Each week our Instructional Technology Team meets and shares the best ideas that crossed our Twitter feeds, RSS Readers, and minds as we were out working with teachers. Recently it occurred to us that we should be sharing our Best of the Week with you all! So here’s this week’s installment. Enjoy!

	Tiny Tap App Click to View     Level of Bloom’s:  Create Create your own educational games from everyday moments. Creating a game is simple – add a photo, record some questions, trace the answers and you’re ready to play!
	Funny Movie Maker Click to View     Level of Bloom’s: Create Choose any face (even from your own images) and replace their mouth (or entire face) with your own!  Project idea:  Have students research a historic or literary character, then write and produce a video interview!  What a fun way for students to show what they’ve learned!
	Word Mover Click to View     Level of Bloom’s: Create Student’s can create ‘found poetry”  by choosing from word banks, existing famous works, or by adding new words.
	NearPod Click to View     Level of Bloom’s: Create Students can design a costume for their fairy tale character, and then photograph their character in any setting (even within their own classroom!)  These images would be great fodder for a creative writing project!
	Grammaropolis Click to View      Level of Bloom’s: Remember Reinforce knowledge of parts of speech in a fun, student-friendly way!  (Nouns are Free, other parts of speech are available for In-App purchase.)

	iPad Apps 4 School Click to View Brand new site from the author of the Free Tech 4 Teachers blog (another great resource!)
	Skitch – for Windows Click to View If a picture is worth a thousand words, then if you could add text, arrows, and annotations to an image, that would be priceless right?? Skitch, a great FREE photo annotation app, is now available for desktop computers with Windows, and Windows 8.  Not sure what you or your students can do with Skitch?  Check out Skitch in Education to see the software in action!
	35 Digital Tools that Will Work with Bloom’s Taxonomy Click to View Edudemic has a ton of great ideas and resources for teachers, but their post matching digital tools to Bloom’s is a must read, if you’re searching for product creation tools for the classroom.
	Learni.st Click to View Think:  Pinterest – but ONLY for educators sharing resources you can use in your classroom.  This site is great for anyone who’s begun to create a flipped classroom.  Not sure what a flipped classroom is?  Check out Brian Bennett’s Video on the Basics of the Flipped Classroom.
	One Word Click to View Hit the “Go” button and students are presented with a single word, a 60 second timer, and a text entry box–the motto being “Don’t Think, Write!”  Accounts can be created to archive writing.  This would be a great warm-up or vocabulary activity for writers of all ages!
	Holiday Fun from It’s A Message Click to View Enter your address, and It’s A Message automatically creates a fun holiday message featuring your home (if Google Earth has a street view of it!)  Ok, Ok, it’s a tiny bit creepy, but it’s pretty cool, and fun to share with friends, nonetheless!
	Chart Editor, by Google Click to View Though still in beta, it’s easy to see how Google’s Chart Editor has the potential to become a valuable tool for educators and students who need to visualize data.
	Google Story Builder Click to View Invite students to write collaboratively, choose an audio track that matches the tone of their writing, and then play back the writing process using Google Story Builder.  Fun, and for best results, this is an activity that requires pre-planning/storyboarding on the part of the student.
	Become a Power Searcher Click to View Sharpen your search skills & join this free online course from our friends at Google to help you become a better searcher.  Knowing how to find answers on any search engine is an important skill in today’s digital age.  A little time invested in this course now, will have long term benefits down the road – for both teachers and students!
	Pixlr Click to View Powerful photo editing online from your Mac or PC – check out their mobile apps and browser plug-ins too!
	Hello Sign Click to View Tired of chasing people around for signatures?  Sick of the endless Print-Sign-Scan cycle?  Hello Sign allows you to invite up to 50 folks to sign your documents for free.  It’s safe, secure, and best of all…legally binding.  Oh – and there’s an app too!