ICT Tools for in and out of the classroom

There are quite a lot of new and not so new ICT tools that can be used in and out of the classroom.

Here are the favourite tools of a number of e-learning professionals-some working directly in education, some not. The tools they have selected could be used for their own personal working and learning or for teaching/ learning.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html

The most popular 100 sites have been listed here:
http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html

The following tools have caught my attention as particularly interesting for languages teachers:
http://bubbl.us/
Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you brainstorm online.
Because you can:
Create colorful mind maps online
Share and work with friends
Embed your mind map in your blog or website
Email and print your mind map
Save your mind map as an image

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
You can choose from over 1,000 add-ons at the Firefox Add-ons Web site. A Firefox add-on can help you comparison shop, share bookmarks with your friends, see the weather in a corner of your browser, write to your weblog, get news, listen to music.

http://www.flickr.com/
Groups can either be public, public (invite only), or completely private. Every group has a pool for sharing photos and a discussion board for talking.

http://picasa.google.com/
Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you:
Locate and organise all the photos on your computer.
Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks.
Share your photos with others through email, prints and on the web: it’s fast, easy and free

http://www.quicktopic.com/documentcollaboration
Quick Doc ReviewSM gives you an instant private space for gathering comments on any HTML document (Microsoft Word documents too). Your group can comment on each paragraph, directly within the document, and you can also display, sort, and print the comments separately. Comments are all in one central place. This is true collaboration, much better than mailing documents around and having people make comments in isolation. And it's private, but still easy to access.

http://polldaddy.com/

PollDaddy is an online tool, which allows you to create free polls and place them on your website, blog, MySpace, hi5, Friendster or Xanga account

http://pbwiki.com/
A wiki is an easy-to-use web page that multiple people can edit. It's like a shared whiteboard online. Don't worry about getting IT support or installing any software. We handle all of that. You just start typing and get an online classroom in about 5 minutes. Create a syllabus, share it with your students, and let them write collaborative essays online. Create online Powerpoint-like presentations right from your wiki.

http://www.powwownow.com/default.asp?docId=12382
You know how useful conference calls can be. Now how about if you could do it with pictures? With Showtime, the free web conferencing service from Powwownow that's exactly what you get. A web conference that allows you to present your PDF or PowerPoint files to 5 participants, and even show whats on your screen to up to 2 participants and its all free.

http://www.skype.net/intl/en-gb/
Free features include:
Calling other people on Skype
Transfer Skype calls to other Skype contacts
Video calls on Skype
One-to-one and group chats
Conference calls with up to nine people
Forwarding calls to other Skype Names

http://moodle.org/
Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy.

http://www.diigo.com/
Diigo is about "Social Annotation": you can highlight, annotate, share & interact on any webpage.


http://www.wikispaces.com/
Create simple web pages that groups, friends, & families can edit together.

http://voicethread.com/
to record a voice over pictures-great to develop speaking skills using personal topics and own pictures.

http://hotpot.uvic.ca/
The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available on the web. Other users must pay for a licence.

http://www.slideshare.net/
SlideShare is a place to host and share presentations. Upload all your slide decks, and find / download interesting presentations.

http://www.fileden.com/
File Den's free file hosting and online storage service enable its users to direct link to their files also giving you the opportunity to embed your files into your web pages, myspace or other social networking profiles. Files stored on File Den are kept on secure systems in a secure data centre. You can access your files anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

http://www.voki.com/
http://www.weeworld.com/default.aspx
Voki and WeeMee are two avatar sites. Design your own character, choose background and accessories and even add a voice for Voki. Great for practising personal identification in any language.

http://vodpod.com/account
Search for and collect your favourite videos. Feed into other people’s vodpods and share your findings or put them on your website or blog.

http://www.teachers-pet.org/whatistp.html
The Text Tool is a Microsoft Word template that contains sets of instructions called 'macros':
Bingo Card Maker
Verb Tense Test Maker
Crossword Maker
Flashcard Maker
Sentence Breaker
Paragraph Breaker
Jumbles
Multi-word Maker
Multi-gap Maker
Multi-choice Question Maker
Synonym Question Maker
Antonym Question Maker
Word Mover
Word Remover
Punctuation Remover
Space Remover
Letter Remover
Letter Underliner
Word List Saver
Online Children's Dictionary Search
Online Dictionary Search
Online Thesaurus Search
Online Multi-word Dictionary Search

http://del.icio.us/
One of the most useful tools to share and find out about interesting links on the web.
The following article details its possible use-well worth a read.
http://onlinesapiens.com/blog/2007/05/10/using-delicious-for-education/