QuestGarden - easily create webquests

QuestGarden is a online website that you allows you to create "webquests" for your classroom.  

If you are unfamiliar with what a webquest is, a webquest is a what it sounds like - a quest on the web.  When you put a webquest together, it requires students to go out and seek information about a certain topic.   I put together a webquest when I was student teaching Economics over labor unions and my kids really liked the variety of activities that was incorporated in it.  Feel free to check it out by clicking on this link here. 

This is a great way to teach or reinforce a certain topic you want to go over with your students because it allows the students to go out and do the research and it allows you, the teacher, the ability to break down the lesson into different required parts (Introduction, Task, Process, Evaluation, Conclusion), as per the given example above. 

What is also cool about creating webquests in QuestGarden is that QuestGarden allows you to download your webquest into a zip folder - that way if you ever need to download the files for the webquest you can do so as you please.    

Most of the resources I live to share are free to use, however, QuestGarden does have a minimal (very minimal) cost to use.  For $20.00 you can have a 2 year membership to create and share webquests with your students and fellow teachers.  The return you will get from the $20.00 membership will definitely pay off.  When I was done student teaching, most of my students told me that this was one of the best activities they had done in awhile.  

You can register for a free 30 day trial with Webquest today and try it out.              

Easy Notecards - create and share flashcards

What is Easy Notecards?

Easy Notecards is a free online website that allows you to create flashcards and share them with your students or fellow colleagues via link or embed into your website or blog.  

What is great about Easy Notecards is that it allows you other options to utilize the flashcards than just flashcards themselves, you can also create a quiz, matching game, or a bingo game.  

If you need to as well, you can print out the flashcards and have a physical flashcard set.  

From a teacher's standpoint, I could see this working really well with students due to it's different options of sharing and different options of studying.  With the ability of making studying into a game (quiz,matching game, bingo) it allows students ways to break up their study time and look at it from different view points.  

Here's a example of what a embedded note card set looks like (click on the green arrow to go to the next flashcard):

With the option of being able to embed any flashcard set, you could easily put this in your classroom website or blog for students to study at their leisure.

I highly recommend Easy Notecards for your classroom, you can create a free account by going to the website, www.easynotecards.com.  

Livebinder it Tool

Livebinders is a excellent way to gather and organize information.  You can create separate binders for whatever topic you may be working on--i.e. education, finance, cooking, etc.  

If you are searching on the web and run across a website or article that you find interesting or useful, Livebinders gives you a very handy tool to simply click and save the URL into one of your livebinders, the Livebinder it tool.  Here's the "livebinder it" extension I use for the Google Chrome browser:

When you click on the extension, it will provide you with the ability to organize the content into a livebinder you've already created or you can choose to create a new one.  You can also choose whether to put it as a new tab or put it as a subtab into a existing tab:

What is also nice is that Livebinders also provides another handy tool, the "livebinder it button" for your website or blog.  If you have anyone who visits your blog or website and you want to give them a way to save a blog post or article you have posted, you can add the "livebinder it" tool to provide them the means to save that content.  Here's a screen shot of it on my blog:

These tools are definitely something that you should utilize to make your life so much easier online.  And, of course, this is free from livebinders.com, just as the website itself is free. Check it out! 

Learn Boost Lesson Planner

Recently, I wrote about a lesson planner from Teaching Channel.

Learn Boost also has a similar lesson planning utility which allows teachers to gather resources (urls, state standards, attachments) all at one central location into your learnboost account.  

Here's what the basic template looks like:

Again, best part of this...it's free!

Lesson Planning with Evernote

Lesson planning is a huge component of any educator's classroom.  We have to breakdown the instruction into several considerations to give our students the best means of learning the objective--i.e. what is the objective of this lesson, what resources will I/students use, what activities will be incorporated, etc.  Once it is all said and done, a lesson plan can be bursting with content and resources--which can be quite overwhelming for the teacher.  Wouldn't it be nice if we had a "central hub" to gather all of our resources for quick and easy access?  Enter Evernote.  

The more I get hands on with Evernote, the more I'm finding out about the extensive ways in which Evernote can be used in education.  One way that Evernote is making a teacher's life easier is by making lesson planning much easier and streamlined.  Two educators that are apart of my PLN on Twitter, Melissa Seideman and David Andrade, are also huge fans of Evernote.  I recently asked if I could share their experiences with using Evernote and they agreed.  Here's their testimonies:

Melissa Seideman:

Lesson Plans

The first set are screen shots are of my lesson plans. I got the idea of lesson plans using Evernote from twitter and I will never go back to any other type. I organized each class into a separate notebook and I created notes for each unit. The hardest part was setting up the lesson plans but once it was set up it's so easy to just enter information. 

