Ammar+ElMerhbi

= __My Favorite Online Tools ( Subject to change)__ =


 * ~ **Type** ||~ **Tool** ||~ **Description** ||
 * //__ **MIndmap** __// || Mindomo || an excellent online mind mapping software that supports critical thinking. It is highly customized for education. Educators can embed their own maps in any website or blog. Students can use it with ease due to its user-/student-friendly interface. Students and educators can share and organize researches in an “interrelated form”. Free for public/ 7 private free ||
 * || bubblus || A simple online mind map that can be embedded in any blog or website. Students can collaborate on the same mind map. Free. ||
 * || mind42 || A web browser plugin mind map let you collaborate on a mindmap with another user. Highly visual. You can embed photos and videos too. ||
 * || mindmeister || A great web-based mind mapping tool. Highly visual. Also, very user-friendly and students can colalborate on a certain task. One can embed videos, photos, links. ||
 * || freemind || An open source desktop mindmap. A great tool but not something used for online teachign and learning. ||
 * || Visual Understanding Environment || A free desktop mind map designed by Tufts University. Also, not mainly used for online teaching and learning. ||
 * __//** e-portfolio **//__ ||  ||   ||
 * || rcampus || A Free online eportfolio and collaborative learning community. Great to help students build their eportfolio, set goals, and reflect on their own academic progress. ||
 * || mahara || A server based open source eportoflio. Very flexible and enables multimedia upload, embed with rss. Can be integrated with Moodle in what is called Mahoodle. ||
 * **//__ Authoring Tools __//** ||  ||   ||
 * || Hotpotatoes || a free authoring software that produces highly effective interactive exercises and quizzes, especially for language learners. It has been and still is my favorite authoring tool. It is also SCORM compliant. ||
 * || Microsoft’s free Learning Content Development System || yet another great authoring tool that produces professional-looking courses online (SCORM compliant) or on CD’s. ||
 * || Courselab || A great interactive authoring tool that I used in Moodle for the " Blended Learning in a Digital Age" course. Very interactive based on reusable objects. Needs some time to learn its ins an outs. It has some bugs especially in the firefox web browser if you want to deliver your course online. ||
 * || udutu || An online authoring and simulating tool. Free. ||
 * || NVU || A free Web authoring tool that rivals commercial tools such as Dreamweaver. ||
 * || 4teachers tools || Online authoring tools ||
 * || Matchmaker Exercise Creator || A simple online match making tool. ||
 * **//__Vocabulary__//** ||  ||   ||
 * || Wordsift || A great online tool much like wordle. Check out my blog post on wordsift. ||
 * || lingro || An online dictionary. What's col about it is that you enter the url of any webpage that the lingro will convert into a one click dictionary. Click on any word and the meaning of any word will appear. ||
 * || lexipedia || A great online visual thesaurus. ||
 * || vocabgrabber || Enter any text into the text area and grab the vocabulary . ||
 * || visualthesaurus || The all famous online visual thesaurus ||
 * || wordle || A famous visual text analyzer. Insert any text and wordle will visually reveal size of the word proportionate to its frequency in the text. Click here to view 40 ways to use wordle in the classroom ||


 * Etherpad is a great web-based word processor. The great thing about it is that you can edit the same document in real-time and you don’t need to register. Just invite and share the unique url. This is great with regard to teaching and learning in real-time. Teachers, colleagues, and students can collaborate on the same word processor in real-time. Another great feature of etherpad is that you can export or import to and form MS word, PDF, and Open Document. (scriblink is another real-time WP sharing but not as flexible as etherpad).
 * Twitter doesn’t need an introduction and is the most well known microblogging platform in the world. A lot of learning projects were based on twitter. The implications for learning in twitter are endless, both for the professional and student. Jane Hart has a list of 10 twitter resources for classroom use on her blog if you wish to explore the learning implications of twitter.
 * Wikispaces is still my preferred tool when it comes to collaborate on projects. This wiki platform makes it possible for the teacher to engage students on a wide range of projects. Wikis in general tend to be chaotic so the teacher should be a constant regulator of the wiki project.
 * Diigo is a web-based social annotation software that I have included in the top 10 tools instead of delicious due to its learning implications. Diigo users can annotate any piece of information in any website and share their notes and comments. This has great implications for online critical reading skills.
 * Simplybox is a relatively new tool where a user simply boxes an info. on the web he wants to share and add to his account to share and annotate with other users.
 * Google Docs should not be excluded form this list. Google Docs makes it possible for users to create, share ( link or embed), and edit documents, presentations, and spreadsheets with great easy. Google Docs is highly efficient with regard to teaching and learning. Google Docs also makes it possible to conduct an online form. Great tool!
 * Pageflakes is an RSS reader very similar to netvibes and igoogle. Some call them the PLE as they are customized to the preference of the learner following website and blogs. What I like about pageflakes is its great user-friendly interface, customizable pages, and pagecasts that you can share with anyone. You can see an example of one user’s pagecast here.