Media Library
A list of free online web resources useful to your digital story writing projects. With a few exceptions, the applications listed below can be used with a browser, and require no software download.
Something missing? We'd love to recieve any suggestions you might have about how this list can be improved. Simply email mnjorgensen (at) gmail.com
Blogging Software
Edublog - a comprehensive platform for educators and students wishing to indulge in blogging that's recieved great reviews.
Chat / forum services
Quick Topic - A free online forum that's quick to set up, and requires no prior logins. Create a new forum each time you wish to host a discussion by simply emailing an invitation to your class group.
Collaborative documents - 'Word online'
Collaborative writing space alternatives
Etherpad - A wonderful shared space, great for building stories as a whole class. Also wonderful for collecting ideas from group discussion you can then transfer to a tool like Wordle.
Write With - Not as simple as Etherpad, but still worth a look. Great for comparing revisions and has a cool deadline feature.
Wiggio - Great tool for working in groups. This is more of a fully featured service, with emails, polling, group chat features and more.
Email for the classroom
Gmail - a great free resource for the classroom. In addition, if you only need an address to register students for an application online, you can try this simple trick. Register an account (eg martin@gmail.com), then give every student their own login for registrations by simply adding their name with a plus sign (eg martin+bobby@gmail.com). All mail will be directed to the main account (martin@gmail.com) - and students won't need their school email address to register.
Epals - a slick free resource that is purpose built for creating an administered student email network in your classroom. Easy to use with some nice features ... and it's free!
Image search
Using images from creative commons, or 'free stock' image websites is worthwhile, as it means your end product, your digital stories, can be displayed anywhere without any copyright conflict.
Image Editing
Picnik - Without a doubt, currently one of the best photo editors available online, though it lacks the advanced features of Splashup. What it does offer instead is a good range of standard features and free use without registration, a definite advantage in the classroom.
Splashup - For more advanced image manipulation, Splashup offers a way of editing images online
Mypictr - Allows you to quickly cut a small portion out of any picture you care to upload.
Resizr - Resize an image you've copied from the web quickly and easily.
Sumo - possibly one of the best web based drawing tools online. It has numerous features, and can be used by beginners as well as more professional illistrators. Oh, and it's great fun!
Pixlr - Comparable to Sumo, Pixlr is a full featured image editor. It's very accessible, and if you have experience with Fireworks or an equivilent product, then you'll pick it up very quickly!
Phoenix - a new kid on the block. This image editor has some advanced tools and solid sharing features. Think of it as a middle of the range tool, simliarities to Picnik.
Instructional Materials - use a website
Google Websites - A fast way to build a website - Google Sites. Registration with Google is required - then you can create a website with resources on it quickly and easily. A fantastic tool for creating instructional materials for your class - include all the web links and directions you're going to use in one convenient place!
Stixy - Another way to approach putting up instructional materials online. Think of it as a bulletin board for your classroom that's online. Easy to use, easy to share and collaborate if you wish.
Lino It and Wallwisher are not as fully featured as Stixy, but offer instad slightly better usability, and a greater canvas size. Worth a look if you don't have high demands on your online bulletin board, but want something easy to use!
Music and sound effects search
Audacity - A free download that allows you to edit audio streams.
Myna - an amazing audio editor built into your browser. Export and import, browse effects and multi track editing. Advanced tools with a great UI.
Free music samples and tracks for use with your stories
Vozmen - Vozmen allows you to create an audio file in a male or female voice from text in seconds!
Podcast recording
We've only listed free online applications here - though there are numerous available online for download or subscription. These are currently two of the best free online services available.
Click Caster - A limit of 125 meg for each account each month is the only limitation here.
Gcast - A great simple, straightforward podcasting website. Easy, and free.
Polling
Poll Everywhere - a wonderful product that allows snap polls in your classroom! As long as you're working with a class that requires no more than 30 votes for each poll (each question), there are no costs involved.
Search Engine
Groker - A more visual and interactive way of surfing the web.
Soople - There are dozens of 'specialist search' tricks you can perform with Google if you know how to phrase them. Soople simply makes it easy to do a specialist search on Google.
Spellcheck
Orangoo - Spell check text copied from a document, or an entire website.
Video Editing
Jaycut - an advanced video editing tool in your browser.
Jumpcut - free online video editing, This tool is easy to use for still and moving images.
Media Converter - allows you to covert a video file type. There's a restriction of 500meg, which means most short movies are covered. You can even enter a URL to convert YouTube videos!
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