Faculty Development Resource Guide

Track and manage Accessibility for Google Files. It makes suggestions for improvement on the areas in which your document, slide, or sheet doesn't meet accessibility standards

Animaker Edify is a service that is similar to PowToon in that students can create animated videos by dragging and dropping characters onto slides where they then add movements and speech to the characters. What's notable about Animaker Edify is that even the free plan gives teachers the ability to create and manage their students' accounts. Animaker Edify also gives teachers a dashboard from which they can give assignments to students and view their students' work. Source: Tech for Teachers / R.Byrne

a nice tool for creating animated videos and images. To create a video on Animatron you start by dragging and dropping characters on a background scene and then choosing how long each character will be displayed in a scene. You can also set the length of time for each character in a scene to be in motion. By using Animatron's timeline editor you can make objects appear and disappear from a scene. The best feature of Animatron is that you can record audio directly over the animation. The built-in recording tools lets you see the scene while you're recording so that you can precisely synchronize each scene with its audio track.

a free tool for creating Common Craft-style explanatory videos. MySimpleshow requires you to write a script for your video before you can start adding illustrations and sounds to it. In MySimpleshow you will find a wide variety of script templates that will help you plan your video. The script is written in chapters that become the outline for your video. After you have written your script MySimpleshow will take your chapters and give you suggested images and animations to use. The suggestions are based on the keywords in your script. You also have the option to upload your own visuals to use in your video. Adding narration to your video is the last step in the MySimpleshow editor. There is an automated text-to-speech narration that will read your script as narration for your video. Completed videos can be downloaded and or directly uploaded to YouTube from MySimpleshow.

PowToon is one of the originals and one of the best-known tools for producing animated videos without the need to draw your scenes by hand. In PowToon students create animated videos on a scene-by-scene basis through a series of slides. Students can choose background scenes, characters, and scene objects from a huge media gallery. After configuring the scenes of their stories, students can record voiceovers or play music in the background. Source: Tech for Teachers/R. Byrne

Toontastic 3D a free app for use on Android and iOS devices. It also possible to use it on Chromebooks that support the use of Android apps. Check this list to see if your Chromebook supports the use of Android apps. On Toontastic 3D students can pick from a variety of story setting templates or they can create their own. Once they have established a background setting students then select cartoon characters to use in their stories. Students can choose from a wide array of customizable cartoon characters or they can create their own from scratch. Once characters are placed into the story scenes students can begin recording themselves talking while moving the characters around in each scene. Students can swap characters between scenes, change the appearance of characters between scenes, and move characters from one scene to the next. Source: Tech for Teachers/ R. Byrne

Etherpad is an open source, web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants' edits in real-time, with the ability to display each author's text in their own color. Wikipedia

Fidus Writer is an online collaborative editor especially made for academics who need to use citations and/or formulas. The editor focuses on the content rather than the layout, so that with the same text, you can later on publish it in multiple ways: On a website, as a printed book, or as an ebook.

Slack is a cloud-based set of proprietary team collaboration tools and services, founded by Stewart Butterfield

At Wakelet, we're working to change the way people find, organize and share information.

Brainstorming generator. Mapping out words.

Online diagramming tool for collaborating on wireframes, flowcharts, and more

is a handy drawing tool from Google

is a collaborative mind-mapping service that is very easy to use. To create a Coggle mind map just sign-in with your Google account and click the "+" icon to start your mind map.

Wikipedia lists concept and mind mapping software by price range -- free and fee based.

Both of these free Google tools can be used to create mind maps and flowcharts. Drawings has more features than Jamboard.

is a free mind mapping tool that can be used online, with Google Drive, and on your desktop

offers templates for creating flowcharts and know, want, learn charts. Unfortunately, you can only make three Padlet walls before you have to either delete one to make a new one or upgrade to a paid plan.

The Post-it mobile apps for Android and iOS let you take a picture of physical sticky notes and then sort them on a digital canvas.

is an online mind map creation service. Spider Scribe can be used individually or be used collaboratively.

is a service that lets you write notes and outlines that
can then be turned into mind maps and flowcharts with just one click

Canva is a free graphic-design tool website, founded in 2012. It uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals.

