Media and Learning 2013

PrimaryPad is a web-based word processor that allows pupils and teachers to work together in real-time. It was conceived by a teacher and is specifically designed for schools.
Pads are collaborative. This means that more people can work on them at a time (indeed that’s the point of it) in order to get ideas, collaborate on a common task, share and quickly posting pieces of information when working in a group or collaborative environment.
PrimaryPad integrates other tools giving the possibility to write sticky notes, to draw, to chat with collaborators, to make templates, to upload and insert images and text from other documents, to use a time slider to go back in time in the edition of the pad to see what was there in a previous version, etc.
The free version of this tool allows to create an unlimited number of pads that last 30 days before being deleted and can be edited by up to 50 people.
The website also contains a library of ideas for teachers of any subject.

Prezi U is a rich library of educational Prezi presentations and videos on different topics for students from elementary school to university. It can be browsed by subject or school.
The community built around it communicates through articles, blogs, forums and receive news by means of an RSS feed.

Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that combines the characteristics of whiteboards and of slides. It provides a non-linear dynamic way to give information. Presentations can be viewed at different zooms in order to analyse different levels of detail: zoom out to see the big picture and zoom in to see details — a bit like web-based maps that have changed how we navigate through map books. The zoomable canvas provide a way to spatially explore ideas and the connections between them leading the audience to an easier and better comprehension of the relationships between ideas and concepts.
It is possible to share presentations online and on mobile devices and to work on the same canvas in collaboration with other people.
The website hosts a rich manual and an interesting page about the known issues so that users can read about all the characteristics and possibilities of this software.

Celly is a platform of tools that builds private communication groups called cells working with any mobile phone or device. Members can join with one text and exchange group messages, polls, reminders, and web feed alerts.
Cells function as chatrooms where people communicate instantly via text-based messaging, phone numbers are kept private. Cells can also include messages from the web or other social networks to capture your interests. Anybody can instantly create, join, and discover cells but membership and message content can be moderated for security and relevancy. Also, cells can be private or public and they are organized by name, topic, and geography and can be explored by topic, number of members or messages, etc.
Celly service is free, messages cost as normal phone messages (it depends on the phone carrier). Currently text messaging works in the United States but there are active partnerships working to open service in emerging markets such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Anyway, Celly can be used also via the web, apps, email, so basically it can be used Celly from almost any country.
On the website there are use guides, FAQ pages and it is always possible to contact the support or read about desired topics in the blog and even chat with the team, if they are available.

Planet eBook is an online repository of classic literature books. The books are in electronic form and it is possible to distribute them by all means: the books published are all in the public domain. The only thing not allowed is to sell them for profit.
The repository contains now more than 80 books and it is possible to get notified automatically each time a new free eBook is published by subscribing to the newsletter or to the blog news feed RSS.
Ebooks are available both in one-page and two-pages format and have been edited in Adobe InDesign or Nitro PDF Professional.

JogNog is a competitive quiz game for students in grades 2 – 12. Over 40,000 educator-created review questions are built on state and national (USA) curriculum standards.
JogNog quiz games are in multiple-choice format—just like standardized tests. To complete any level, the student must score 80% or higher. Missed questions are repeatedly re-presented until the student answers correctly. Educational areas are organized into: English, Math, Science and Social Studies.
On the website it is possible to play JogNog quiz games for free as a trial and the website maintains memory of the played quizzes as long as the connection lasts.
It is also possible to buy the quizzes and using the Design feature, teachers can create their own personalized quiz towers based on the class textbooks and reading materials. Teachers and students can also customize existing quiz towers using the Quick Quiz feature, as well as create personal quizzes.
The JogNog quiz game provides testing, design, and reporting features which offer teacher, parents, and students a robust and valuable educational tool. Reports provide teachers and parents with detail about students’ strengths and weaknesses. Class tools exist for teachers to easily track students’ progress.
Students can now use JogNog Mobile on Apple and Android devices.

The Wolfram Education Portal is a project that provides teachers and students with the opportunity to use dynamic interactive course material developed to enhance the teaching and learning experience. The portal focuses on Maths teaching.
The sign-up is free and allows access to all the resources and courses.
Each course include a dynamic textbook. The chapters and contents within each textbook are enhanced with interactive computable document format (CDF) objects and widgets (CDF is a format containing graphs, charts, plots, objects, etc. that allows real time manipulation for a deeper understanding of the concepts being presented). It is possible to navigate each course through the chapter view which displays all the concepts included in that chapter or through the library view, which allows users to search through the entire collection of lesson plans: chapters, demonstrations and widgets.
The portal also includes additional resources for teachers and students that can access them by visiting the resources page and identifying themselves as a teacher or student. Resources include videos, educational product information, links to CDF and demonstrations as well as direct links toward education communities, newsletter signups and more.

Teach your Monster to Read is a free game to practise the first steps of reading. It is built on the principles of synthetic phonics and follows the teaching sequence of the Letters and Sounds programme.
Teach Your Monster to Read is intended to be used by teachers and parents/guardians as a reading-related teaching tool for children of between 3 and 8 years of age.
Teachers and parents may register on the site, and as a result become “Users”. Users may set up individual accounts for their Students, which allow the Students to access, and the User to track Students’ performance in their use of, the Game Service. Accounts may only be established by Users, and not by Students themselves; Students must have Users’ permission to use the Game Service.
On the How It Works Page, you can find links to how the game has been conceived and used in schools.
http://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/how-it-works

Alberoventi is a social networking platform developed within an extensive communication research project with the aim of helping teachers and educators of all levels to use new educational resources and methodologies, taking particular advantage of the resources of the Web.
Alberoventi offers a variety of different experimentations and services through protected autonomous platforms where members can get into action individually or (mainly) in groups and interacting with the others in order to achieve goals, thus developing at the same time the tools to use and their own knowledge on the selected topic. These platforms are partially designed on the characteristics and necessities of each single group and the possibilities made available for each of them depend on the particular collaborative education methodology chosen or developed specifically for that group.
Alberoventi is currently in Beta version. Its present projects are aimed at the training of high school and university students and of teachers. At present among its activities there are collaborative writing, web tv productions and foreign languages teaching.
Alberoventi's activity also include a big effort to constitute a network of schools and teachers interested in the use of the new methods offered through the online platform.

Teamie is a cloud-based social platform that makes learning collaborative & fun, enables educators to engage & teach, and drives performance & behavior.
Teamie gives the possibility to create a social network for your institute with online classrooms populated with the respective students & teachers. This will create a safe & secure platform to share, discuss, collaborate and learn.
Teachers can create lessons and quizzes easily using a simple but rich editor, or by simply uploading content (audio, video, documents). All the created content is saved as part of the Knowledge Bank and can be reused eventually, not to restart from scratch.
Teamie supports online assignments (uploaded as files, or written on the rich editor), and objective type questions which are automatically graded, while the subjective one's can be graded online, without having to download the documents.
With a variety of standard and custom reports to choose from, teachers and students can identify areas of strengths & weakness, and as the management get a dashboard view of the performance of the overall institute.
There is also a bulletin board where all important notifications are posted or any announcement from the teachers.