MeeGenius Free Ebooks for Kids

MeeGenius is a great resource for both free and paid ebooks designed specifically for kids. The website has an awesome interface which obviously shows that kids were in mind while designing the template. MeeGenius stands out from the crowd by the unique features it offers to its users. I know several websites provide ebooks for free but not all of them are as good as MeetGenius.

MeeGenius is available both on the web and on mobile devices particularly iPhone, iPad, and Android. Among the features that MeeGenius offers to its users and that distinguishes its service from other similar web platforms is the automatic word highlighting option that accompanies each narration of each book. The mobile version of MeeGenius lets users eiither choose to read the stories by themselves or have them read by others.
Head over to MeeGenius and start exploring the ebooks there.

Merge Several Tabs into a Single Window using Windows to Tabs Extension

Managing tabs is one of the overlooked feature in most browsers and unless you do some search into the world of extensions and add-ons you will never fully benefit from the services of the browser you are using. Today I am sharing with you one of the extensions that should have normally been included in chrome by default. This web extension is called Window to Tab and as its name suggests, it allows Chrome users to merge all the opened tabs in different windows into one single window. This works for people who opens different windows in the same browser. Sometimes you end up having three windows opened and several opened tabs in each one, it takes you time and energy to keep switching between the different windows but Windows to Tabs saves you all the agony and makes it handy for you to see all the tabs in one window.

To start using Window to Tabs you need to head over to Chrome Extension Store and install the extension. Now whenever you want to merge tabs into one single window just click on the icon in the navigation bar. Window to Tab is free and very easy to use.

Send Links from Chrome to your Phone using Google Chrome to Phone Extension

The Gogle Chrome to Phone is a cool chrome add-on. It allows its users to send information like text, links, maps and contact numbers to your Android device.This is in fact a great service for Android users. As a matter of fact Android offers the best syncing experience and using Google to Chrome extension will  definitely make your Android browsing experience richer and much more convenient.

To start using Google to Phone extension you need to head over to Chrome esxtensions gallery and install the add-on on your browser. You will also need to install the Chrome to Phone app from the Android market. Once you installed both of the tools  you can then instantly and easily start sending in information from your chrome browser to your Android simply by clicking on the button installed on your browser. You access and view the contextual information you sent in your  phone's apps. For instance , YouTube links will automaticcally launch on YouTube app, and maps links will open in Google  Maps app. This Android feature requires Froyo ( Android2.2) to work.


Watch this video to learn more about Google to Chrome Extension

Capture, Edit, and Share your Screen Uisng Explain and Send Screenshots for Chrome

Explain and Send Screenshots is a Google Chrome extension that lets users capture screenshots of their websites and send them to their friends using Twitter and Facebook or via a generated link.This is in fact a useful tool for those who love to share important portions of what they see or read on their web pages . Explain and Send Screenshots will help you capture the part of the page you want and add your own explanations with the use of arrows, lines, circles and text.

To start using Explain and Send Screenshots you need to head over to Chrome extension gallery and install the add-on. Once installed you can then start sharing your screenshots very easily. Just click on the Expand and Send Screenshots button on your browser and  a new tab will automatically be opned with the web page you want to share. Crop out the portion you want to share and  use the editing tool bar to ad arrows and text then send it as a post on your Facebook and Twitter .

Watch this video to see Explain and Send Screenshots in action.

Send Tab Send Opened Tabs to Different Computers or Mobile Devices

SendTab is a great web application to help you send tabs to different computers and devices. Has it ever happened to you that you opened a webpage in your office or classroom and suddenly  felt like you needed to leave immediately because of a certain circumstance and wondered what would you do with the opened web page that you did not finish reading? Now with SendTab you no longer need to worry ,whenever  it happens that you want to save opened tabs to continue reading them say at home or somewhere else or even  on another computer or smartphone then all you need to do is use SendTab free service.

