This page is a listing of the (mostly) free tools I use on a regular basis for personal and work activities.

Start Page

• Netvibes
  • I have tried several start pages (iGoogle, MyYahoo!, Pageflakes) and Netvibes is by far the best for me. I’ve been using Netvibes for years and love the ease-of-use, the new sharing features, and the customizable layout.

Browser

• Chrome
  • I began using Chrome as my default browser in October of 2008. Two things that make this browser stand out: speed and the address/search bar that knows what I want even before I do. Now with extension support, Chrome has everything Firefox does.
• Firefox
  • As much as I love Chrome, there are still a few sites that still work better in Firefox. I also use the FireFTP extension as my regular FTP client.

Google Tools

• GMail
  • What can I say that hasn’t already been said about GMail? The lab features such as tasks and the Calendar and Docs gadgets are great.
• Google Calendar
  • Easily embedded into websites and sharing options. I use Google Calendar as my personal calendar and our school has recently switched to Google Apps so all of my calendaring is now with Google.
• Google Docs
  • Collaborative word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. My favorite tool in Docs is the form tool which allows you to create surveys. Results automatically populate a spreadsheet and there is a summary tool that allows you to view results as charts and graphs (although no easy way to print this summary yet).
• Google Reader
  • I just started using Reader regularly after my “EdTech” tab in Netvibes was bursting at the seams with blogs. So now I use Reader exclusively for my education blogs and Google alerts for our school’s name.
• Google Sites
  • Every teacher at our school is required to have a class web site and they use Google Sites to build them.
• Google Earth
  • A student favorite. Recently used Google Earth in lessons about measurement using its ruler. Discussed when to use feet vs. miles and had students choose different things to measure (ex., distance from Raleigh to Charlotte in miles and the length of the runway at RDU in feet).

Twitter

• Twitter
  • Micro-blogging tool Twitter has become the main way I keep up with my personal learning network of other independent school communicators and edtech professionals. Initially I wasn’t sure I would use it, but have found that it has become indispensable.
• TweetDeck
  • An Adobe Air application that allows you to groups your followers and alerts you when there are new tweets. I have mine setup to only alert me when I have @ replies. I had the Twitter widget for Netvibes, but realized I was missing some replies because there is no alert feature.

Screen Capture

• FSCapture
  • A light-weight screen capturing and annotation application. Since I started using it, the company has started charging $20 for the program (still worth it). A previous, portable version that does not even need to be installed is available here.
• Jing
  • From the same company that creates Camtasia, Jing is a free screencast application. It can upload videos directly to screencast.com. Screencasts are limited to 5 minutes, but who wants to sit through anything longer than that?

Bookmarking

• Diigo
  • Online bookmarking with the ability to annotate web sites and share with groups. Teachers can sign-up for an educator account which will add a “Teacher Console” to their profile. This makes it easy to set up private groups for classes. It’s also easy to bulk-create private student accounts by uploading CSV files.

Wiki

• Wikispaces
  • Collaborative web spaces. I initially chose Wikispaces because of their free educator wikis. Simply state that your wiki will be used for K-12 educational purposes and it will be upgraded to a private, ad-free wiki. I’ve stayed with Wikispaces because I like the clean look of their wikis.

Blogging

• Blogger
  • Google’s easy-to-use blogging application. One downside for educational use is the “Next Blog” button that appears at the top of every blog. Click it and who knows where you will end up. There is some CSS code that can remove the “Next Blog” bar.
• WordPress
  • If you want more power and control over your blog, WordPress is the way to go. WordPress.org offers the application for download to your web hosting company to run on your domain. (WordPress is pre-installed on many hosting provider’s servers.) Alternatively, wordpress.com allows you to create your blog on WordPress servers.
• EduBlogs
  • Using WordPress, an excellent blogging service for student use. Blogs are free, but are increasingly displaying ads. Become a “Supporter” for $40 a year and get thirty ad-free blogs as well as power tools such as forums for one blog.

Other Useful Web Tools

• fd’s Flickr Toys from Big Huge Labs
  • Allows you to create motivational-type posters, trading cards, magazine covers, movie posters, and many more fun things using your own photos.
• stock.xchange
  • The best place I have found for free, professional stock photos. Most allow for free use and some only require that you let the creator know where it is used.
• Print What You Like
  • Simply enter a URL on their home page and choose the sections of a web site to print. Can save a lot of paper and eliminates the annoying problem of selecting text to print but also getting ads and other unnecessary items as well.
• SlideShare
  • Upload, share, and embed PowerPoint, OpenOffice, or Keynote presentations.
• Scribd
  • Upload, share, and embed Word, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenOffice, or text files. I use Scribd to embed our principal’s monthly newsletter on our web site.
• Vimeo
  • Since Google Video is no longer accepting video uploads, I have switched to Vimeo. The quality seem much better than YouTube. The free account provide you with 500mb of uploads per week and one HD upload per week.