New Tools

Last week I had the opportunity to visit Philadelphia and attend the Educause 2011 conference. Educause is perhaps the biggest conference for higher education and technology, both in terms of quantity of presentations and also quality. While there, I attended an excellent half-day session on Instructional Design presented by Ed Bowen. Here are some new tools that came up during that session:

Glogster – This is a tool for making interactive posters. Think collage meets Web2.0. I think this could be very interesting for elementary school teachers to use with their students.

PassTheNotes.com–  “PassTheNotes.com is a SAAS (software as a service) for educators, students, and developers to create, manage, distribute, and monitor interactive themes and content.  We are passionate about revolutionizing education through our platform and realize there’s lots of work to be done.  We’ve created the foundation and now we’re opening it up for the world to start working together to make it great.”

Splashtop –  “Travel light and have full access to the computing power of your main PC or Mac. Access your files and multimedia content on a remote computer with exceptional audio, video, and real-time interactivity all from a Mac.
FEATURES:
• Connect from anywhere via local network or across the Internet
• Access important files or photos on another computer without worrying about syncing, converting, or compatibility issues
• Use MS Office, Silverlight, and other Windows software without having to install it on a Mac
• Play HD movies and music from your central media libraries without the hassle of transferring files
• Run graphic-intensive PC games on a powerful machine and play them from a portable Mac
• Save energy with Wake-on-LAN”


Wall wisher – “Wall Wisher is a web tool that allows you to have an interactive cork board. Imagine the ability to post notes with reminders about class trips, even the PDF file for the permission slip, as well as photos and other great items for your peers and students. Wallwisher is simple to use and can be shared or kept private. It is an easy way to share a workspace either with students or colleagues.”

Poll Everywhere –    “Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere. It can help you to raise money by letting people pledge via text messaging. And because it works internationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.”