I spend lots of time trialling new web 2.0 tools with my students, for all different learning purposes.

My students and I often have a conversation that goes a little something like this:

Me: I have placed the link to —— on our blog for you to open and use.

Students: Miss, it needs a login and password.

Or Me: If you’ve finished your writing/numeracy activity, you can log onto ——-

Students: But I can’t remember my password to ———-

As a result of my occasional frustration with web 2.0 tools that require the creation/ability to remember usernames and passwords, I’ve decided to start building a list of websites which can be used in the classroom without these. It is not that I am against usernames/passwords – they can often be extremely useful for tracking student progress, online safety etc, but here are some links that do not require these for teacher and student use.

Padlet (formerly known as Wall Wisher) is a great tool for students to record information on a ‘virtual board’. The teacher creates the Padlet wall, provides students with the URL, and they can begin editing.

Aww Aww, (A Web Whiteboard), is touch-friendly online whiteboard app that lets you use a computer, tablet or smartphone to easily draw sketches and collaborate with others. You can save a copy as a .png to your computer.

Artpad Beautiful drawing tool with the option of adding text. Drawing may be saved or printed by students.

Sumopaint Another easy to use drawing tool that lets you save drawings and offers a free version.

Word It Out Free, easy to use, no frills word cloud website. Literacy Tools Make Beliefs Comix This is an extremely simple to use comic/storyboard creator, which students can then either email to themselves/teacher or simply print (comics are never saved in the cloud).

Flipbook! Flipbook! is a drawing game that allows students to create simple animations and share these. It has the option of creating as a guest or by creating a logon account. Proceeding as a guest means a 100 frame limit.

My Storymaker This storymaking website is wonderful for the early years, as it provides students with prompts to help them develop characters, plots etc. Finished ebooks can be printed, downloaded or shared via email.

The Peanut Gallery From the peanut gallery website: “PEANUT GALLERY is a Chrome Experiment that lets you add intertitles to old film clips using your voice, then share those clips with your friends. It uses your computer’s microphone and the Web Speech API in Google Chrome to turn speech into text.” I think that this site would be great as a fun and interactive language development activity.

Dvolver Movie Maker This is a free, user friendly movie making website. Offers templates, easy sharing, and a cute design.

Boolify Boolify aims to increase the ability to perform effective web searches, something which many students struggle with, using visual puzzles. Here is an example from Boolify’s website, showing how it can be used to help students narrow their results when using search engines.

Read Write Think Read write think is a resource that has interactive templates/graphic organisers for different writing styles. It is extremely user friendly, with the students having the option of typing directly into the graphic organisers and saving or printing these.

Scribble Maps A useful tool for teaching and learning about mapping and location. The maps can be saved or emailed.

What web tools for teaching do you use in your teaching?

From http://www.edudemic.com/web-tools-for-teaching-without-student-logins/