Subscribscription required.

Brainstorming generator. Mapping out words.

(Tufts U.)

Wikipedia lists concept and mind mapping software by price range -- free and fee based.

Think Visually. Work Collaboratively. Online. Anytime.
Free sign up required.
Brainstorm, develop ideas and express your thinking with visual mapping techniques such as webs, bubble diagrams, concept maps and idea maps.

There are plenty of iPad apps and Android apps for making whiteboard videos. Show Me is a good representative of those apps. On a Chromebook, MacBook, or Windows computer use a screencasting tool like Screencastify in the Chrome web browser to record while drawing in Google Drawings.

A free tool for making a hosting side-by-side comparisons of images.

URL Shortener

URL Shortener

URL Shortener

Kami is the leading PDF & document annotation app for schools. Basic is free.

Interact with your audience using real-time voting.

Live audience interaction.

Can integrate within Google Slides

Create video lessons.

Creating astonishing presentations live and on the web.
Free verson and Student/Teacher license version w/more features $60

Zipcast is a new service from Slideshare for conducting online presentations. Using Zipcast you can share your slides, talk to your audience, respond to your audience, and have your audience interact with each other in realtime on one page.

Make dynamic presentations for a real-time world.

Create engaging infographics and reports in minutes
Basic is free, but upgrades cost.

A free tool for adding interactive annotations to your images. Using Pixorize is a fairly straight-forward process.

Easy Notecards is an online studying tool that uses interactive notecards to makes it quick and easy to learn new material. It was designed to benefit both students and teachers.

Level up engagement in your classroom with student-led game modes.

Make practice quizzes from you notes.

Try Link. Also PDF found under handouts on guide.
Popular Quiz Game Tools

Free self-paced quizzes to review, assess, and engage—in class and at home.
Images and text can be added along with up to 4 response options.

Improve your grades by studying with flashcards, games and more.

Enjoy scanning anytime.
CamScanner is a mobile app that allows iOS and Android devices to be used as image scanners.

Professional scheduling made easy

If you're the person that everyone in your school emails for help with their tech problems, you need to have a good screencasting tool at the ready. Loom is a fantastic tool for making quick screencast videos to answer requests for tech help. You can launch Loom from the Chrome browser or directly from your email inbox. Click here to learn how to create a screencast right from your email inbox.

A free program allowing you to capture screen recordings on a Mac or Windows computer. Good for creating short instructional videos.

Music for projects.
Dig CC Mixter offers thousands of songs that are Creative Commons licensed. The site is divided into three main categories. Those categories are Instrumental Music for Film & Video, Free Music for Commercial Projects, and Music for Video Games. Within each category you can search according to genre, instrument, and style. When you click the download icon on a file you will be prompted to copy the attribution information that is required to include in your project.

a website that offers more than 20,000 sound effects and songs that you can download and re-use for free.

is a great service that will turn any typed text or highlighted page text into an automated voice recording. Voicepods will read text aloud in your choice of voices and in your choice of ten languages.

Whether it is for a podcast, a video, a slide presentation, or some other multimedia project, there will be times when your students need to download sound effects. SoundBible is a good place for students to find all kinds of free sound effects recordings. Students can download files as MP3 or WAV files. And best of all, students don't need to register on the site in order to download the files. But do remember to cite the source of the sound effects as most are labeled with a Creative Commons license.

Flipgrid is the leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families .

SafeShare.tv is the Safest Way
to Watch and Share YouTube and Vimeo videos.

Create engaging infographics and reports in minutes
Basic is free, but upgrades cost.

From Technology for Teachers

Hosts video.

Video content hosting

Teambox is a free service that allows you to create and manage a collaborative workspace for team projects. Within your workspace you can create a calendar of due dates, chat with team members, send emails, and most importantly post and edit files.

Trello is a free service designed to help individuals and groups manage tasks. Trello's user interface features a basic virtual corkboard-like space to which you and your collaborators can pin task cards.

Todoist and its sister service Wedoist are easy-to-use task management services for individuals and groups

Enter the Group is a new free service offering collaborative project management for groups. Enter the Group features a calendar, messaging, and file sharing for your group members.

