Livebinders

One of my goals in professional development sessions is to provide teachers with quality, usable technology tools for their classrooms. Most teachers want their tech resources to be easy to learn and use (no detailed handouts or pages of notes needed), they want the new tools to have a place in their own classrooms and subject areas, and they want the new tools to save them time.

Livebinders meets all those criteria and by organizing websites and webcontent. The setup is very clear. And if you have an idea of how you'd like to organize select websites around a subject, theme, class schedule, etc... you'll be binding websites together in no time.

Using it in the classroom:

• If you have a projector, interactive whiteboard or flatscreen TV, Livebinders is a great way to present websites to your classes. In presentation mode the Livebinder is visually appealing and allows you to quickly jump from webpage to webpage without opening new browsers or tabs.
• Your Livebinders can be used in centers on the classroom computers, allowing students to explore a topic or theme while staying on the websites chosen by the teacher.
• Your binders can be linked to your webpage or embedded in a blog or wiki. This permits students to access the Livebinder from any connected computer. Livebinders are a great way to collect sites to support or enrich classroom instruction.
• Finally, while a Livebinder can be set to "private," many of the livebinders are public and teachers can benefit from the broader community of educators using Livebinders - seeing and using websites other teachers have found.

Livebinders is a functional, easy-to-use addition to any teacher's tech toolbox. Check it out at http://livebinders.com/ and if you're interested in see a few examples first, check out my Livebinders on the SMART and Promethean resources below:

SMART resources

Promethean/ Activ Resources