Web 2.0 Cool Tools for Schools

Here is yet another site chocked full of Web 2.0 tools for teachers. This site provides you with endless lists of tools for presentations, research, collaboration tools, video tools, slideshow tools, tools for audio, images, drawing, music, organization tools, mapping, quiz and poll tools, graphing, and creativity tools. I actually even left a few out because the list is so long!  This site is your one-stop shop for access to a huge variety of Web 2.0 tools - most are absolutely FREE, and we ALL like free stuff, right?

Since this is a Web 2.0 tools type of site, as expected, the Collaboration Tools section is pretty impressive. You could spend hours on this one page alone! Everything you need to set up a collaborative environment for your students (or yourself) can be found here.  Pick several and try them out before you commit to just one though. Each of these resources has their own individual unique qualities and you need to find the one that works best with your style of collaboration.  I'm sure everyone can find something they can use here!

25 Free E-Book Sites

This website has compiled a list of 25 websites where anyone can download free e-books on a wide range of topics.  While some of these sites want you to pay to download the "high speed" version, I found the the "slow download" to be quite speedy. Hey, the books are free, I'll wait!  And, like anything that is free on the Internet, the quality will vary greatly from site to site. However, you should be able to find some nice, free materials on a few of these sites if you're willing to spend the time to sift through their offerings. I've already found several good free resources here in just 30 minutes.  Happy reading!

Pete's Powerpoint Station

Just stumbled upon this very useful site! This is the place for teachers (of any age students) to go for pre-developed Powerpoint presentations on virtually ANY subject. I can see where this would save teachers a ton of time in developing presentations for their classrooms. Of course, these are free to use and revise. You may want to revise the Powerpoint files for some of them so they suit your specific style of teaching. I reviewed a few of them and most were fine the way they were. However, some might need a little fixing - I'm very focused on making sure slides have graphics on them to help stimulate thinking and adding interest to the presentation. Some of these presentations are a bit lacking in the creativity department BUT the hard work is already done. All you need to do is add the FUN, creative part!

Internet4Teachers

This site is a very comprehensive collection of Internet-based tools designed especially for PreK-12 teachers. There are so many resources on this one site that I just can't list them all! For elementary teachers, I would suggest starting with the first link on this Home page:  Grade Level Help for PreK through 8th grade. Teachers can select their grade level and topic and find a wide selection of Internet-based games, materials and activities to enhance the teaching of their lessons.

Free Tech 4 Teachers

This blog has received numerous awards including the best resource sharing site for all things educational. Richard Byrne, the blog's author, provides so many technology resources for teachers it's amazing!  Most of the resources he points out are free to use. There are even books he has written that you can download for free. These books discuss everything from using Google Docs to creating videos for your classroom. This is an essential resource for all teachers who plan on incorporating technology into their classroom. I highly recommend subscribing to this blog to get on board with all of the upcoming technologies he will uncover for teachers.

More Than 100 PowerPoint Tutorials & a Free Template » The Rapid eLearning Blog

 More Than 100 PowerPoint Tutorials & a Free Template » The Rapid eLearning Blog
Tom Kuhlman is the king when it comes to designing learning materials in Powerpoint.  His end of 2010 blog post holds a wide assortment of Powerpoint tips, trick and tutorials as well as a few reall nice templates. If you subscribe to this blog you will be regularly rewarded with new inspiring Powerpoint templates you can freely use to help you create unique teaching resources.
Enjoy these resources from Tom!