Here are Melissa's screen shots for lesson planning:

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

I find Evernote for lesson plans to be one of the most time saving technologies I have implemented into my classroom. I have my lesson plans on every device thanks to Evernote. I can make a change with a simple click on my phone, ipad, or computer. Every change syncs and keeps me organized. I am also making notes in each lesson to change if I teach the same course next year.  I have also shared my lesson plans with members of my department as well as my principal. I highly recommend using Evernote for lesson plans. 

Using Evernote for Student Portfolios

My seniors are doing a final portfolio project using Evernote. The project is very detailed with each step of the project. It took a few days of getting students adjusted to working in Evernote rather than opening word, but the progress is beautiful. They shared their project notebook with me and I can see every change as well as the progress each student makes.   I attached a few student projects. I also created a shared notebook that I shared with them such as my how to guide, what if I am absent, and a sample portfolio layout. This project is truly digital in every sense including the directions for each project work day. 

Here's Melissa's screen shots for student portfolios:

Example 1

Example 2:

Example 3:

 Example 4:

Example 5:

Evernote is a great way to teach our students to be digitally responsible, organized, and literate. My hope using Evernote they will find other uses for cloud computing as well as ways to successfully use technology outside of school in the real world. 

You can connect with Melissa on Twitter or on her blog (Twitter: @mseideman, Blog: Notanotherhistoryteacher)

David Andrade

Evernote is my main lesson and resource organizational tool. I have notebooks setup for lesson plans and lesson resources, along with notebooks for things to do, things to research, and things to share. My lesson plan notes are set up by unit and have the objectives, links, resources, and attached files (like handouts and lab packets). I also have notes setup by week that I use to keep track of where each class is and to schedule my plans out. I can easily share resources and information with my students or colleagues. I have notebooks for faculty meeting notes, ideas for future lessons, Android tips and resources, technology support, and personal notebooks for financial notes and account information, recipes, travel plans, and much more.

In the image below, you can see my lesson plan notebook. It has my schedule for each week with what I am going to do in each class, each day. I also have notes with my unit and lesson plans, links to other resources, notes, and I have attached the files I use with each class.

Lesson Plan objectives:

David's post on winning Evernote premium for himself and his classes for a entire year:

I just won a very cool contest Evernote hosted for educators. Along with 9 other teachers, I won a year of Evernote premium for me and all of my students, along with training and support to implement it with my class.

I have been using Evernote myself for years and always share it with my students, but this will be my first year really using it with them. I'm learning more about sharing notebooks and setting up groups and classes with Evernote. The first webinar from Evernote was great and we have a Yammer group for support, as well as more training from Evernote throughout the year.

Students have already been using Evernote to take notes and upload files from me and attach them to their class notes. Many are also taking pictures of notes on the board and uploading them to Evernote. I'm also having them submit assignments to me via Evernote. Each class has a notebook and the students tag anything they send me with their name for easy sorting. This will become their online portfolio. Students can share notes with me or email me files right into Evernote. 

They are getting so used to it already, that when I say "where should you save this?" they automatically answer Evernote. 

You can follow David on Twitter or his blog (Twitter: @Daveandcori, Blog: Educationaltechnologyguy)

I highly recommend you follow Melissa and David, they have shared some great things involving a vast area of education.  

What do you think?  Give Evernote a try.  

What is Study Blue?

We live in a world where everything is digital.  Everything to paying bills online, finding news articles, and yes, even studying.  Teachers and students now locate and share their content online, making the learning experience more engaging.  Online tools such as Evernote, Livebinders, and Google have provided ways for teachers and students to gather that content and present it online.  However, when  it comes time to study, what digital tool is there to facilitate that need?  Enter Study Blue.  

    

Study Blue is essentially what I like to call "21st century studying" or what Study Blue calls "your digital backpack".  Studying has evolved beyond opening a text book and looking for key terms in the glossary, we now incorporate pictures, audio, and technology into the studying experience.  

My StudyBlue Livebinder:

  

Study Blue for Educators

U.S. Election Volcabulary Flashcards

5 free mobile apps to capture student work

Mobile technology has provided new opportunities for students and teachers to both capture and organize data.  With the advent of mobile technology in the classroom, students can do a number of things like capture notes from their spirals or the whiteboard to capturing pictures/video of a project they've been doing in class.        This allows students to both share and reflect upon their learning.

