Great Web Sites & Web Services

Internet4Classrooms.com: A Web portal for anyone who wants to find high-quality, free Internet resources to use in their classroom instruction. There are Links for K-12 Teachers, Assessment Assistance, Online Practice Modules

SendUIt.com and YouSendIt.com: Send very large files up to 100 mb. Most E-mail services such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Comcast, GMail all have limitations on attachment file size. This way you can send huge bundles of pictures, even videos to your friends, relatives and co-workers. Ask about creating .Zip files, so that you can compress an entire folder and send it off to others.

TinyURL.com and SnipURL.com: Free Web site URL shortening services. These sites allow you to copy the longest Web site addresses you come across and convert them to smaller, more compact addresses which you can easily pass on to your colleagues.

Officetutorials.com: A great way to quickly learn any of the major Microsoft software. There are full-color picture-laden tutorials that take you step-by-step through learning Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, FrontPage, Outlook and Access in each of their last 4 versions. Shorter tutorials include learning Mail Merge in Word. Each tutorial is easy to follow and up to 50 pages in length – for free.

MOODLE: http://moodle.phasd.us/: Free to the PHASD staff and students, this amazing and very broad online course content tool is as fun to learn as it is powerful to use. You will be amazed at how much of your own class content can be posted to your very own online site in less than an hour.

Clusty.com: This is a great Search Engine along the lines of Google, but it will bring up completely different results. Try it out and compare. You might be surprised how much you like it. Searches can be limited to Jobs, Wikipedia, News, Images, Shopping, or Customized.

Flickr.com: Currently, this site has not been blocked (yet) by our District’s Web Filter, so it is one of the best ways to find full-color and amazing photos of nearly anything on the Web. These images have been shared by members of the site, including people like you.

Google Apps: www.google.com/intl/en/options: Collaborate on the same document together, instead of sorting out changes in attachments. Share documents and calendars with co-workers, and access it all from any computer. Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Sites are all available. Go to google.com and click on “More” and then click on “Even More” to bring up the mind-blowing list of all of the Google products. A great place to start using these free applications is by setting up your own GMail (E-mail account). To do this, go to http://www.gmail.com/ and fill out the form.

Passpack.com: This service allows for online storage of your various Web site passwords! The first time you sign in, you can pick a Packing Key, which keeps your passwords secret. Depending on how much time you want to spend setting it up, it could be what you’re looking for. Otherwise, spend the $30.00 for a RoboForm license (available from http://www.roboform.com/) or $20.00 for a RoboForm2Go license (which runs from a USB Flash Drive). To review, Passpack is a Web site (free) and Roboform is software which runs from a desktop or a USB flash drive and requires a purchased license.

Hulu.com: This site features free movies, free TV show episodes and other videos that you can watch all day long (if you have the time to kill). Click on the “Alphabetical” link at the top of the site to browse the entire list of movies that are available to watch immediately on the Web. It does require a high-speed Internet connection to enjoy this site’s content.

SkyDrive (http://skydrive.live.com/): This is a Microsoft online service that you get for free if you already have a Hotmail account. Otherwise, you still get it free once you sign up for a Windows Live (Hotmail) e-mail account. SkyDrive allows you to store up to 5 GB of data. Small video clips, your entire picture collection, your work documents. The sky is almost the limit, as long as you don’t exceed 5 gb. Great for large online file storage. Ask about creating Zip files to store your folders.

Adobe Photoshop Express: www.photoshop.com/express: Finally, Adobe has gotten into the online photo storage and free online photo editing competition. For absolutely free, you can set up an online account with Adobe, then store and edit your photos all from this Web site. It is not overly powerful like the Photoshop Elements software, but it is quite good and has some nice editing features to go along with the 2 gb of free online photo storage.

Picnik.com: Along the same lines as PhotoshopExpress.com, Picnik.com is a one-click photo editing site. Fix your photos very quickly, use advance controls to fine-tune your results, and there is no registration required!

AtomicLearning.com: This site is for anyone who wants to learn computer software very quickly through online training videos which take you step-by-step through over 100 different programs. It costs $99.99 for a full-year subscription, but if you want to learn computers, this is the best and quickest way. It is definitely geared toward teachers, featuring a wonderful assortment of Lesson Accelerators that can be used in your classroom.
Zoho.com: If you want a site that competes quite well with the Google Apps, this is it. Designed for group collaboration, this is one of the best examples you will find of Web 2.0 technology at work. Productivity and Collaboration software is available here for free. All you need to do is create an account. 17 different online applications are featured, some of which Google hasn’t even come up with yet, including a database, planner, wiki, and word processor.

SlideShare.net: Partake in the amazing collection of slideshows shared by people all over the world, then create an account and share your own PowerPoint slideshows. This is the best way to share your presentations with the world. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to create a webinar. This site shows you how.

Soople.com: Want to use all of the great search tools of Google, but don’t have the time to learn them all. How about a site that has all of the best search features from Google incorporated into one Web page. Here it is. Translate languages, do a book search, music search, etc., etc. This is great!

Blogger.com: Google’s incredibly simple blog-creation service is totally free and amazingly easy. You will honestly have your own Blog set up in minutes and online with content in less than an hour.

Carbonite.com: This subscription-based service will allow you to back up your entire computer’s data for $50.00 per year. There is no limit to the amount of files, folders and data you can back up. Enough said. This is essential. Just think what would happen if your computer got struck by lightening or your laptop was stolen.

LogMeIn.com: Here is how you can access your home computer from anywhere in the world. The service is free. If you want to use its more advanced features, like remote printing, file transfer and file sharing, then purchase LogMeIn Pro for $70.00 a year.

Radar: http://www.mymobilewatchdog.com/: Here is a badly-needed tool. Protect your kids against cell phone safety threats by subscribing to Radar. It allows you to access complete text messages (sent to and received from your child’s phone) along with corresponding phone numbers, and records them on the Website where you can review them at home and print reports for authorities. Fill out the form and give it a try.

Pageflakes.com: Create your own personal homepage online in minutes. Brain-dead easy! You will have your own classroom Web site complete with maps, weather forecasts, video clips and more. This is the simplest web creation tool yet available.

TeacherTube.com: Post your own classroom videos to this site, and see what other educators have created. It is a free site, but requires a membership. Better than YouTube, because it’s created for Teachers and NOT blocked by our Web filter.

Refdesk.com: We saved the best for last. A reference librarian’s best friend. Plan to spend an entire day, week or year on this site. It is that good and that thorough. Any type of search you can do is already here for use, including such educational tools as the Daily Quote, Daily News article, newspapers of the world, and many other search collections. You have to see this to believe it. All searches are organized quite well into 3 columns. With each use, you will find the site more and more useful.