Community Builder - Inspiring Articles and Videos

This website has an eclectic variety of inspiring videos and articles from kids all around the world. These kids starting from the age of 5 and up, have all accomplished very inspiring things.

It is great way to elicit conversations about the community, helping others and positively encouraging one another.  I usually use this in the classroom at the end of the day, for a reflection and reminder of different life lessons (Being kind to one another, never giving up, you can accomplish anything, etc..)

http://inspiremykids.com/

Interactive Thinking Map/Brainstorming

This online tool allows you to create a "cluster of bubbles" to form an online thinking/map graphic organzier.  This is a great way to engage students for pre-writing brainstorming.

https://bubbl.us/

Word Clouds

This is a fun new way to use words!  These two sites allow you to build beautiful word clouds.  Tagzedo allows you to build word clouds out of fun shapes, objects, animals and people.  Wordle is a more basic word cloud tool.  You can change colors, customize looks, etc..  This tool can be used in all subject areas.

http://www.tagxedo.com/

http://www.wordle.net/

Classroom Management

This is a great interactive "monster avatar" classroom management tool.  It really reinforces positive behavior and keeps track of behavior trends through graphs. It also allows parents to monitor their child's behaviors and stay involved!  More importantly, parents can have a login and also stay up to date on their student's behavior in the classroom.

http://www.classdojo.com/

Create Objectives with Blooms Taxonomy Language

This is a simple and easy objectives creator.

 http://byrdseed.com/differentiator/

Alternatives to PowerPoint!

This is a more interactive approach to creating slides.  There all have very easy and nice tutorials to walk you through creating one,  as well as already created projects/templates you can mashup.

http://prezi.com/

This is visual and interactive board were the user can add multiple items, text and sound. 

http://www.glogster.com/

This allows you to create animated presentations, similar to cartoon animations. 

http://www.powtoon.com/

Creating Rubrics and Graphs

This is a great resource when you need any type of rubric.  There are many rubrics to choose from you can also customize it to your subject and liking. 

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=NewRubric&module=Rubistar

I utilize this when I want to measure students pre-test data compared to post-test data.  It is very user friendly for the teacher and for the students. 

http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx