DEVELOPING COURSES:
Web Tools for Teachers
(course creation & classroom helpers)

 Updated June 12, 2008
   
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For related links, please ALSO visit:

In fact, if you're just starting out designing online courses, check ALL of my topics, listed on this site's homepage.

Top 100 Tools for Learning Spring 2008: posted at Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day:
"The list has now been finalised from the contributions of
155 learning professionals from education, workplace learning
and continuing professional development."
Several viewing options; the one I prefer is by type of tool. 04/13/08

(in alphabetical order)

ActiveWorlds.com: "In minutes you can create fascinating 3D worlds that others can visit and chat in." FREE software to view and use the chat worlds. Pay educational pricing to build your own 3D virtual reality home on the Internet. Also, check out their Active Worlds Educational Universe! 10/29/03

AscToTab: A free little utility that easily converts plain text files containing table data into either HTML or RTF (rich text format) tables. The software can also convert files of tab-delimited or comma-separated (.csv) data into tables. One use I can think of is excel gradebook reports, when you want to post them online for your students? 03/10/02

Bitty Browser: They call it a "Picture-in-Picture for the Web". This is SO kewl! I can think of many applications for this "Bitty Browser", from in-course links/feeds to using multiple browser boxes as a website organizing method. Check it out as you think creatively (click on the title of this post). Here's an example -- I used a Bitty Browser to post my list of subscribed feeds on my Resource Site's Acknowledgement page. 04/09/06

Boomer: Easily creates a .swf file (Flash format) from almost any of your files. All you have to do is drag and drop. All graphical possibilities can contain Flash Audio and page links. Convert any Animated Gif, Gif, Jpg, Png, or AVI Movie; convert any .wav or .mp3 to a fast "play now" stream for background music or create your own player interface; create Slide Shows and Transitional Effects with Audio, Links, or Both; create Streaming Audio without having to deal with a slow loading player. Play, Stop, and Pause are supported graphically. Create Panoramic effects or a carousel of images. Chose between Flash 5 and Flash MX modes for your creations. 11/23/02

Breeze (Macromedia): see entry below -- "Powerpoint with Breeze".

Captivate (Macromedia): (formerly RoboDemo) I own Quarbon ViewletBuilder for this, but I've been reading some high praise for Captivate as THE software to own when you want to prepare a screen recording (screen capture tutorial, presentation, etc.) with audio. Bruce Landon (Douglas College, Vancouver, BC) wrote in a forum: "If your time is important for about $200 (ed pricing) you can get Captivate which works quite nicely for making high quality flash screen shots with audio (recored live or editied in). ...it seems to work fine and with little effort." Scott Leslie (Ed Tech Post) then tried it and responded: "Wow - it totally rocks! I installed it, ran it and made my first screen recording in under 5 minutes. Really nice piece of software that truly put all of these others to shame, and Bruce, you were doubly right about it being worth the price just for how easy it makes doing these screen recordings. Really nice piece of software." 02/03/06

Chalkface Project: Purchase and download lesson plans, course units, whole courses. "...an independent educational publishing house...enhanced by associates, mainly practising classroom teachers, who write and research all our material... we produce detailed lesson plans complemented by photocopy-master worksheets across the secondary curriculum. These are available as bound publications or digitally as downloadable resources." 04/11/04

Comparative Features Analysis of Leading Course Management Software: A report from January 1, 2000 with updates.

Concept Map Tool ~ IHMC CmapTools: This FREE (upon registration) tool "empowers users to construct, navigate, share and criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps. It allows users to, among many other features, construct their Cmaps in their personal computer, share them on servers (CmapServers) anywhere on the Internet, link their Cmaps to other Cmaps on servers, automatically create web pages of their concept maps on servers, edit their maps synchronously (at the same time) with other users on the Internet, and search the web for information relevant to a concept map." 04/14/04

Contribute by Macromedia: Macromedia has finally created an HTML editor for people who don't know HTML and don't want to spend time figuring it out. Free 30 day trial available. "Get professional results without needing web-design experience. The familiar, intuitive Contribute interface empowers non-technical users to begin updating and publishing website content right away." 11/25/02