To start using SendTab you need to register with them and open your free account once done you can then download the  bookrmaklet into your browser tool bar or simply install their extension. You add all the devices you want to include in your netwrok. Now whenever you want to share a tab simply click on the bookmarklet and choose the device you want to send the tab to. This could be your personal computer, your co-workers' or your phone. To share a tab on your iOS devices will cost you 99 cents for the app.

Some snapshots of the app

Google Good to Know : Everything You Need about Staying Safe Online

Google Good to Know is a great resource for educators. It offers free tips on online safety and how your data are managed in the cloud. I consider Google Good to Know as an important website that educators need to access and share with their students. I am also adding it to the List of Internet Safety Tips Parents and Teachers need to be aware of.

Google Good to Know covers four areas. They are:

1- Stay Safe Online

In this section, you will find tips and advice for staying more secure on the web. Among the topics you can learn about here are : Passwords, Phishing, Malware, Secure Sites, Safe Networks, Mobile security, family safety, shopping saefty, signing out of public computers and Googles security tools.

Watch this video to learn more




2- Your Data on The Web

In this part, you will learn how web sites store cookies and get to know your preferences. You will also learn about IP Address and accounts.


3- Your Data on Google

Here you will be able to have an idea of how Google deals with your data and personal information. You will read about topics such as Search logs, Advertising, Google accounts and web history, Google producs and privacy, Making search more relevant, making search faster , and helping  society.

Watch this video to learn more





4- Manage your Data

This section offers an " overview of some of the ways that you can manage what you share online, with Google and with others. We offer a collection of privacy tools, the most popular of which are described in this section."

Head over to Google Good to Know to learn more.

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PrintFriendly Easily Select Parts of A Web Page to Print

PrintFriendly is a great add-on that lets users print selected parts of a web page. It resembles the other tool I covered earlier called Printliminator. Using these extensions on your browser enables you to save so much of paper and time. You will be able to print just what interests you and not the whole pages.

PrintFriendly " cleans and formats web pages for perfect print experience. PrintFriendly removes Ads, Navigation and web page junk, so you save paper and ink when you print. It's free and easy to use. Perfect to use at home, the office, or whenever you need to print a web page."

 To start using PrintFriendly you need to head over to Its main page and drag the bookmarklet to your browser bookmark toolbar. Whenever you want to print something you just click on that bookmarklet and that's it.

PrintFriendly works on the popular browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Firfox. Here is a snapshot of the instructions of how to use this add-on.

To learn more about PrintFriendly you need watch this video

Printliminator Print Whatever Part of a Web Page

PrintLiminator is a great bookmarklet that allows you to print whatever part of a web page. How many times you want to print just a part of a web page and you end up printing the whole page ? It is not convenient at all but lets thank technology life has been much easier.

Printliminator is a bookmarklet that you can install on your browser . It is fairly simple and easy to use. Just drag and drop the button and there you go. Once you found a part of a web page you want to print out then you just click on the bookmarklet and  circle the part you want , you can even eliminate graphics and reformat the print styling and when you are done you click on print and that's it.

 Printliminator is a great tool to save you paper . It works on Chrome, Safari, and  Firefox.

Watch this video to learn more about Printliminator

Youtube Documentaries Free Awesome Documentaries

Youtube Documentaries is a video platform created by an enthusiastic web developer to offer free documentaries to its users. It has nothing to do with  YouTube  except that most if not all itsscontent is from it.

" We are not affiliated with YouTube.com, or Google.com . We do however love YouTube.com and Google.com 
I happen to really enjoy watching documentaries - and I use YouTube.com to find them. It's an excellent source. I'm a web developer - so I put 2 and 2 together to come up with this website. "

 I have covered several free documentary sites in my previous articles here and Youtube Documentaries is one of the best documentary resource in this list.

Multimedia sites where educational videos are offered for free are highly desirable for educators. Teachers are in constant need of video resources from which to fetch their digital support. It is not always easy to find secure and reliable video platforms and this is why we try our best to provide the best resources for educators here.

