Screencast Video

A screencast is a digital video recording that captures actions taking place on a computer desktop. Screencasts, which often contain voice-over narration, are useful for demonstrating how to use specific operating systems, software applications or website features. 

Screencast production requires some kind of video-capture software and a microphone. The software, which can be a desktop client or web-based service, captures and synchronizes the video and audio files and compresses the completed movie into a format that can be shared. 

Presentation technology

 Prezi is a good opportunity to create interesting and unusual presentations on line. These presentations helps to motivate pupils and make lessons bright. 

Timelines

Timeline allows students to create a graphical representation of an event or process by displaying items sequentially along a line. Timelines can be organized by time of day, date, or event, and the tool allows users to create a label with short or long descriptive text. Adding an image for each label makes a timeline more visually appealing.

Add, drag, and rearrange items as needed. Saving capability allows students to return to their work and make revisions, and they can share their final work via e-mail.

http://www.dipity.com/helenmatveeva/My-case-Web-2-0/

Mind Mapping in education

Using mind mapping is useful for developing critical thinking, creativity. It is a logic way of note-taking of students' ideas. Mind maps have a natural organizational structure that radiates from the centre. It is easy to use at lessons and can be done in groups.Mind mapping is ideal for brainstorming, project management, storyboarding presentations and others. It is the modern and interactive tool of education.

Word Clouds in education

Word cloud tools are part and parcel of teachers' digital tool kit.Their importance stems from the fact they are web based and can be access anywhere with an internet connection. There are a variety of reasons why you as a teacher and educator should use them with your students and here some of these reasons :

• You can use them to create  infographic-like visualisations to enhance students learning
• You can create out of them nice posters to use in the classroom
• You can use them to brainstorm a certain study  topic 
• They are also useful in teaching vocabulary
• They might be used as post-reading activity to test students understanding of the text
• Create a class word cloud that highlights class expectation
• Post students first names to create a class or group word cloud

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a user-defined taxonomy system for bookmark s. Bookmarks here are referred to as tags. Unlike storing bookmarks in a folder on your computer, tagged pages are stored on the Web and can be accessed from any computer. Web sites dedicated to social bookmarking, such as Flickr and del.icio.us, provide users with a place to store, categorize, annotate and share favorite Web pages and files.

Here are some examples of social bookmarking sites:

1. Digg.com

Digg is social bookmarking and social networking gone a little crazy due to the fact that anyone can submit a Digg (site), and then anyone can comment on those same Diggs. For me the most interesting feature of Digg has to actually be the comments on the sites and stories, since the Digg community is not shy about letting folks know how they feel about a particular Digg. Primarily focussed on geeky, technology-type items.

2. Reddit

Reddit is a social bookmarking Web site that works much like Furl and del.icio.us: you register a username and password, and then start submitting and sharing your bookmarks. Reddit is similar to del.icio.us in that users are encouraged to vote on the links and stories that they feel are deserving of being in the top dog spot: it’s kind of a popularity contest, so to speak.

3. StumbleUpon

The beauty of StumbleUpon, to my mind: you are able to take advantage of a vast network of dedicated Web searchers who are finding utterly brilliant sites and sharing them with you. I do have to warn you, though – StumbleUpon is an incredibly addicting way to search the Web. I found myself up till 1:30 AM one weekend, blearily clicking the Stumble! Button over and over again, because the quality of the sites are just so amazing; you just keep on coming across stuff that instantly merits a bookmark of your own.

4. Delicious

Here's how you might use del.icio.us: Once you've registered, you can install buttons to yourtoolbar . If you visit a Web page that you want to save, you click a "tag" button. A window pops up with the URL and page name and optional fields for you to add notes and tags. Tags are single-word descriptors -- this is how social bookmark systems categorize content so that you and other users can find it.

5. Diigo

Diigo is one of my newest favorite Web tools. Not only can you use Diigo to save your favorite Web bookmarks, yalso ou can use Diigo to put sticky notes on websites, highlight stuff you like, comment, and more.

the teaching opportunities of blogging

Students can write blogs that fit any genre from diary entries to reading journals, from reflective comments to literary analysis, and more. Any genre that a student can write with pen on a piece of paper can also be written online as a blog entry.

Review your district's appropriate use policies to determine the requirements for a blogging site that students can use. Remember that anyone can post to most of the public blogging sites. Some material on them will be inappropriate for your classes. Some schools filter blogging sites, so you may need to speak with your technology coordinator ahead of time to get approval.