Cool Free Web Tools : Home Office And School

These cool web tools will help you organize web resources,create, communicate and share. They are very useful at both school and office as well as at home for personal use. Good clear tutorials are provided for those of us who tend to be "tech 'tards". Best of all they are absolutely free.

Past experience shows that many freebies start out so in the beginning but don't stay that way. So jump on the band wagon while you can. They are easy to sign up for. All you have to do is give an email address and set up an account with a username and password.

Most of us have used 3 ring binders for school, in the office or around home. We're familiar with organizing our papers under the color coded tabs that come with them. Now you can have virtual binders. Sign up at Livebinder.com and your first binder will appear with tabs on using Livebinder, example binders, tips and tricks. You will be able to download a bookmarklet that goes into your browser toolbar. As you browse the web you can now click Livebinder It and save web pages, videos, pdfs and images to a new or existing binder. Make as many binders as you need for any reason. You can share binders or keep them private. Educators will definitely want to check out the shared binders for loads of ideas others have found and organized.

The Livebinder site has excellent audiovisual tutorials. Learn how to move tabs and sub tabs around and create shelves for organizing and storing all your binders. You can browse the featured binders (ones that have been created by others) and add those to your shelf. Become a real expert with Livebinder Tips and Tricks. You can learn to use features such as changing colors, embedding binders in blogs and websites, uploading documents to binders and copying content from one binder to another. You can even add tags and make your binders become searchable in Google.

Testimonials of Livebinder users include binders for recipes, safe websites for children, and even saving information about ski resorts! Can you use a little organization somewhere in your life? If so, go to the website and watch a 90 second overview of Livebinder. You will be impressed.

Have you been wishing for Photoshop? At Aviary you don't even have to sign up to try out the photo editing tool. You upload a photo and try sixteen different tools such as sharpen, whiten, remove red. If you are impressed join for free and upload and modify your own images or create new ones from scratch.You can launch a suite of powerful tools without even having to download or install them. Choose among these applications:

• image editor
• color editor
• effects editor
• vector editor
• image markup
• music creator

Aviary also has social networking similar to Facebook. Share creations and view other creations. Open up a creation and learn how they were made. Read and leave comments and visit the Hall of Fame and Staff Picks sections. Tutorials are available but Aviary requires a bit more tech savvy than Livebinders. Not to worry. An inexpensive handbook for Aviary is available on Amazon. .

If you are not quite a tech guru yet you will love Photo Peach. Create a slide show in three easy steps. Upload photos in step 1. Drag and drop photos to change play order. In step 2 add music and text. Just hit enter in the text box to separate them into pages. In step 3 edit, download and share or delete if you want to start fresh. Private and share options can be selected.There is a comments feature on shared slides. You can also embed into your blog or websites if desired.

Use your creativity and photos to make beautiful high quality slide shows to share with friends and family for free. You can also upgrade to Photo Peach Premium for only $3 per month. Premium allows you to download unlimited shows in burnable DVD format and high quality digital video for sharing online. You can also upload MP 3 files of your own music and customize the transition effects between photos.Upgrade to premium to create unlimited photo albums.

Teachers can sign up for the Educators version of Photo Peach. Using this tool they can add quiz questions to photos for students to click on a response. A timed buzzer can be added. Create student accounts without using email. Student work does not appear in published by default. You have the option to organize projects, tag, publish and share. Educators also have all the other features that Premium subscribers have. Pricing packages are as follows:

1. one educator and 50 students $9 per month
2. one educator and 150 students $25 per month
3. contact Photo Peach for more students

Create a customized avatar with Voki and add a dynamic talking character to your blog or website. You can also share them by emailing. This would be great for internet marketers. Or introduce your young child to technology in a fun way by creating an avatar. Then the kids can have a good activity to keep them entertained on a bad weather day. Change the character style, clothing and accessories. Add your own voice via phone, microphone or text to speech. Speech recording time is 60 seconds. Choose backgrounds from Voki's library or use your own.

The Voki avatar is a valuable class room tool. Educator packages are available very reasonably priced. You can sign up for a one year subscription for $29.95 or $2.50 monthly. There is no student registration. Lessons can be set to private. Voki is also an effective language tool with text to speech in over 25 languages.

Hopefully you can use one or more of these great tools to impress your family, co workers or students with your new technical knowledge. Get organized, create, share and have fun!

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