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 * Activity**

For our activity this week, please post a resource that is a free or low cost alternative to costly licensed software.

Provide a resource name, location, a brief description and then identify it as open source, Web 2.0 (or some other identifier if that is appropriate). If you don’t know, you can make an educated guess. Google docs has been posted as an example. To add to the table, choose to ‘edit’ and then type within the table cells.

[|Plickers] (Stewart) Plickers is an application that teachers can download through the App store and it collects real-time data. Students hold up different cards that represent answers A through D and the teacher scans the room with their phone through the app which provides real-time answers from the students. This is a great tool for teachers to use to engage their students in the lesson and is really fun. I used it in one of my classes in college. It is great for teachers to use at the end of the lesson to make sure the students paid attention/understand the information they were presented with.

(Duran) Weebly.com is a free website builder or open source? that is very user friendly and easy to use. It is very easy to drag and build your site. They provide a domain under their weebly.com domain but can pay to have your own domain. While they do offer more rights or abilities to do within their website for a monthly or annual cost.
 * [|Weebly]**

(Hoskins) Schoology is a free Web 2.0? Learning Management System alternative to Blackboard, Canvas, etc. Teachers can create classes in similar ways to Blackboard and Canvas. Teachers can upgrade to their "Enterprise" level if they want specialized customer support.
 * Schoology**

(Cobb) http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It's simple, fast, powerful, and free.
 * VLC Media Player**

(Krause) www.educreations.com Educreations is a web 2.0 IPad app that can be used as a whiteboard and a screen casting tool. You can annotate, animate and narrate content creating a short instructional video that you can instantly share with students. You do not have to have an IPad to view created content.
 * Educreations**

(Mike) www.goalbookapp.com Goalbook is a web 2.0 tool where teachers can be provided with strategies to ensure all students of different learning levels can succeed in the classroom.
 * Goalbook**

(Anderson) Web 2.0. A way to organize and collect links and web resources. There is a free version as well as a paid version.
 * Resources:**
 * Symbaloo**

Common Core linked resource library.
 * Opened**

My personal favorite, cross platform resource that allows you to store links and resources from anywhere. For example, if you see a link on twitter that you want to save for later you can send it to Pocket and pull it up later.
 * Pocket**

(Snyder) TenMarks is an excellent, free Web 2.0 resource that gives students an abundant amount of mathematical content to hone their skills. The TenMarks program may be driven by an instructor or done individually by students. TenMarks provides videos, practice problems, practice tests, instructional content, remediation, and more. Very similar to StudyIsland, TenMarks is a a wonderful resource to help students to prepare for district and state assessments.
 * TenMarks -** **@http://www.tenmarks.com/**

(Zabinski) CK-12 is a free website of Open Content for middle and high school math and science courses. Teachers have the ability to use this website to either create an open content textbook for their classes or supplement their current content at no charge. They are also encouraged to share their own content so that other teachers across the nation and even globally can use it. It is a free share website for teachers. It includes content, movies, flashcards, practice problems, quizzes and exams.
 * CK-12 -** http://www.ck12.org

(Medina) Web 2.0 platform Based off the knowledge and understanding levels in Bloom's Taxonomy, with eduCannon teachers can create quiz questions on youtube videos. Additionally, they can pause the video, check for understanding, and grade the assessment. This is an excellent tool for those teachers who want to build fipped classrooms using videos with related questions. You can also assign lessons and track student progress.
 * eduCanon** - []

(brockelman) URL: [|**http://espeak.sourceforge.net**]
 * eSpeak** - a compact //open source// speech synthesizer for Linux, Windows, and other platforms
 * eSpeak** can synthesize many languages with clear and understandable results but only requires a small memory footprint. It can be used with a command line or screen readers and is ported to mobile platforms like Android and Mac OSX. It includes a variety of voices and can produce speech output as a WAV file.

(Rentschler) http://www.brainpop.com and http://www.brainpopjr.com/ BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. is a partially free resource with the ability to subscribe and have access to even more resources. BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. is an animated, educational video resource that engages students and provides activities, games, and quizzes for teachers to use as either whole group, individual, and/or cooperative learning groups. Topics covered include health, math, reading, science, social studies, English, engineering and technology, and arts and music. Videos engage learners of all ages and can be used to introduce, support, and/or review topics taught. All videos are standards based as well.
 * BrainPOP** and **BrainPOP Jr.**

http://www.wordle.net/ Wordle is a free resource that students can use to develop "word clouds" or word collages. Words that appear more frequently within "the cloud" will appear larger than words that appear less frequently. Wordle is also great for teachers to integrate into their curriculum to demonstrate new words and importance of words within a given topic. I highly recommend this resource as my middle school and high school students enjoy making "word clouds" during free time in the computer lab!
 * Wordle**

(Flanagan) The program can be found at [] This resource allows you to search any topic, category, or question you want and gives you educational sound facts, calculations, data, answers, and more. This is a great tool for students to use when conducting research for a paper or project. Also, there is so much you can learn about, its amazing! This search engine is as easy to use as Google... I think it would be considered an open source tool that anyone with internet access can use.
 * Wolfram Alpha -** An educational search engine

(Medina) The program can be found at @http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus The program offers layouts comparable to those of Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress and Microsoft Publisher. Besides layout, Scribus is made for typesetting and preparing files for professional-grade image-setting appliances. One of its main strengths is making PDF files with animation and interactive presentations. The user can also employ Scribus to design small books, brochures, newspapers and newsletters. In addition, the program websites offers many how-to sections as well as tutorial videos.
 * Scribus** - a free and open source software that equals InDesign, QuarkXPress and Microsoft Publisher

(Schilajew) Animoto- This is a web 2.0 tool that allows creators to make free 30 second video or slide shows. The tool can be found at []. As opposed to using other methods to create a visual presentation, Animoto is simple means to create a free or inexpensive presentation. It's step-by-step process allows novice users to successfully create a piece of multimedia can be used to show how content has been learned or as part of a lesson design. Users can place images, video footage, and music into the program. Animoto also offers some public domain media as well. The tool can be used for free to create 30 second videos, or for five dollars per month 10 minute videos can be created.

