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Animation Made Easy: The best tools for student projects, from stop motion to...
Very often, complicated ideas can be easily explained with simple drawings, as Dan Roam claims in his best-selling book The Back of the Napkin (Portfolio, 2009). Case in point: The popular step-by-step...
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Cool Tools for Featuring Student Book Reviews
We put a lot of stock in personal recommendations—particularly when it comes to books. Plenty of websites offer tips on great reads, but none will carry as much weight with your students as a site...
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Multimedia Assessments: Tools for making dynamic audio-and video-based tests
Google Form Video, audio, and images can spark students’ imaginations in ways that text alone sometimes can’t. Likewise, multimedia often helps students gain a deeper understanding of a question. In...
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Cool Ways to Use Google to Inspire Your Students to Create Dynamic Worlds
Thanks to the Internet, we can now see more detailed views of the world than ever before. A student wondering what the Eiffel Tower looks like doesn’t have to wait for that once-in-a-lifetime trip to...
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Apps for Outdoor Learning | Cool Tools
With spring in the air, students typically clamor to get outside—and teachers would often like to follow. April is an ideal time of year to explore outdoor learning opportunities, and these apps and...
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Pleased to Meet You: Web apps for getting to know your students before fall
From left to right: Namez, Canva, Adobe Voice, Pixiclip, and Narrable. School’s out this month. But before we know it, we’ll be thinking about next year. To jazz up your blog and revitalize your...
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Eight Apps to Support Early Reading and Writing | Cool Tools
As we all know, it’s never too early to encourage reading. I regularly Skype with my two young nieces, who live 1,200 miles away. The four-year-old shares her current bedtime book with me, and shows me...
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Streamline Your Workflow: Five Time-Saving Tips
It’s back to school and there’s so much to do. If you had more time, how would you spend it? Developing better lessons, talking with students, or collaborating with colleagues? Maybe you’d just relax...
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Classroom Management Tricks: Timers and a tool to control noise | Cool Tools
As every teacher knows, good classroom management can make the difference between a great class experience and a poor one. While technology doesn’t replace the need for a solid approach to classroom...
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SLJ’s Top 10 Cool Tools 2014
The close of the year is a good time to take stock of the best productivity apps and websites launched over the last 12 months. A quick count of my bookmarks reveals more than 100 newly issued...
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Let’s Talk About “Selma”| Consider the Source
Let’s talk about Selma—the movie. There’s the film, and the reactions: the Oscar snubs, protests from the members of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s cabinet and a number of historians, and defense from...
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Screencasting Tools for Tech Support | Cool Tools
This time of year, a lot of new laptops, Chromebooks, iPads, and other devices appear in the hands of our students and colleagues. While most students adapt to new devices like ducks to water, our...
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Five Top Collaborative Research Tools | Cool Tools
The Internet is built for sharing knowledge, but students often research and write in isolation—and turn out papers that cite the same handful of resources over and over. Collaborative research prompts...
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Six Top Sources for Free Images, Video, and Audio | Cool Tools
I’ve written about a number of video, audio, and collage creation tools, with WeVideo, Audacity, and PicMonkey topping some of my lists. However, it can be a challenge for students to locate...
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Tools to Engage Students When the Back-to-School Buzz Wanes | Cool Tools
About this time of year, the novelty of “back to school” can start to wear off as students settle into their routines. Looking for some new or improved tools to re-engage them? Tech companies have been...
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