Cool Tools

Add some spice to your technology tool chest! Add spice to your online site! Try these Technology Tools. Most are free but may require you to “register” or create an account.


Audio Tools

http://www.animoto.com/ Combine your mp3 music and your slides into a short (30 second) animated clip. Good for an “ice breaker” in an online course.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ Use this to record your voice. This is compatible with Windows, MAC and Linux. The default format is .wav; be sure to download the lame encoder to save as .mp3 Audacity allows editing of your recordings.

http://studio.odeo.com/ Record your voice (requires a microphone) and save up to 1 hour of audio. May also upload .mp3 files you have created using Audacity or other free audio recording device. Publish to a podcast.


Image & Video Tools

http://picasa.google.com/ Upload, caption, organize and share your images. Requires a Google account.

http://www.flickr.com/ Upload, caption, organize and share your images. Requires a Flickr account

http://www.voicethread.com/ Online resource transforms media into collaborative spaces with video, voice and text commenting.; an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. Requires a voicethread account.

http://www.realnetworks.com/products/producer/index.html RealProducer Basic. Capture or create compressed video clips (Resulting files require RealPlayer.)
Windows Movie Maker - comes with Windows XP and Vista. Set up a slide show; add narration or music. Directions for using MovieMaker from MS.

http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html Capture video from your web camera.

http://www.jumpcut.com/ Video editing / hosting site on Yahoo. Will allow “private” publishing of video, photo, and audio. Requires a Yahoo and Jumpcut account. (Can be the same.)

http://www.dotsub.com/ Allows you to add subtitles to your video. Requires a DOTsub account.


Image & Audio Conversation Tools

http://www.yackpack.com/YackPack is being used by several distance learning institutions. It has allowed the students to get to know each other, even in a virtual setting, enhanced communication between students and teachers, and provided new ways to address different modalities of learning.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio/ CamStudio records activity from your screen and audio from a microphone into AVI video files and can also convert the AVIs into Streaming Flash videos (SWFs) using its built-in SWF Producer; a “poor man’s” version of Camtasia.

http://picresize.com/ Resize your images.


Blogs, Wikis and other things

http://www.popurls.com/ Here you can customize a homepage with all the buzz on the web from many sources including Yahoo!, delicious, metafilter, digg, and more! Customize yours today to view all the latest in Education and Learning.

http://edublogs.org/ “… the most important thing about edublogs, …, is also the most obvious… we’re just here for education.” Create a blogspot for your class. If discussion boards don’t work for you, consider this blog spot. Requires a registration on the site.

http://www.wetpaint.com/ Simple easy to use wiki site.

http://pbwiki.com/Have your class collaborate on this wiki site.

http://www.ning.com/ Create your own social network site. Ning is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds. Requires a Ning account.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ Lists options for you to use such as YouTube (can use your google account), calendar, eBlog, sketch-up (3D modeling) and more.

http://powerbullet.com/index.php Powerbullet Presenter is a small, simple and free program for creating presentations in the FlashTM format.

http://www.zamzar.com/ Online tool to convert almost any file type to another file type.


Video / WebConferencing Tools

http://www.yugma.com/ WebConferencing and desktop sharing.

http://www.elluminate.com/ WebConferencing tool

Courtesy of SUNY New Paltz