CourseForum: Newly developed tool for asynchronous discussions and much more. "Much more flexible than discussion-only tools, each page can not only hold a discussion on a specific topic, but also a set of questions and answers, links to supplementary course material or research, a student's note-taking from a lecture, student portfolios, or more. Everyone can contribute, and all contributions are tracked. Easily create text, links, files, projects and more." 08/22/02

Course Genie: [update Feb2008: Clicking here takes you to the Wimba site.Wimba has taken over CourseGenie and calls it Wimba Create. It's the same software.] "With courseGenie you can write a complete course as one Word document and automatically generate an online course including navigation, popups, hyperlinks, selftest questions, audio and video, with export to plain HTML, WebCT Content Module or IMS formats.... If you already have material such as lecture notes or handouts in Word format you can start with these and transform them into a set of interactive web pages. You can also use courseGenie to create completely new materials in Word." ... "How is it different from Word 'Save as WebPage'? It splits up the content into many small pages; it adds interactivity; it produces clean XML and HTML." 03/18/04

Crossword Compiler 5.1: "Windows crossword maker with everything you need to create great educational, professional, and interactive crossword puzzles" Make fun vocabulary puzzles automatically, interactive crosswords, etc., and they offer several add-ons. 04/17/02

dezignus.comDezignus.com ~ Icons and other Graphics for FREE: Beautiful vector graphics of all kinds. I jumped right to the royalty-free section, so that's the link I'm providing you. But just have a look at the other beautiful stuff they have to offer! 02/15/08

Dreamweaver: "A solution for professional website design and production." An excellent tool for creating HTML pages for your on-line courses.

Easy Text-to-HTML Converter: A FREE tool from Softpedia. "Provides fast and easy conversion of Text Files (in *.txt, *.rtf formats) and Text Blocks pasted from Clipboard to HTML."

Eclipse Crossword: "The fast, easy, FREE way to create crossword puzzles in minutes. It's never been simpler-just give EclipseCrossword a list of words and clues, and it does the rest. In seconds, you'll have a crossword puzzle with just the words you want." 05/16/04

Educational Software Awards 2004-2005: "Criteria for evaluating educational software may vary considerably - items which look impressive from a marketing point of view may prove to be less than stellar in the classroom, if elements of educational design have not been properly implemented. In this edition of WWWTools for Education, we present various rationales for running awards and views on the characteristics of good educational software, and look at some winners from the 2005-2005 awards cycle." 10/01/05

eGems Collector: "the easiest and fastest way to capture, organize and source your electronic research! It will help you save your valuable research "gems"- text, images and links - from the Internet, digital libraries, email and open applications." 11/28/01

Elluminate Live: Provides an audio and visual combination of chat, whiteboards, and application sharing for "live discussion and dynamic interaction to your asynchronous distance learning solution in the fastest, least expensive way possible. So you can engage easily distracted students, promote active learning, and improve student performance." 05/16/04

Encyclopaedia of Typography and Electronic Communications: If you want to delve into the world of putting words on a page.

Error Message Generator: This is fun, and might also be used to create popup messages in your course pages? Error Generator will create your image for you, then you can save it to use with an image-mapping program (to activate the buttons on the image) and/or a popup javascript. 07/31/06

eXe : eLearning XHTML editor: [eXe = eLearning XHTML editor] "The eXe project is developing a freely available Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup. eXe can export content as self-contained web pages or as SCORM 1.2 or IMS Content Packages." Watch the video intro on YouTube. 09/03/07

FAST (Free Assessment Summary Tool): "The FAST project is committed to providing users with a simple online tool for assessing their students' impressions of their courses and their teaching. Using the software does not cost anything." 02/07/02

Filamentality: "...a fill-in-the-blank tool that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Internet, gathering good Internet links, and turning them into online learning activities. Support is built-in along the way through Mentality Tips. In the end, you'll create a web-based activity you can share with others even if you don't know anything about HTML or serving web pages."..."What about that crazy name? Filamentality combines the 'filaments of the web' with your 'mentality' allowing you to create a variety of formats that meet your personal or learner needs." 06/12/08

