I’m not big on kittens or mittens, or many of the things on the list from the song. So instead, here are a few of *my* favourite things. These are tools and sites that I find myself referring to time and time again on training days as well as tools I use all the time in my day to day job.
Delicious / Diigo
Both sites provide one of the best ways of storing, and sharing, my online bookmarks. As soon as a list of useful websites is printed, you can guarantee it will be out of date as I find a new site. I just point anyone on one of my courses to my Delicious list. Tags allows me to create different reading lists such as IWB, PGCE, Web2.0 etc. Rumours abound that Delicious may be on its way out.. but Diigo does the same thing with added groups.
In fact what I do is have a Diigo toolbar in Firefox that bookmarks items to Diigo, then have it automatically copy the bookmark to Delicious. (Log into Diigo, look for tools, then “more tools”). This means I have two copies of my bookmarks, handy if a massive company buys one of the sites and decides to shut it down. Always a problem with Web 2.0 tools (see Etherpad.)
DropBox
A simple way of keeping files synchronised between several computers. Also online backup of important files. Starter amount of space 2.5Gig isn’t too shabby, but this can be increased by referring friends. For someone with a laptop for work, a home PC and other devices (iPad/iPhone) it means I always have access to some of my important training files and documents.
Google Documents
Online documents that you can share with other people. Easily work with others on a spreadsheet or presentation. Is a great way of getting students to collaborate on work.
I’ve used this to collaborate on presentations and documents with teachers all over the world. Some of the best collaborative presentations are the “Ideas to Inspire” ones, which were produced using Google docs.
I’ve also used a Google Spreadsheet with a public form to do data collection and surveys, with the results going straight into a spreadsheet which I can then analyse. Also good for collecting class data for science or maths investigations.
Etherpad
With an Etherpad it’s possible to have a class of students all on the same page – all updating the same document in real time. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but there are many ways you could use this kind of technology. Create a shared pad for notes, brainstorming, collaborative writing, questions etc. More ideas here.
The beauty is that there’s no need for a password or messing about with logins and sharing to user accounts- you can quickly set up a pad and use it. That’s also it’s weakness. For more permanent and secure documents, then Google Docs is the way to go.
Etherpad itself is sadly no more after being bought up and incorporated into Google Docs, but sites like iEtherpad and Primary Pad live on and keep the idea alive.
Wallwisher
Wallwisher is an online pinboard – a quick way to allow brainstorming and collection of ideas. Visitors click on the wall and add their own sticky notes. They can add images and videos too, or just text and links. You can choose to have a private or public wall, and can moderate all posts if you wish. As an alternative, try Stixy, which does pretty much the same thing.
WordPress
I am a massive fan of WordPress. I use a self-hosted WordPress install to run this blog, and a few other blogs such as Teaching Science. It”s a really simple way of getting your own website up and running. I’ve used other blogging platforms such as Blogger, but found that very frustrating at times.
The wordpress-hosted version is very good too, with a few more limitations on some of the things you can do with it. It does give you your very own website in a matter of minutes. If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at blogging, it’s one of the best places to start.
Classtools.net
I find I am always showing this site to teachers on training days. In particular the Countdown Timer is excellent for keeping track of time when students are carrying out task. The Random Name Picker has also been used many times, and if any of you have seen a Teachmeet then you’ll have seen this in action.
FlickrCC
I’m always on the lookout for good images to use in blogposts and presentations. I’m trying to be more aware of copyright and so will always use creative commons images where I can. Flickr CC is the main tool I use to trawl through the milions of photos on Flickr that are covered under a Creative Commons licence.
Twitter
I’ve found Twitter invaluable. It gives me educational experts on tap as well as a constant feed of good ideas and links. If you haven’t quite got the hang of Twitter yet, then this blog post might help.
There are a stack of other websites and tools I use, I’ll share some more another time. But the ones above are the most frequently visited (apart from Google Mail and Facebook!).
Photo credit: UK Love by Doug88888
