When designed well, technology can making life easier. Too bad most technology has the opposite effect. Here are a few notable tools that educators say have helped them in some way. Perhaps you will find one useful too.

Education Genius 

Like a Wikipedia of annotations, any student or educator can publicly annotate classic literature or academic journals.

Wdgts

A collection of utilities you can use without unlocking your iOS device, such as a calculator, calendar, currency converter, etc.

Mover 

Transfer files easily between backup services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or even FTP and WebDav.

Pop Up Archive 

Audio recordings stored here are automatically tagged and transcribed, making them easy to search later.

Want more? Check out these collections .

Utilities 

This one is curated by ICT coordinator Tessa de Wit.

Productivity Programs/Apps 

This one is curated by head of computer science Mike Washburn.

Coding Websites

Code Racer that is featured in TED article has become Treehouse which brings the number of websites to 9.

1- Code Academy

This by far the most popular of them all. Code Academy provides lessons on writing simple commands in JavaScript, HTML and CSS, Python and Ruby.

2- Girl Develop It

One of many programs geared toward females who want to code, Girl Develop It  is an international nonprofit that provides mentorship and instruction.

3- Udacity Computer Science Course ( not free)

Stanford University’s Udacity is one of many sites that make college courses—including Introduction to Computer Science—available online for free.

4- Teamtreehouse

Learn from over 1000 videos created by expert teachers on web design, coding, business, and much more. This library is continually refreshed with the latest on web technology so you'll never fall behind.

5-The Computer Club House

The Computer Clubhouse, which Resnick co-founded, works to “help young people from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies,” as he describes.
6- Coder Dojo

Through CoderDojo’s volunteer-led sessions, young people can learn to code, go on tours of tech companies and hear guest speakers.
7- Code School

Code School offers online courses in a wide range of programming languages, design and web tools.
7- Girls Who Code

Girls Who Code, geared specifically toward 13- to 17-year-old girls, pairs instruction and mentorship to “educate, inspire and equip” students to pursue their engineering and tech dreams.
8- Black Girls Code

Through workshops for young girls of color, Black Girls Code aims to help address the “dearth of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions,”

Top Aps

http://www.teachthought.com/apps-2/30-best-educational-apps-ipad-2014/

Plickers

Rewordify

Rewordify

Rewordify is a great web tool that you can use with your students and kids to help them read difficult passages. Rewordify simplifies complex passages and render them reader-friendly. Students can paste in difficult sentences, paragraphs, or whole chapters and then click on "Rewordify text". They will then get a paraphrased version of their text with a simpler and easier vocabulary.The reworded words are highlighted which means that students can click on them to hear and learn the origin harder words. Rewordify also allows you to obtain a simplified version of any web page. Just paste in the URL of the webpage you want to read in the yellow box and hit 'Rewordify'. Watch the video below to learn more about how Rewordify works.

information taken from:  http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/11/excellent-tool-to-enhance-students.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yURGZ960wWc

Story Jumper

Create your own story!

NearPod

Nearpod – iPad teachers know that Nearpod is synonymous with engaging, interactive presentations. In fact, some would say they wrote the book on it. However, it is no longer just for the iPad because you can use it on Android, Nooks, Chromebooks and Macs or PCs via the web. Top features include the ability to add quiz tools, videos, photo slideshows, drawing tools, a PDF viewer and even a live Twitter stream.

CodeAcademy

Visit CodeAcademy here! To start coding!

Other sites:
Tynker
Scratch
Code HS
Alice
Kandu
Dash
Touch Develop
Code.org
Editey
Snap
iPad Coding Aps

EverySlide

Visit Everyslide here!  Turn your presentation into a conversation!

Search Cube

search-cube is a visual search engine that presents web search results in a unique, three-dimensional cube interface. It shows previews of up to ninety-six websites, videos and images.

TodaysMeet

TodaysMeet: Talk. Listen.

TodaysMeet helps you embrace the backchannel and connect with your audience in realtime.

Encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.

Claymation Avatar

Clay Yourself is a site that lets users create an claymation style avatar. The site was created by Hotels.com to allow their customers to create a commercial as part of a contest and promotion that they were running. However, the site is still running and is a great and simple way to create an avatar that can be placed on a Facebook page and can also be downloaded and used on a classroom blog or website.

Create A Facebook School Page In 10 Minutes

Create A Facebook School Page In 10 Minutes

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is a hosted web app designed to take presentations to the next level with graphical prowess and multimedia integration. It is a great transition for anyone familiar with PowerPoint, but who is tired of dull presentations in over used templates. Although the content of your presentation is of course the most important part, small visual improvements can have a big effect on audience engagement and participation. Some of the more impressive features of SlideRocket are enhanced text effects, slick slide transitions, media integration (audio, video, animation) and graphic effects. You can see in the below example just how smooth and beautiful slide transitions are and how much more interactive it looks than a standard PowerPoint. There are a number of real benefits in using a web based Presentation tool such as SlideRocket. Your presentations are always hosted online so there is no need to backup or save files to disk. Sharing can be done directly through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter or by mailing a direct link to your slides. A final benefit and in our mind the most exciting feature of SlideRocket is it’s ability to measure your slides effectiveness. You can retrieve statistics on who has watched your presentations and see comments left by your audience online. www.sliderocket.com

visual.ly

Infographics are popping up everywhere. They are a great way to get a message across by visualizing data rather than bombarding a reader with vast amounts of text. The same principles apply to presenting and this makes Infographics a fantastic way to convey your data without putting the room to sleep. Visual.ly is a site dedicated to Infographics and data visualizations. They host a huge amount of quality Infographics on a wide variety of topics. You can choose to embed or re-use pre-made graphics in your own presentations or in the not too distant future the site will be offering  tools to help you create your own.


Embed an Infographic into your blog or presentation.

http://visual.ly/

Screenr

Screenr

Alltop

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. You may wonder how Alltop is different from a search engine. A search engine is good to answer a question like, “How many people live in China?” However, it has a much harder time answering the question, “What’s happening in China?” That’s the kind of question that they answer.

They do this by collecting the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic. They group these collections — “aggregations” — into individual web pages. Then they display the five most recent headlines of the information sources as well as their first paragraph. Our topics run from adoption to zoologywith photography, food, science, religion, celebrities, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, Macintosh, and hundreds of other subjects along the way.

You can think of Alltop as the “online magazine rack” of the web. They have subscribed to thousands of sources to provide “aggregation without aggravation.” To be clear, Alltop pages are starting points—they are not destinations per se. Ultimately, their goal is to enhance your online reading by displaying stories from sources that you’re already visiting plus helping you discover sources that you didn’t know existed.

Joongel

Joongel is a simple web application for searching and navigating through the most popular sources on the Internet in different categories. Their search method is based on the geographic location of the user and traffic ranking analysis from Google, Hitwise, Compete, Comscore,Nielsen//Netratings, Quantcast and more.

FindHow

FindHow, the How-To search engine, focuses on indexing only high-quality How-To's, typically from well-known, recognized brand names or individuals. Many of these sources (often companies, government entities, or educational institutions) have other motives for providing information besides pure profits, and most have trusted, off-line brand name reputations to protect - which encourages them to focus on providing trustworthy and high-quality information.