FREE Computer Utility Software: Lots of helpful stuff here. This page is where I found IconArt (listed below alphabetically). Dave, the site owner, writes, "All of the software listed is spyware and adware free at the time it is listed." 05/30/07

Flash MX 2004 ~ using it as an E-Learning Authoring Environment: Discusses media & animation, quick-start templates, data tracking, course architecture, and scripting. "One of the most compelling reasons to use Flash as an authoring environment is its cross-browser compatibility. If you've ever developed an e-learning course that had to be delivered via multiple browsers you know how difficult it can be. Because Flash is interpreted the same across different browsers, you can easily maintain one source that should work on multiple platforms. The point: Every learner will have access to the same learning experience." 07/10/04

Font Colorizer: Free program that makes your text do this and supplies the lengthy HTML for it!

Getleft: This FREE app. would be a very useful tool for those learners with slow internet connections. Plus, if one could get past copyright, it would be a good way to include full websites in a course or on a CD of reference material. "A web site downloader, that downloads complete web sites according to the settings provided by the user. It automatically changes all the absolute links to relative ones, so you can surf the downloaded pages (web sites) on your local computer without the need to connect to the internet. Getleft supports several filters, allowing you to limit the download to certain files, as well as resuming , following of external links, sitemap and more. Getleft supports proxy connections and can be scheduled to update downloaded pages automatically." [review from Lockergnome newsletter] 04/20/03

Glossary Builder: "Babylon's FREE glossary builder is a user-friendly application that enables you to create your own glossaries based on your personal interests. With Babylon's Glossary Builder you can make creative glossaries, incorporating pictures (BMP, JPG, ICO) and hyperlinks into each definition." 11/05/04

GoHTML: "A free service that provides instant document conversion into HTML. Both PC and Mac platforms are supported."

Google Maps ~ Embedding in webpages: This is a great idea for courses that involve reference to maps. "The Google Maps API (Application Programming Interface) lets you embed Google Maps in your own web pages with JavaScript." Embedding a fully interactive map is easy. The interactivity on your embedded version is identical to the original: your page visitor can see/close the address box, drag to move the map, zoom in/out, toggle between map/satellite/hybrid views.

How do you do this? When you look at their sign-up site, it seems more complicated than it is. Here's the simple version:

First, you have to sign up and get a "Maps API key". Keep track of that key somewhere.It gives you permission to embed any Google Map in a webpage. (Sign-up is quick. You need one key per website you use.)

How to embed a map:
1. Navigate to the location you want to show on Google Map.
2. On the top right corner of the map, there is a [link to this page]. Click it to get a snippet of HTML. From there you can use "customize" if you want to select a map size. (Default size is shown in my example below.)
3. Copy and paste the HTML code to your web page.

Easy, right? You can also go beyond basics to add a number of features: define areas, add text, add links, add controls, pop-up info/event windows, overlays, driving directions, and more. Google supplies "mapplet" codes for these. The maps do NOT include advertising at this time. (Google will give 90 days notice if they change this policy.)

Here's an example (the place I used to teach, Columbia Square Adult Learning Centre):


View Larger Map

Graphics: Freebies Roundup ~ Icons, Buttons, Templates: Some VERY AWESOME items here! I'm amazed they're free, they're so good. 06/18/07

Hot Potatoes: By Half-Baked Software. NOW exports to WebCT format! (03/18/01) This easy FREE (for educational use) software suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Very easy to use and allows for a lot of interaction. Instructor/student need for HTML knowledge is nearly non-existant.

Hacking in Hot Potatoes: Are you a Hot Potatoes user? Check this out! "We have built the architecture of Hot Potatoes in such a way that anyone with a little knowledge about the underlying code can easily make significant customizations without risk. In this presentation, we'll show three examples, each showing how a little coding knowledge in one of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript can give you a lot of power over how Hot Potatoes exercises appear and behave." 01/10/04

HTML TIDY: A small utility that cleans up your HTML code from errors and reworks it to standards set by W3C.

