My favourite, free, non-Google, educational web tools for 2010

Here are the web tools (other than Google tools) that I've used most, and, I feel, used most effectively, in 2010.

Storybird - www.storybird.com

So simple. but so effective. Storybird allows children to create picture books by combining a choice of wonderful artwork from professional artists with their own text. Its strength is its simplicity; the editing tools are unfussy, and the final stories look very authentic.

All stories are moderated by real people before appearing in the public directory, and will be rejected for any hint of violence or unkindness between characters. All of the usual options you'd expect for embedding stories into your website, blog or learning platform are there too. Storybird is free to use. (It appears that at some point in the future, you will be able to pay for printed versions of your storybooks).

Here's an example story from my son!

The family of monsters on Storybird

Prezi - www.prezi.com

Prezi is an innovative presentation tool and the ideal antidote to "death by Powerpoint". You lay out text, images, shapes and video clips onto a huge canvas, then create a path of marker points for the presentation to follow as it swoops and zooms between them.

Prezi very much suits my mode of thinking and planning; I love the fact I can lay out the key points of a topic or discussion onto a Prezi canvas, then play endlessly with the structure and flow of the presentation until I'm happy with it. Anyone who loves using mindmaps for planning will slot neatly into using Prezi for turning their thinking into a presentation.

A basic Prezi account is free to use. Paid accounts give you access to a desktop application for creating your presentation offline. This is particularly handy if your presentation contains lots of video files, which would take a long time to upload to the web version.

Here's a fabulous example presentation from a teacher called Graeme McCafferty, on the use of video games in education:

Games Based Learning in the Primary Classroom 2010 on Prezi

Edmodo - www.edmodo.com

Edmodo is a tool for creating simple social networks for classes. It's very quick to setup, and includes many of the tools you might find in a learning platform, free of cost, and free of fuss. Go and try it out.

The Random Student Selector - from www.barryfunenglish.com

I use this so often. All it does is randomly select a student from a list. It's the digital equivalent of the "names on lolly sticks" idea from The Classroom Experiment. I use it to select students or groups to give answers or opinions or class discussions and to assign topics to groups. The recent addition of a "Remove Names once selected" tickbox was most welcome too.

RandomStudent from Richard Anderson on Vimeo

DropBox - www.dropbox.com

I'm not sure what I would do without DropBox. For those who aren't familiar with the concept, DropBox creates a folder onto any computer (Windows, Mac) that you've installed it onto, then automagically syncs any files that are dropped into that folder between the computers. So, let's say that you want to move a copy of a presentation you're working on from your home PC to your work PC. Just drop the presentation into that folder, and it will download automatically onto your work PC the next time you log in.

There's a web client too, so you can download any file from the internet (i.e. from a cybercafe, or a friend's computer) without installing the software. It even stores backups of changes to files from the last seven days, so if you've accidentally deleted or modified a file, and want to go back to the old version, then you can do that.

Here's a quick intro to DropBox:

Want more? DropBox support is present in all sorts of iOS (iPhone / iPod Touch, iPad) apps - for note-taking, image-sharing and so on. For recent work in a Special School class, I simply set up a DropBox account with a separate folder inside it for each student. The class teacher could drop notes, files, MP3s or videos inside a student's folder, and the students could then browse into their folder to view it, before using the DropBox app, or a note-taking application like Nebulous Notes to upload an image, video or text-file in response.

• A list of iOS apps with DropBox compatibility

By the way, the latest version of DropBox includes the ability to selectively sync folders, so not everything in your DropBox folder syncs to all of your computers. Very handy.

Basically, DropBox is everything that Apple's iDisk service should be, but isn't. DropBox is free for 2GB of storage, with the option of buying more if you require.

Update: Check out DropItToMe for an easy way to allow other people to upload to your DropBox without you giving them any direct access to the contents of your DropBox.

Compfight - www.compfight.com

Compfight is a tool for searching Flickr. It presents search results as a grid of thumbnails. It's key feature from an educational point of view, is the option to limit the search to only Creative Commons images, so students can respect the copyright status of the images they use.

Honourable mentions

• VoiceThread - www.voicethread.com. VoiceThread is an amazing tool for collaborative commenting by students on image, videos or documents. Students can use a mic, webcam, or sketching tools to share their thoughts. I'm sure I'd use VoiceThread lots with groups. Unfortunately, it simply does not work within the broadband infrastructure of my Local Authority, despite lots of liaising to try and resolve the problems (It's a known bug with the firewall software, I'm told, and also limits the use of Glogster).
• Lino.it - http://en.linoit.com/ - Sharing post-it notes. Very useful for quick sharing of opinions onto a single canvas. Another similar option is Wallwisher.

Update on Dec 22, 2010 by Richard Anderson

Another link for DropBox - The Ultimate DropBox toolkit and Guide - courtesy of @web20classroom.