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ProductiveZamzar | Free w/ option to paid upgrade
Free media conversion through web-based system. Fairly quick and free. Only a few limitations, but rarely come across anything I cannot convert. Weebly Education | Free w/ option to paid upgrade Very clean looking and easy to use website creator. Can link to an existing domain if you own one. What I do however, to cut costs, is redirect all traffic from the domain I own (levineducation.com) to wherever my homepage is. This lets me host my own content on my domain while taking advantage of solid cloud-based webpage builders. Khan Academy | Free Started so a guy could help out his relative with homework and things got out of control. This resource now includes tutorials and pacing for most subjects and many grade levels. Also has test prep for SATs and several others. Through mini-assessment it guides users through the topics based on strengths and weaknesses. Cox | 10 per month " Families with at least one child receiving free lunch are eligible to receive Internet services, from Cox, at $9.95 per month. There also are no activation fees or equipment rental fees associated with the high-speed Internet program." AssessmentClass Dojo | Free
Excellent way to set goals and keep records of student behaviors. Despite "childish" appearance, setting age appropriate responses for scores makes this very versatile. I created a matrix for my students you can see HERE. ClassCraft | Free w/ paid upgrades Students earn XP and can level up characters granting them abilities similar to D&D or many MMORPGs. Excellent graphic design. I'm hesitant to use it in my class as the theme seems very involved and if some refuse to participate, it would be hard to use. Socrative | Free Best formative assessment tool I have used. Easy to make assignments, it will send you a spreadsheet of results so you can use excel to analyze, AND no student log ins. Students are prompted for name, but no passwords. Names are just used so you know who data came from. Show and Tell |
ELA/WritingGrammarly | Free
Have not tried this out yet, but it has better grammar and spelling help than typical word document. NoRedInk | Free Helps students learn grammar and differentiates based on their ability. Newsela | Free Reading Articles that are searchable by topic, grade level, and reading standard. Articles also available in Spanish. ReadTheory | Free Reading and analysis practice. Tracks students progress. BoomWriter | Free Collaborative writing tool Audio-VisualScreencast-O-Matic | Free w/ passive-aggressive window for paid option
Really good screen recording software. Shows where mouse is well and when you click it animates the click so it is very clear. Unfortunately it does not work in my district due to the restrictions they put on the computer, but I use it at home whenever I need to pre-record anything. Screencastify | Free Plug-in for Chrome that does work with limited rights on computer. Does not animate mouse movements or clicks. Had a few problems with it not showing prompt windows in something I was recording, but I will continue to work with this and see what comes of it. GIMP | Free About 90% of the functionality of Photoshop, but it's free. Pixlr | Free About 50% of the functionality of photoshop in the browser-based editor. Although it does not do high resolution layered editing, it is the best layer based editor online (no downloads). It does have a desktop version, I've never used it (see GIMP) Resource ManagementTizmos | Free
Resource Sharing to Students Symbaloo | Free Resource Sharing to Students Lesson Plan Symbalo | Free Resource Sharing to Students w/ Paths |