Image Resizer: At this website you can download a free utility that can batch resize your images in bmp, gif, and jpg picture formats. You can also convert from one format to another, rotate images, create thumbnails. The site has MANY other free downloadable utilities, too. 02/15/08

IconArt: "IconArt is a highly-compact cursor & icon creator. Icons are used to illustrate programs and files. One example are the shortcuts on your desktop. IconArt allows you to either draw the whole image from scratch using all common tools or to import an image to turn into a icon or cursor." 05/30/07

IMS Assesst Designer (IMS Assessment Creation Tool): "...designed specifically for user friendliness. ...Create, modify, delete and rearrange questions with ease. ...Complies with open standards such as the IMS Project Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) Specification. ... (multiple choice, multiple response, matching, numerical and string fill-in-black). Assessment data can be exported and imported... Image and HTML materials are supported." 09/06/01

Kibisis: "Kibisis is a complete Video to Flash Converter. Kibisis allows you to encode standard video and audio files into low bit rate Flash movies, ready to be streamed across today's Internet connections. Using Kibisis you can create a streaming Flash Video, that anyone can see without the need of any special program - plugin or codec (consider that 99% of the users are capable to see Flash in their web browsers)." 03/31/05

Learning Tools: from UBC Arts ISIT: "The e-learning tools listed here are publicly available for academic use, within and outside the University of British Columbia. Periodically, Arts IS releases new tools to this site, so please check back in the future to see what's new. You are invited to explore these exciting new learning tools, and make free use of the learning objects they generate for educational or research purposes." TOOLS at this date: 03/12/05

  • Timeline Tool,
  • Discussion Extractor for WebCT discussions,
  • WYSIWYG Tool,
  • Multimedial Learning Object Authoring Tool,
  • Character Stroke Recorder,
  • Vocabularly Memorization Platform.

Link Checker: Nothing more frustrating than clicking a link that's no longer valid. Don't let your website or course pages get outdated. This free downloadable utility works great. 02/15/08

MOSST (Modular Online Software for Self-paced Tutorials:) A FREE tutorial builder for creating web-based tutorials. It features tools for adding automatically-generated footers, headers, and navigational links, making JavaScript pop-up windows, and creating multiple choice, self-checking quizzes. 04/06/01

NetSupport: "Award winning multi-platform PC Remote Control software offering an unrivalled range of standard features. ...Use this class leading training software solution to Instruct, Monitor and Collaborate with your networked Students. Control + Monitor Student PCs, create Instant Student Surveys, design and send Custom Tests, monitor Web + Internet activity and conduct class forums." A colleague/mentor, Bernie Kirkey, says: "In my proctored exams, where I might have up to 80 students writing at one time, I use NetSupport to handle most of the problems [with cheating]. It allows remote monitoring of student displays, web blocking, and application blocking to help me control what's happening at each desk." 10/08/05

Notepad: "NoteTab can do more than just standard text processing. In fact, you'll find it an excellent replacement for many utilities, not just MS Notepad: handle a stack of huge files with ease, format your text to your heart's content, perform system-wide searches and multi-line global replacements, use a spell-checker and thesaurus. Build document templates, add bookmarks, convert text to HTML on the fly, and take charge of your code with a bunch of handy HTML tools. Use a simple, power-packed scripting language to create anything from a text macro to a mini-application." 01/24/02

Office (MS Office; Open Office) Help Websites

Word for PC, Tips, Tricks, Troubleshooting: Part of the MPV website. 1/30/08

Word Shortcuts: A page from the above MPV site. 1/30/08

Useful MS Word links on Microsoft's website: MPV has compiled a handy list of links. 1/30/08

Word Tips by Allan Wyatt: A weekly email newsletter full of tips. The writer has also published a book of tips. 1/30/08

Carol's Corner Office: Lots of tips and tricks for MS Office here. Check out her Free Word Bytes Newsletter, as well as her subscription premium newsletter and her books. 05/30/07

