Etherpad is a real time collaborative online word processor ideal for the primary classroom. When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone’s screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate on text documents, useful for meeting notes, drafting sessions, education, team programming, and more.

Get it here

Powerful, Drag & Drop Website Editor

Add pictures, videos, music and audio, maps, and photo galleries. Sell products, accept online bookings, create a contact form, or arrange your pages in multiple columns. Drag on slideshows, files, forums, games, RSS feeds, or any other HTML embed code — all by simply dragging and dropping.

This is a really easy to use website – safe for pupils to use, enabling them to make professional looking websites in minutes

This was originally posted by a variety of people in Twitter – it comprises of many photographs categorised by people, decade, places, events and culture – it has its own search facility making it very easy to track down images to support any project you are running in the classroom – as a teacher i would find this a really useful resource to support any work i was doing in the area of visual literacy -

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

Came across this useful looking site called STIXY - this is in effect a blank bulletin board – you can add images, to do lists, documents and notes -

Stixies can be shared with invited guests (by email) thus making them a collaborative tool – This could have a variety of classroom applications ranging from collaborative research to records of achievement -

You might be interested  to know that last year the National College for School Leadership and the National Education Trust hosted a day for 100+ primary pupils to work on a pupil learners charter. The day proved to be excellent and the charter can be found by following the link below – take a look – why not think about developing a learners charter at your own school – i would be very interested to hear from anyone who wants to do this.

pupil charter

This is a wonderful website that has loads of “heritage” pictures and associated activities. Their strapline states,

“Explore our inspirational images and information to discover more about England’s heritage. 
Teachers and pupils can pick and mix from our images and resources to create their own learning experience.”

The site has the following categories;

  http://www.heritageexplorer.org.uk/nmrlearningzone/default.aspx

If you are interested in setting up a Web 2.0 environment for your class, but are worried about online security and safety, it might be worth exploring Edmodo. Their website says,

“Edmodo is a private micro-blogging platform built for use by teachers and students for use in the classroom. The problem with traditional web 2.0 tools in a k-12 classroom environment is concerns over privacy of the students. Edmodo has been built with the privacy of students in mind. Edmodo provides a way for teachers and students to share notes, links, and files. Teachers also have the ability to send, alerts, events, and assignments to students.”

see Edmodo here – http://www.edmodo.com/blog/about/

Screencast-O-Matic is the free and easy way to create a video recording of your screen (aka screencast) and upload it for free hosting all from your browser with no install!

take a look at – http://screencast-o-matic.com/

Why not get pupils to make screencasts as tutorials for other pupils – once uploaded to the internet they can be used anytime anywhere by anyone!

I recently came across this really good site for animation – well worth taking a look at this as it makes the creation of animations a simple task for pupils.

“GoAnimate.com is an entertainment website that enables the simple creation of unique computer animated stories, satires and sentiments that can be shared with the entire online community. The site offers simple to more advanced innovative features that provide users with a multitude of possibilities for customizing their animations. We will constantly be enhancing and adding features, popular licenses and animations from well known comedians, animators and writers.
Historically, the creation of animation required specific skills, limiting those who can express their creativity. We designed the Go!Animate application to allow users to create animations without drawing talent or a technical understanding of advanced software such as Flash. The site provides users with a library of interesting characters, backgrounds, props, sound effects and music for use in creating their own unique animations. Creators can customize their animations with a number of tools and features that allow them to create truly unique works of expression. “

taken from their website – http://goanimate.com/go/

This is by Biraja Swain from Bangalore India