Cool Tech Tools!

Monday

Visual Thesaurus
This is one of my favorite "affordable" tools. I love the graphical way relationships of words are mapped with this tool. Be sure to check out the Visual Thesaurus Video Review as well.

Grokker
This is another graphical mapping tool that puts web searches into categories where the circles' sizes indicated the relative among of items in that category. I believe you can also use it to organize the files and folders on your computer!

iGoogle
Create your personalized Google homepage with gadgets for all kinds of interesting things.

Tuesday

The Brain
This is somewhat like the Visual Thesaurus or Grokker, except that you are the one who makes the connections between web sites, documents on your computer, and other helpful items. Go through "The Brain" tutorial (although a couple of chapter links don't work).

ZCubes
This is a free tool, if you don't mind a few ads. Check out the ZCubes demo to see what this truly cool Web 3.0 tool can do! Watch another demo about ZCubes Features. This is a beta version, so it might not work the way it should just yet.

Wednesday

COWs (Computers on Wheels) for La Sierra Academy - Earthwalk
Yesterday Enilson mentioned what kind of COWs his school will be purchasing! This is a good source.

Google Docs
These online word processor and spreadsheet tools allow you to work collaboratively on docs even in real time. You can store documents at Google docs.

Google Calendar
This online calendar tool is fully compatible with Microsoft Outlook. Since it is online, you can access it from any web-connected computer wherever you are.

Rubistar
Rubrics are a wonderful way to help students keep focused when they are working on technology projects. They can also be a great help to teachers to not get over-dazzled when evaluating projects by all the bells and whistles but little content projects. This site will help you build wonderful rubrics quickly!

More Cool Tools!

TransferBigFiles
"Just select the files you want to send (up to 1 gigabyte per file) and TransferBigFiles will email the recipient with a link to the download page, and it's FREE!"

Jing
Try out this new program that allows you to do customized screen shots, videos, etc., automatically posts them on the web, and then gives you a URL that you can share with others. It's free now but may not always be.