Smiles Ahead: Planning for Summer

As the year winds down, I wanted to remind everyone of a few great tech resources that might be helpful over the summer.  All of these listed could be used in classrooms with students, but they are also applications that I use for my own professional development (and personal uses).  Enjoy!

• Feedly is an online, free application for reading and saving rolling content from the web.  This article describes how the Feedly app and website can be used to gather, save, and share articles from your favorite blogs.  I use this application for writing and education resources I like to follow, in addition to cooking, poetry and other interest blogs.
• Diigo, another free, online application with an app and website, is the tool I use when researching online.  This article gives step-by-step instructions for highlighting and saving information in your Diigo account.  I usually save articles in Feedly and then highlight specific information and add comments and tags for my Diigo account.
• Canva is also free and available online.  It is an easy-t0-use tool for creating web graphics, presentations and posters that are polished and professional.  Here is an article describing many of the functions of the program.  I use this application to create graphics for my website and to make embarrassing media for my friends on their birthdays (see examples below).

Lastly, when you are setting up your Feedly account, here are some sites to get you started:

Education Sites

• NPR Education
• Film English
• Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
• Edutopia
• Mindshift
• New York Times Education
• The Learning Network: New York Times
• TED Education
• TEDTalks
• Blogging about the 2.0 Connected Classroom

Writing/Poetry/Literature Sites

• McSweeney’s (This publication has a wealth of funny, satirical stuff- not all is intended for students, but I believe any English teacher will love it)
• Poem of the Day (from Poetry Foundation)
• Writing Forward