Powerpoint Templates

FREE Powerpoint Templates: (another site) 03/02/07

FREE Powerpoint Templates: A user forum where templates are uploaded and updated regularly. Free for downloading! 05/23/06

Phonetic Fonts for webpages: 04/08/04

  • "The SIL Encore Font System is a library of over 1600 phonetic characters and linguistic symbols that can be used to create customized, scalable TrueType fonts for Windows and Macintosh systems. The Encore library has a complete Roman based glyph set for linguistic applications." (Remember that if you use this method, you'll have to download the font and also have your students do the same.) 04/08/04
  • Use Images (gifs): If you prefer to use images for each of your phonemics, visit this page. It has them all, plus a tool for easily gathering the graphics you need. Here's an example:

Popup Windows - Javascript generator: "The most flexible and powerful tool of its kind on the web, use this JavaScript wizard to instantly create, customize, and add pop up or pop under windows to your site! Control precisely the frequency of the window, whether it's once per browser session or any desired period (ie: once every 24 hours). For the uninitiated, a popup refers to a secondary, usually smaller window that loads on top of the main window, and contains a separate HTML document inside of it. To create your own popup, just follow the three simple steps below, and grab the generated code. It's that simple!" 07/30/06

Quandary: by Half-Baked Software. This is Shareware (registration required) downloadable tool for creating "Action Mazes" -- can be used for many purposes, including problem-solving, diagnosis, procedural training, and surveys/questionnaires.

Qarbon ViewletBuilder: Amazingly easy to use program that will help you quickly create lessons from captured screenshots, animate the transitions. "Viewlets are media rich, easy to implement training and product demos that teach software and run on any application." 06/08/01

Quiz Builder: A free application available on EdNA's Global Education website. "Quiz builder enables you to publish quizzes for use by your students. ... True/False or multiple choice... provide a response for each answer to help broaden student's understanding of the selected topic." They also supply a "Quiz Planner": "Template for preparing questions and answers for Quiz builder." 05/15/04

Respondus: "A powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard, eCollege, WebCT and other eLearning systems. Exams can be created offline using a familiar Windows environment, or moved from one eLearning system to another. Whether you are a veteran of online testing or relatively new to it, Respondus will save you hours on each project. Download the free 30-day trial and see for yourself!" [see also StudyMate, below; another new Respondus tool.] 05/29/04

Publisher Test Banks Available in Respondus Format: Pearson Education is partnering with Respondus to distribute Respondus-formatted test banks through the Respondus Test Bank Network. The partnership will include test banks from Pearson Prentice Hall, Pearson Longman, Pearson Addison-Wesley, Pearson Allyn & Bacon, and Pearson Benjamin Cummings. 07/10/04

RoboDemo: Macromedia's answer to "...the easiest way to create interactive demonstrations and software simulations in Flash format. RoboDemo records your actions in any application and instantly creates a Flash simulation with visible and audible mouse movements. The small file size and high resolution make RoboDemo simulations and demos easy to publish online or burn to CD for use in training, sales, marketing, or user support." 05/18/04

RSS ~ How to get a live newsfeed into your WebCT course: "Incorporating a newsfeed into your WebCT course is a great way to get dynamic, changing content into the password protected environment of WebCT. Potential uses include creating an up to date 'breaking information' news source for your class." See also:

How to get a news feed into your WebCT course

Anders Jacobsen article on Optimizing Movable Type (part 6) - Category XML feeds

Extending RSS: Making use of RSS beyond simple links on blogs. The author distinguishes between types of RSS, and explains that "if you want to extend into distributing more sophisticated or diverse forms of material, then the differences become more apparent." 08/16/03

SafariU: BETA TESTERS WANTED at this time. "A new web-based publishing platform from O'Reilly Books allows you to easily compile and publish just the information you need, both in print--through custom books--and online with a custom online syllabus. Built using recent advances in print-on-demand and electronic publishing technology, SafariU gives you the control to teach exactly what you want to teach. It gives you an alternative to standard textbooks that are expensive, out-of-date, or only partially relevant to your course. You can offer your students both a custom book and an online syllabus for less than the average cost of a primary textbook. And you can do it all from your own computer, on your own schedule." 04/29/04

