Friday, April 12, 2013

Our Favorite Social Media Tools

Social media technology continues to transform how teachers, students and leaders do their work. We're amazed at the creative tools that have emerged to support our work individually and with one another. Here are a few of our latest finds.

This tool allows you to gather and organize ideas much like a concept map. It allows you to examine resources from different sources and organize an assignment or presentation. You can invite others in your group to add to the web/map. 

Educreations - www.educreations.com 
This tool allows you to create amazing presentations on a recordable whiteboard. It captures your voice and handwriting to produce short video lessons that you can share online. Created as an iPad app they're working on an app for Android devices. Public lessons can be embedded on blogs or websites. Ron uses it all the time in his online courses.

Idea Sketchhttp://www.nosleep.net/ 
This app allows you to draw diagrams and create mind maps, concept maps or flow charts. There is an option to convert from text or to text if desired. It's a great tool for brainstorming and illustrating concepts. Apps are available for iOS and Windows devices.

We also want to include a tool that's been around for a while but just keeps getting better.

Prezi - www.prezi.com 
This presentation tool allows you to organize and share ideas on a large whiteboard. A wide selection of templates makes it easy to get started. Once you begin you'll find Prezi easy to adapt to a whole variety of presentation needs. It allows you to embed photos, audio, video and links to all sorts of information on the web. 

We hope you enjoy trying out these social media tools and would enjoy hearing from you about other's you've discovered.