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!