Here are 5 mobile apps to capture student work:

1.  Evernote (IOS, Android, Blackberry)

Evernote is a mobile app that is cross-platform friendly--so regardless if your students prefer the Iphone, Android, or Blackberry they will be able to install the app and use it.  With the Evernote app, students can take picutres of classroom activities (not to mention activities assigned outside of class) or they can take audio notes as well.  So if you have your students taking notes in a spiral or journal, they can make them into digital notes with the Evernote app and have access to them 24/7.  More importantly, once they've created the new note from the app, they will have it access to it on any other device which they have downloaded Evernote or they can simply access it from the main website www.evernote.com.  

2.  JotNot (IOS)

Jotnot is a very impressive mobile app which makes pictures or "scans" very crisp and clear.  Depending on how new your mobile device is (which I still have the Iphone 3GS so the camera on it is not as good as some of the new models) taking pictures may not exactly be as clear as you want--especially when reading text.  With JotNot, you can take a picture and change the settings on it to make it clearer to read.  

The only downside to the free version of JotNot is that can't share via Evernote or Dropbox--that is only with the paid version ($1.99).  With the free version, you can still save the image to your phone's photo library and upload it into Evernote or Dropbox app from there.    

3.  Whiteboard Share (IOS)

Whiteboard Share is a app that I just recently started experimenting with.  Essentially, with Whiteboard Share you can take a photo and share via Evernote or email.  The main benefit of this app is that it when the image is uploaded into Evernote, it makes the text more readable (evernote.com).  

The other benefit to using Whiteboard Share is that it gives you a "zoom" feature on the camera, which the standard camera on the Iphone (3GS model at least) doesn't allow for that. 

4.  Pinterest (IOS)

Pinterest is quickly becoming a fun and easy way to both capture and share photos.  With the Iphone app you have access to your previous "pins" and can take photos directly from the app and assign them to a "pin board" for easy organization.  The pin boards can be a easy way for students to organize photos into different categories (i.e. Group projects) and be able to reflect on what they did later on.  

Only downside with Pinterest is that at this time you still have to submit a invite in order to start using it.  That being said though, once you submit your request for a invite it only takes a day or two for it to process.  Other than that, you can send a invite to people who don't already have a Pinterest account via email or Facebook.

Updated 8/12/12:  Pinterest recently went open to the public, meaning no longer needing to request a invite! 

5.  Voicethread (IOS)

Voicethread is a very engaging tool that students can utilize in the classroom.  With the Voicethread Iphone app, you can take a series of pictures and categorize them into different "threads" and make them into a type of "slideshow" presentation.  

What sets this apart from the other apps is that once you take the photo, Voicethread allows you to make comments on it either by voice, text, or video.  So instead of students just making a caption description of the photo, they can also take audio notes or even actually video of them describing what is going on in the picture.  

Honorable Mention:

CamScanner (IOS, Android)

CamScanner is also another excellent app that students can use to capture there work.  With Camscanner, you can take a snap shot from your Iphone or Android device and save it as a PDF or upload directly into your Evernote account.

Thanks to Melissa Seideman (@mseideman) for suggesting the app!    

  

Conclusion:

If you are looking for a cross-platform app, Evernote is the way to go.  Of course, if students have the Iphone or even a Ipod Touch they have a few more options to choose from (for now at least). I'm sure that there are a few that I may have overlooked, which ones would you recommend?

Making Teaching Easier with Teaching Channel

Earlier this year, I wrote a short post over the Teaching Channel lesson planner.  It's a great tool for teachers who want to gather all their resources while preparing their lesson plans.  However, Teaching Channel has a ton more resources than just the lesson planner.  Here's a look a some of their resources in more detail:

Teacher Workspace

What is great about Teaching Channel is that it provides a "workspace" for teachers--a place to save videos, lesson plan resources, and notebooks of notes over videos.    

Here's a snapshot of what your workspace would look like:

With your workspace on Teaching Channel, it provides a central "hub" of your selected resources so that you don't have to spend time searching for something you previously saved.  

Videos

This is one of my favorite tools that Teaching Channel offers.  On the Teaching Channel website, there are several professional development videos (which is constantly growing) over subject areas such as Math, Science, and Social Studies.  Here's one I liked from the Social Studies selection over the Declaration of Independence: 

What is also great is that you can search through the library of videos by subject, topic, and grade level.