Youtube Documentaries is completely free of charge and very easy to use. You can even subscribe to their email notifications and whenever  a new documentary is published you will get an email in your inbox of the link to this video. Youtube Documentaries also allows you to tag videos and share them with your friends. You can create a My Video page to keep track of the videos you have watched.

Documentaries in this platform are only 10 minutes long.So if a documentary is normally 50 minutes then you will find it divided into 5 parts each part featuring a 10 minutes clip. I have just finished watching a 12 minutes  documentary of World War Two in colour. I love history documentaries but you can find all kinds of  categories.
If you want to give this website a try then head over to Youtube Documentaries main page and start watching.

Zeodia Turn Static Pictures into Dynamic Videos

Zeodia is a great web tool. It allows its users to create video stories with a timeline, location and content. The tool is very easy to use and does not require any advanced tech wizardry. Teachers would love to work on Zeodia, they can use it in storytelling to create stunning video stories out of selected pictures. They can also encourage students to use it in the same way to enhance their sense of creativity and imagination.

Some features of Zeodia

Here are some of the features that Zeodia offers to its users:

It is free
It is easy to use
It has a student friendly interface
It does not require any software instalation
It is fast and secure
It turns static pictures into dynamic videos
It requires a free registration.

I do recommend this tool for my fellow teachers. Head over to Zeodia and register for an account.

TeachBook A Great Collaborative Platform for Educators

TeachBook is a professional community for educators. It is an online platform where teachers meet to discuss and share educational resources, videos , lesson plans and many more. I have just discovered it and it seems quite interesting. I have registered there and started interacting with other teachers. You can visit my profile  to see how it looks.

TeachBook is completely free and requires only your registration. It has several tabs such as : Planbook, Forums, Videos, Events, Online courses, Lesson Plans , and news. Once you are registered you can then start uploading your own videos , comment and reply on other threads, submit your resources, create and manage online courses and instructional modules.

Some features of TeachBook

Here is a list of some of the features that TeacheBook offers to its users:

• It is free
• It has a user friendly interface
• It requires a registration
• It lets you Create lesson plans and share them with others
• Interact with other teachers
• Create and join  online groups
• You can download and print lesson plans
• Build your own courses and invite students to join
• You can manage your grades, discussions, calendar and chats with the online course tools
• Post in forum and reply to others' threads
• You can search instructional videos under any subject or category. You can also add your own videos and share them with others.

Furthermore, here  is a snapshot of what TeachBook can also offer you

I highly recommend TeachBook to teachers and educators. Head over to its main page and register for a free account.

The Importance of Team Work in Education

Team work is something that every educator stresses upon. It is in fact the backbone of classroom work. It is not only a method of work but a cherished conduct, a desirable learning behaviour.The purpose is to prepare citizens who can collaborate for the benifit of the whole society. This is education's ideal goal after all.

 We might differe in the way we perceive the nature of team work but no two educators will ever argue over its importance. There are in fact several clasroom tasks and activities that promote collaboration and cooperation between students.I will not go through these activities here because it is not what this article is designed to cover. I will instead underlie the importance of team work furthermore with these two videos that have been making rounds on the net for months now. Some of you might have already seen them but I really hope that you would give them your full attention and devote some of your time to concentrate on the message they try to communicate to us. They are short videos but contain inestimable wisdom.

It would also be preferable to devote an hour of your teaching time and share these videos with your students. They can be integrated into a listening activity after which you provide students with questions about the content of the videos.This is just a suggestion but you can use them the way you see it convenient.

The first video is entitled The Meaning of Team : Together We Achieve More.






The second video is entitled  Lessons from The Geese.




I hope you got the message and do not forget to spread it.

A List of Free Web Tools to Create Disposable Email Addresses

If you are an active web2.0 user and always trying new technology tips, installing new softwares and trying new web tools then your inbox will definately be cluttered with emails most of them are confirmation emails. This is not a problem so far, for as long as you find what you are looking for in  the website you registered with then it is worth the subscription but unfortunately it does not always work this way. