It's really handy for projecting an article on the big screen, without all the "extra" visual clutter. Using it is simply a matter of dragging the icon to your menu bar. When you want to "tidy-read" a site, just click on the link! (There is also a way to use this on the iTouch/iPhone as well. Just follow the instructions on the site.)