Lesson Planner

As I've stated before, I've only briefly discussed the lesson planner from Teaching Channel.  However, the lesson planner is a solid collection tool for teachers to use and it deserves more detail.

The first thing that you'll want to get before beginning to use the lesson planner is the "lesson planner plus" extension for your web browser (once you've created a account, you can get the link to it on the lesson plan page).  This is similar to the Evernote extension in that you can save resources like articles and webpages.  Once you've decided to use the selected resource, you can choose to save it into your lesson planner directly for future reference.  When you use the Teaching Channel plus tool you can choose to create a title of the resource, schedule a particular month for when you will be using it, and set reminders for yourself to check the resource at a certain point.

Here's what the lesson planner looks like:

When you save the content into your lesson planner, it will detail the source from where you got it and the date added.  This way, if you are research for material for your lesson plans and come across something you like, all you have to do is save it to your Teaching Channel lesson planner and you can continue on researching.

Notebooks

Notebooks on Teaching Channel are the collection of notes that you've taken on videos from the Teaching Channel library.  If you have ever saved a video and then gone back to it a few days ago and forgotten what you were thinking about at the time you were watching it the first time, this will help jog your memory.

Notice in the image above, on the right side, there is a option to add notes to the video while you are watching it.  This way, when you do go back to it you can read over your notes for a quick reference.  Once you do save your notes on the video, they are saved into "notebooks" on your Teaching Channel workspace for a quick referral of what video and notes you were previously working on.

Teacher Connections

One of the coolest things about Teaching Channel is that it allows you to connect with other educators through the Teaching Channel website.  You can follow educators from different subject areas, grade levels, and roles (teachers, admins, etc).  Once you follow another educator, you can share notes and other ideas from videos.

Conclusion

Teaching Channel has a ton of resources that educators can use to help with their profession.  The website is constantly making updates and changes so I'm sure more good things are to come.  By the way, did I mention all this is free?

Collecting Student Work with Google Forms

Google applications have a multitude of uses, both for students and teachers.  Students can have one "central  hub" for all of their documents--i.e. word documents, all the different kinds of Google docs, PDF files, etc.--to which they can store and share via unique url.  And, of course, teachers can also utilize this for storage of all their lesson plans and other important documents.

One thing I love about Google docs is the ability to create a "form".  With a Google forms, you can create a form document which can contain several different type of responses, such as: multiple choice, drop down, text boxes, etc.  What is great about this, for teachers, is that this gives the capability for teachers to collect a student's work with minimal effort.  Here's a example of a form I created that allows students to submit their URL for the required document:
 With this, students don't have to register to be able to access the document (other than maybe signing up for a Google account, just so they can create documents in Google) and you can easily embed the form into your website (such as Google Sites if you have one for your class). And once students make their submission, you get all the results in a spreadsheet in your Google account, including the time stamp.


What is also nice about this is that it doesn't necessarily have to be a Google document that your students would have to submit, it could be anything that students can provide the unique URL to their work, a Evernote note for example.

Note: One thing to keep in mind is that students must be sure that if the are using Google Docs to set the document to share with "anyone with the link" to share with "everyone".

I think this is a pretty easy way for teachers to collect work from their students. If students do use Google or Evernote or any other "cloud service", it would eliminate documents from being not accessible because they are on the student's "computer at home".

Thoughts?

Don't grade student's binders, grade their Livebinders

I've actually had off work this week for the first time in a very long time.  So, I've decided to look back over when I was a student teacher and reflect on what went wrong and what went right.  

My Student teaching days

I student taught 12th grade Economics in a low socioeconomic part of the district.  Some of my students had jobs to help pay for their parent's bills and others just had a less than ideal home life.  That being said, however, I loved all of my kids.  There were days that were rougher than others, but the good days always trumped the bad ones.  

The one thing that I have thought about numerous times since my student teaching days, about 2 years ago, was how my co-op teacher and the other teachers graded student's notebooks.  The classroom that I was in was shared between my cooperating teacher and another teacher, both of which required students to have spirals with notes and glued assignments to be graded later.  All the binders from all classes from both teachers were "organized" into stack-able bins one on top of another.  Of  course, some of the classes had close to about 30 students, which when they are all piled into the bins, they tend to fall over or fall out.  

That was a issue for me on a weekly (if not daily) basis.  I had spirals go missing, one student accused another student of stealing their's, and not to mention they would occasionally fall apart from wear and tear.  When it came time to do the grading,  it took a very long time just to go through one by one and make sure that everything was in place.  Besides the fact that they weighed 5 tons, it was always a uphill battle to keep these things around.  When my student teaching was done, I said to myself that there has to be a better way to do this. 