SplashUP: Edit your images online for free. "Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it's easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress." 02/15/08

StudyMate: "StudyMate is a new authoring tool by Respondusthat lets you create nine Flash-based activities and games using three simple templates. The Flash activities can be used with any web server or published directly to a Blackboard 6 or WebCT 4 course. StudyMate will also import questions and glossaries from MS Word or text files making it easy to create interesting, interactive activities from existing content." 05/29/04

How to import Respondus files into StudyMate: "StudyMate 1.0 has a powerful Import Wizard that allows you to convert materials from other formats, including MS Word, rich-text, IMS QTI, and Respondus format. The features for importing Respondus 2.0 files are particularly powerful and seamless. By understanding how these import features work, you'll be able to make good use of materials that are already in Respondus format." 10/06/04

Survey Tools Online: (in alpha order) Where recommended by people who use them, I've quoted these people but have left out their names for confidentiality. 04/16/04

  • E-Listen: "I tested and ran a product by Scantron called E-Listen. I was pleased with its functionality. Cost may be a concern, however."
  • Flashlight Online: The site says: "The system has special assets for studies in education, especially educational uses of technology."
  • Perseus: "Our Online Degree Program is using the Perseus to good effect."
  • SuperSurvey: "We use SuperSurvey for a variety of institution surveys."
  • SurveyKey.com ~ Create Your Own Online Surveys: Creator John Jetter says: "...currently being used extensively by educators across the country and beyond. This is an online survey creation tool ...service is offered for free for up to 50 survey respondents which makes it perfect for the classroom." 11/16/03
  • SurveyMonkey: "...a relatively cheap service ... has a good list of features for about $20/month assuming you don't go over the monthly response rate cap.  I want to say the cap is 5000 responses in a month, but could definitely be wrong there." Also see this article: Creating a web survey with SurveyMonkey.
  • Web Online Surveys: The site says, "Free use for charities, teachers and students. You can use the system fully without cost for the first 250 respondents."
  • WebSurveyor: "Our College uses WebSurveyor for many of its surveys."

TeleEducation NB - List of items to include when designing a course for eLearning. "Here is our instruction manual for inputting courses according to the Instructional Management System created by Educause." 03/31/03

TextPad: A user-friendly little program that's somewhere between notepad and authoring tool. I use it all the time to create html.

Tools (several helpful applications): from UBC Arts ISIT: "The e-learning tools listed here are publicly available for academic use, within and outside the University of British Columbia." The tools include a WebCT Discussion Extractor, Timeline tool, Multimedia learning object authoring tool, and more. 05/18/07

Tools for Web-Based Training: Use keywords or choose a category, and it gets you a list of tool available/recommended. 12/12/01

Trailfire: A Firefox extension or add-on. Enables teachers to create a "trail" through several web sites for your students to follow. "Sticky notes" with the author's comments, notes, instructions, etc. are placed on any web page, along with your next and back button. This links the pages together, creating a sequential path for navigating the trail. Students need only click YOUR "next" button to proceed to the next site rather than returning to some sort of index. Visit Trailfire's homepage to sample some of the trails others have posted. 01/20/08

Web Assign: Developed by teachers for teachers. "...ready-to-use database of textbook questions, or write and customize your own exercises...complete control over the homework your students receive, including due date, content, feedback, question formats.Create, post, and review assignments...deliver, collect, grade, and record assignments...practice exercises, quizzes, homework ...assess student performance..." 08/30/08

Wiki: An environment for online collaborative webpage creation and simple database functions. "The simplest online database that could possibly work. ...Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself. ...Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users. 08/22/03

Wink: "FREE Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots of your software, use images that you already have, type-in explanations for each step, create a navigation sequence complete with buttons, delays, titles etc and create a highly effective tutorial for your users. Similar applications sell for hundreds of dollars, while Wink is free with unrivaled features." 06/11/04

   

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