A database of simple, easy to follow tutorials covering all aspects of popular computing.

By Russell Stannard, a teaching fellow at Warrick University. Loads of great training videos.

Richard Byrne, a high school social studies teacher, blogs about all types of free technology tools available to teachers -- mostly free stuff. Excellent! Definitelyworth a look.

A couple of new tutorial videos every week. My YouTube channel has more than 400 video tutorials on everything from G Suite for Education apps to video creation tools to fun and free formative assessment tools

Created by Richard Byrne

BigMarker provides fully-featured web conferencing solution for free to everyone. Here you can host web conferences with friends, family or colleagues, teach online training seminars to students, practice presentation skills, or broadcast events in real time – all free and unlimited! There are no trial period and no monthly fee

Tool to assist with online collaboration. Free. Upgrades for a fee.

A free service offered by Log Me In. Join.me allows Mac and Windows users to quickly share their screens with each other and work together.

is a free service that allows anyone to create a video chat over a whiteboard, PDF, image, or map. To use Draw Chat you just have to visit the site and click "Start New Whiteboard." Once your whiteboard launches you will have the option to enable access to your webcam and microphone. You can have people join your whiteboard video conference by sending them the link assigned to your whiteboard.Draw Chat allows you to draw or type on a shared whiteboard. Additionally, you can upload a PDF or an image to annotate on the whiteboard. A fourth option for drawing on Draw Chat is to import the URL for a Google Map and draw on that map.

is an online whiteboard tool that I have been recommending for the last half-dozen years. At its basic level Realtime Board provides a blank canvas on which you can type, draw, and post pictures. You can connect elements on your boards through a simple linking tool. Realtime Board includes an activity tracking feature. This feature lets you see the changes that have been made to a shared Realtime Board whiteboard.

is an online whiteboard and video conferencing tool designed with math students in mind. The platform works like many similar services as it provides you with a whiteboard on which you can draw, type, and import images to annotate. Scratchwork is a little different than other services because it includes a Latex editor for writing equations. Scratchwork also offers an option to draw on a tablet and import those drawings. The collaboration aspect of Scratchwork comes into the picture when you activate the video conferencing component built into Scratchwork. Scratchwork's free plan has a limit of four boards and three collaborators.

There are plenty of iPad apps and Android apps for making whiteboard videos. Show Me is a good representative of those apps. On a Chromebook, MacBook, or Windows computer use a screencasting tool like Screencastify in the Chrome web browser to record while drawing in Google Drawings.

is a free Microsoft service that was developed for employers to use to interview potential employees. It was specifically designed with coders and programmers in mind as there is a code editor component that lets candidates display their skills in realtime. Yesterday, Microsoft added a whiteboard to Skype Interviews. The whiteboard in Skype Interviews allows you to draw on and share a virtual whiteboard while in your call. You can also type on the whiteboard. A few pre-made shapes are also available to add to your whiteboard to create a flowchart.

is a free online collaborative whiteboard tool hosted by CK12. On Stoodle you can create a whiteboard space and invite others to use it with you. Registration is not required in order to use Stoodle. Stoodle has voice and text chat options, but it does not have a video chat option. In the video embedded below I demonstrate the features of Stoodle.

is a free service for hosting online meetings. WebRoom doesn't require you to download any software and you don't need to register in order to use it. WebRoom lets you use your webcam if you want people to see your face during the meeting. A whiteboard space is provided. You can draw on the whiteboard or upload a file to share and discuss on the whiteboard. A text chat space is provided in each WebRoom meeting. It is possible to share your screen with other meeting participants. However, to share your screen you will need to install the WebRoom Chrome extension.

BigMarker provides fully-featured web conferencing solution for free to everyone. Here you can host web conferences with friends, family or colleagues, teach online training seminars to students, practice presentation skills, or broadcast events in real time – all free and unlimited! There are no trial period and no monthly fee

Tool to assist with online collaboration. Free. Upgrades for a fee.

A free service offered by Log Me In. Join.me allows Mac and Windows users to quickly share their screens with each other and work together.