Use Livebinders instead

The school that I student taught at wasn't up-to-par when it came to educational technology or using it in the classroom.  However, when I finally get my own class, I know the solution to this problem...Livebinders. 

Livebinders is a amazing tool to utilize in and out of the classroom.  It provides the means of gathering and organizing content in a streamlined website at livebinders.com.  Of course, the first thing that I thought about was the fact that I taught in a lower economic part of the district--but I don't buy the whole "we don't have the money" excuse to not have these tools in the classroom.  For starters, Livebinders are free--they will not cost the students/parents/teachers one dime--so money is not a factor when using Livebinders.  

Combine Evernote with Livebinders

Secondly, some might ask how exactly do you get the student's notes into their livebinder?  The suggestion I would have is simple--use Evernote.  Evernote is another free service that makes organization a breeze.  Sure, you can have students scan there notes on a scanner, save it on a flash drive, have them upload it to their computer or a library computer, save it to their computer file, and then finally upload it into their livebinder, or you can just use Evernote.  Let's look at that procedure again with Evernote:  Use a Lexmark smartsolution printer (about $80.00) that is connected to the student's Evernote accounts, have them scan their notes, upload to Evernote from the scanner, get the unique URL from the Evernote note, and insert into their Livebinder--a lot simpler right?  

But what, you might ask, if you can not afford the scanner?  Students have cell phones--99% of my students had them in class, so I don't see that being a issue of students not having them at all.  With their cell phone/smart phone, they can scan their notes directly into Evernote via the Evernote app.  They can now get to a computer, grab the link, and insert it into their Livebinder.

Making grading easier

Now that you have students upload their notes into their Livebinder, you can easily access the student's livebinder and grade accordingly.  Students can have tabs in their Livebinder, named "Class Notes", for easy organization.  They can upload the scan into a subtab of the "Class Notes" tab with the title of the notes or even the date.  No 5 tons of paper to sort through, no missing spirals, etc.  This isn't the end-all solution to this problem, however, I would much rather do grading this way compared to dealing with student's actually hard copy notes.  This is just a suggestion that might make things easier in the classroom.   

Thoughts?    

5 reasons why you should use Evernote

Evernote is one of my favorite online tools.  I use it on my Iphone, Android tablet and laptop to gather information and jot down thoughts and ideas.  Here are 5 reasons why you should give Evernote a try:

1.  Never forget a thought or idea

Ever had a really awesome idea or something that you thought of and wanted to write it down before you forgot it?  With Evernote, you never have to forget anything.  With my Iphone app (here's the Itunes store link for it) I can quickly launch the application, create a new note or edit an existing one and type in the thought or idea.  Once you're done, that thought is now in your world of Evernote--it will be on my laptop, tablet, and on the web at evernote.com.  

2.  Organize and catalog online content

Since one of my teaching certifications is Composite Social Studies, I love to read and save articles over history, economics, and politics.  Evernote has truly been an awesome tool for me to use this year because we are in a election year for the President of the United States.  With the Evernote webclipper, any time I run across a article that I find interesting and want to refer to later, all I have to do is click the webclipper, select the notebook I want to put it in, and it's done.  Here's an example of the Google Chrome Evernote webclipper I use:

It's also nice that I can assign tags to the article that I've just clipped for even more organization.  This saves me all kinds of time and hassle. 

3.  Sharing made simple

With Evernote, sharing content and notes has never been easier.  As soon as a new note has been created in your Evernote account, you have the option of sharing it several different ways.  You can share via Twitter, Facebook, Email, or even via link directly to the note.  Here's the link to a article over Ben Bernanke that I clipped a few months ago.  You also have the option to share an entire notebook so your users can access all of the notes in that notebook.  With this capability, you can share one link to your students where they can access all class lecture notes.  Thus, with Evernote you have one central "hub" to which you can share your content.  

4.  Simplify other online tools with Evernote

Evernote in itself is completely awesome.  However, once you realize that there are other online websites/tools that also use Evernote with their services, it makes it all complete.  There are a wealth of apps for Iphone and Android that you can combine with Evernote, check out the Evernote "Trunk" to see what you could be using with Evernote:  http://evernote.com/trunk.  

