TOP 10 TOOLS 2008
Sue Hellman

I am a teacher in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada with 33 years of experience. I have taught everything from regular classes to co-op to learning assistance in both secondary and adult education settings. Currently I am at a small, alternative education site offering individualized courses to at-risk high school students who have been unsuccessful in mainstream schools or who have made themselves unwelcome there. In my area I can have up to 17 or 20 students working on different units in up to 8 different subjects in math and science -- all at the same time.  Hence my need for engaging, easy to use tools that add richness, fun, and fresh approaches to what we do.  

Sue's Top 10 Tools as at 30 March 2008

1. Teacher’s Domain -- a library of learning resources that provides a collection of everything from lesson plans and essays to video clips and interactives -- all collected under one easily accessible umbrella. When you sign up, you get your own 'filing cabinet' with as many folders as you want. You can collect TD resources in your folders as well as add links to any others you find online & they're all stored in one place. I can give students access to some or all of the folders (eg. to view videos while they are doing assignments) and they can assemble their own resource collections as well.

2. Freepath  -- a presentation tool that allows me to create an instructional path that includes any type of media material I want -- powerpoint, video and audio, worksheets, weblinks, etc. What I get is a sequence of thumbnails on one screen and the full view on another. (In about a month both screens will be viewable in solo mode.) Instead of the old overheads and video machine, I can now use my laptop and a projector and organize everything I need for a lesson in the order I want to present it all in one file ready to go. I also can build individual instructional units for my kids, and they can follow my path by clicking on the thumbnails. We have a serious bandwidth problem at our school so if I can download videos, etc. at home and load them into Freepath for the kids to view they don’t have to wait for slow loads to get to the material online.
3. Vuvox -- a slide show program. The collage feature (our school is in the beta test group for this) allows students to do projects by building a sequence of connected and 'collaged' images with embedded hot spots that incorporate everything from text to audio to video.
4. ToonDoo  -- a tool for making cartoons in 1, 2 or 3 frames. A teaching partner uses this in social studies to get students thinking analytically about the key elements that determined the outcome of a particular historical event. It gets them away from 'research and copy' because they have to have to crystallize the content in 3 images and a few words.
5. Stinks and Bangs  -- I only use the balancing equations tool of this chemistry site. It makes a difficult task very easy to teach. I have the students first learn to identify, list and count the elements on each side of the equation, and then they go back and figure out how to balance. This one is stored in Teacher's Domain so I can get to it quickly.
6. MWSnap 3 -- a screenshot program that is easy to use and free.
7. Powerpoint Jeopardy @ Educational Resources for Teachers  -- a template for students or teachers to build great vocabulary study resources in game form. When the students click through the finished game, it works just like the real thing. We have revised it so there are 3 levels of questions -- those requiring 1, 2, & 3 clues. Students have to incorporate hints, pictures, and different backgrounds. It's also a great way for them to learn different powerpoint features.
8. Google Page Creator -- I, with very little computer skill and no knowledge of HTML, I was able to make a department website !!! In future, I will have students as part of their Earth Science course, make webpages of their own on various topics, and we will link these in as they're done.
9. GCalc -- an on line graphing calculator tool that lets students input equations and get the graph back. I have Math 10 and 11 students keep it on their desktops when they do their graphing units. This way I don't have to worry about expensive graphing calculators being stolen. It can be hosted on a website as well.
10. efofex equation and draw --  Worth its weight in gold -- it's an easy to use math writing program for algebra and geometry that makes the task of doing worksheets, tests and instructional material so much easier than using MathType. I finally went from doing all my math stuff by hand to using a computer for that task after I found this program.