Xtranormal

Xtranormal is a new video making tool. You can create a cartoon like video for free, just by typing in a script you want your characters to say. You can customize their movements, facial expressions, voices, and much more with the click of your mouse. You can add music and change the background too. Xtranormal lets you choose your characters, once you do that it is simple. Type what you want them to say, customize all the effects and voices, and view. When you have it the way you want it, create the movie. This lets you download the movie and save it. You can view many movies that have been made using xtranormal on youtube! It is a fun way to use creativity to create a movie.

Quiz Star Review

Quiz Star is created by the same company as rubistar and is a program for teachers to create quizzes online. Once you create a quiz, you can create a class to take the quiz. Students in the class can log onto the quiz and take it. It then grades your quizzes and lets you view the results online. Quiz star has just recently become a free service to educators!

Glogster Review

Glogster is an online poster maker for students. Teachers can create a classroom with up to 100 free student accounts at edu.glogster.com. Students then sign up under their teacher's accounts and create a glog, a mix between a blog, and poster. Glogster has a huge selection of backgrounds and clipart for students to choose from. They can also upload video and pictures to their glog. Glogster can be used as a get to know you project, where students write about themselves, or an educational poster, where students display particular information they have learned in a creative way. As the teacher you can view your students progress on their glogs at any time.

Animoto Review

Animoto is a great online movie making tool for students and teachers. As an educator you can sign up for a refferal code and get full length video making for you and your students for free. What animoto does, is takes pictures and/or video clips, (you can choose from animoto's gallery or upload them from the computer), that you choose and put in order and mixes them with music for a professional looking video. You can add text to your video as well. You choose your music the same way you choose your pictures and videos, either upload or from their collection. Once you choose all the elements of your video you hit create. It takes about 10 minutes to create your video and you can watch it immediately. You then have the option to download, or email it to others for viewing. Animoto is a great tool for making book trailers, or any other video project you do in your classrooms. www.animoto.com.

Rubistar Review

Rubistar is an online tool that helps teachers at any level create a customized rubric. You can choose from rubrics that are already made, or you can make a rubric customized to the exact project you are grading. Rubistar makes it easy to choose categories and customize each and every rubric you make. You can also save your rubrics to go back and edit them later.

4teachers.org Review

The 4teachers.org website is a great resource for teachers wanting to integrate technology into their classroom. It includes a blog at blog.4teachers.org with weekly topics discussed. Features of 4teachers.org include; professional development, online games, portals on youtube and teachertube, and many links to websites to help with the integration of technology into your classroom. It offers teachers online tools and resources that can be easily integrated into what you are already teaching. Not only do they offer resources for you to use with students, they also offer many tools to help with teaching such as, online calendars, rubrics, and assessment tools.

4teachers.org offers a family of tools at your fingertips. These are links to programs they have found for teachers that will be helpful in every aspect of teaching. These tools include; quizstar, rubistar, academic skill builders, persuade star, classroom architect, equity, trackstar, assign-a-day, casa notes, PBL checklists, teacher tacklebox, web poster wizard, note star, think tank, and kids vid.

They also affer some greate resources for helping those teachers who are just getting started using technology in their classes. These are under the integrating technology link at the top and include links to use policies and safety, resources in spanish, success stories, and technology.

4teachers.org is a great resource for any teacher wanting to, or who is already integrating technology into their current practices