5. It's Free

With Evernote, you can have the option to get a premium account or you can just keep the basic (free) account.  Here's what you'll get with a free account:

• 100,000 Notes; each note can be a maximum of 25 megabytes (mb) for free users and 50mb for Premium users.
• 250 Synchronized Notebooks (including Notebook Stacks). All 250 notebooks can be shared. There is no limit to the number of Local Notebooks (which aren't synced) you can have.
• 10,000 Tags.
• 100 Saved Searches.

  (evernote.com)

Event though I have a premium account, I never maxed out my usage even when I had the free account.  

Hopefully these reasons give you some insight on why to use Evernote.  Of course, these 5 reasons are just a start to the numerous things you can use Evernote for.  I've also created a "Evernote for Educators" livebinder with a lot of articles on how others are using Evernote.  Feel free to browse:

  

Evernote for Educators

5 Reasons why you should be using Livebinders

If you follow me on Twitter or Google +, you know how much I LOVE Livebinders.  It is a website that I visit on a daily basis and regularly update my resources on. Thus, I've decided to list the top 5 reasons why you should be using Livebinders.  

1. Professional Development:

I can honestly say that if it had not been for Livebinders, I would be no where near the level of professional development that I am now.  Livebinders is the first 21st century educational technology that got me hooked into finding educational tools and learning how to use those in the classroom.  I had a job interview at a school a few months ago and I explained Livebinders to the Social Studies department head--who had never heard of it before.  As I finished telling him about it, he literally started walking out of the room to get his computer to check it out!  (of course he didn't, but you can see his excitement).  Livebinders.com provides a means for anyone, for the purpose of this post a educator, the means to collaborate with someone who is thousands of miles away.  I personally had the privilege of collaborating on a "Cyberbullying" livebinder with Jen Petras--a technology teacher in Ohio.  To put this in the realm of all things, I live in TX and she lives in OH!  The fact that you can collaborate with someone that easily is reason enough to get a livebinders account.  To add a collaborator to your livebinder, all you do is email them a link and the both of you can start adding content to the same Livebinder!  Here's our livebinder, please feel free to view:

  

Cyber Bullying

P.S. Jen is a fantastic educator and I've learned quite a lot from her.

  

2. One stop collection of ALL your resources

Ever actually "shopped" around at all the different websites for data collection?  If you haven't, you'll be celebrating your 100th birthday by the time you get to the last page of search results.  Livebinders gives you the freedom of having to have 500 web resources for collecting all your documents, web clippings, etc.  If you are a teacher, that fact that you can create a class livebinder and embed it on your class site/blog should be a dream come true.  There's no more questions like "Can I get a copy of last weeks assignment?" or "Where is your notes from the lecture?"  Just direct them to your livebinder where you've uploaded your materials and they can print it/save it when/where they need it.  

3. Connection to other Educational Resources

Again, if you follow me on Twitter or Google Plus, I'm a HUGE advocate of Evernote and Study Blue.  With Livebinders, I've been able to collect resources and share them (via Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook, etc) on Evernote and Study Blue.  Had it not been the advent of Livebinders, there is no way I could gather all the resources that I have gotten and been able to share them with the world about Evernote and Study Blue.  Educators should keep themselves up to date on educational resources and the fact that Livebinders help you gather resources on them and narrows down your search for content about them is priceless.  Here's my Livebinders on Evernote and Study Blue:

  

Study Blue for Educators

  

Evernote for Educators

4. Livebinders save you time

Who doesn't have time to spend countless hours on the computer searching for content?  If you do actually have that kind of time, then your job probably doesn't call for you to search for resources in the first place.  Again, for the sake of this post, in the case for teachers Livebinders.com can help you get resources in a flash. For example, let's say you have a interest on how to use an Ipad in your classroom.  On the search tool on the website, simply type "Ipad" and hit "search".  As of the creation of this post, this will give you over 300 livebinders over Ipads themselves!

5. It's Free!

Would you rather pay a website for all these features or would you rather get it for free?  Correct, you answered "free"!  And if you are always looking for free resources, you're probably thinking, "ok, here comes the solicitation ads!", but, not in this case.  Livebinders does not have ads that will pop up on your screen telling you that you are the 1 billionth customer and you've just won the state of Rhode Isand, or ads that clutter up the binder themselves.  The fact that Livebinders give you all this great material and resources at the touch of your fingertips and for free is nothing short of remarkable.

I would like to think the creators of Livebinders, Tina and Barbara, for making such a awesome tool.    As soon as the economy turns back around and I find a teaching job, you can rest assured that I will have my students using Livebinders!