(Kvinnesland) @https://www.zotero.org/ This free plug-in for Firefox allows you to save citation information (title, author, abstract, URL, etc.) for many types of resources with the simple click of an icon in the address bar of your web browser. Your "library" of citations is saved in the cloud and can be accessed from any computer you use. Citations can be organized into files, and bibliographies created (and shared) in many different citation styles with just a few clicks. An additional plug-in for Microsoft Word allows you to enter citation information into the body of your paper as you are writing it. This is an open source tool created by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Pricey alternatives include EndNote and RefWorks.
 * Zotero -** an open source bibliographic management tool

__**Google Docs -**__ Create and share your work online and access your documents from anywhere. Web Address: docs.google.com (Krakoski) SourceForge.net [] This website allows you to "find, create, and publish Open Source software for free". It hosts various projects that are broken down into categories such as business, education, and communications. There are over 260,000 projects available to download and many more are in development. I found a free application for a graphing calculator when I was searching through education which would be useful for students who cannot afford the $100+ price tag of graphing calculators.

(Lowry) These are all free Web 2.0 tools that I use in my classroom: [] Safe blogging website for teachers and students.
 * Class Chatter:**

[|http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activities.aspx?grade=] [] Both of these sites have great interactive math activities
 * Illuminations and Calculation Nation:**

[] Create online posters with picture, videos and text.
 * Glogster EDU:**

(Holton) Just a few Web 2.0 and open source tools I use: Jing - Jing allows to take screenshots of your desktop or short videos and combine it with a voiceover. Just some of the educational uses are:
 * Comment on students' homework
 * Narrate a PowerPoint presentation
 * Record a teaching video

Issuu - create and publish an online book that learners will interact with just like a physical book.

Audacity - Need to include audio as part of a project or web site? Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. You can use Audacity to:
 * Record live audio
 * Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs
 * Edit a variety of sound files
 * Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together
 * Change the speed or pitch of a recording

**Prezi** http://prezi.com/ @Preziis a cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas and the connections between them. The result: visually captivating presentations that lead your audience down a path of discovery.(http://prezi.com/about) J. Hanlon

(Arnts)

**FreePlay Music**
http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ This site contains royalty free music clips that can be used to make multimedia projects. Great for having students include music without having to worry about copyright issues.

(Celise) http://quizlet.com
 * QUIZLET**

This is a Web 2.0 application that allows you to create online flashcards. There is a mobile version too. You can import images or use only text.

__**STUDY STACK**__ (TRISH) http://www.studystack.com/

This Web 2.0 application allows you to import your information. It then translates it into flashcards and various review games making it easy and fun for kids to learn the vocabulary terms at hand. My students love it! You can get the mobile version of this application, too! It also saves all of the stacks that have ever been created so that your kids can use ones that other teachers have made, which is a bonus. They are not limited to just the study stacks that you have created!

__**Wordle**__
(Jeanette) []

This Web 2.0 application is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. It gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can change the format of your cloud by using different fonts, layouts, and color schemes so that you can make them your own.

__**Wallwisher**__
(Jeanette) []

This Web 2.0 application is an online bulletin board maker. You can post videos, photos, links, anything to your board. I think this would be a great tool for students when they are creating projects to keep all their ideas in one spot. You can choose differnet layouts and personalize it as you wish!

**Pearltrees**
@http://www.pearltrees.com/ This Web 2.0 application allows you to catalog, share and "cultivate your interests". Every site is a "pearl" and you can create various tree branches that you can build on your own or with other Pearltrees users. It provides a great visual for students in terms of seeing the collection of sites you curate. You can add a "pearler" to your web browser or use the mobile phone app for ease of adding pearls to your site.
 * (Shelby)**

**Shmoop**
[] Shmoop is a Web 2.0 resource filled with information, activities, quizzes, standardized testing help, highlighting authors, books, and more for student and educators. This site is focused primarily in literature and English Language Arts, and also offers resources in other areas as Math and Social Studies.
 * (Lori)**

**GIMP**
[] GIMP is a open source application which is free. GIMP is a multi-platform photo manipulation tool including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction. GIMP has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. It is easy to use and runs on multiple operating systems. It can be used in place of Photoshop for most image editing.
 * (Joann)**

**Edmodo**
[] Edmodo is a web 2.0 tool. //Edmodo// is a secure, social learning platform for teachers, students, schools and districts. It provides a safe and easy way for your class to connect and share resources. In Edmodo’s secure environment, teachers and students can collaborate, share content, and use educational apps to augment in-classroom learning. Edmodo is free for teachers and students and always will be.
 * (Joann)**

(Christen) [] Evernote is a web 2.0 tool you could type notes with, store documents, record audio, and stores pictures. It synchronizes your digital information from multiple devices to help with organization. There is a free version to download.
 * Evernote**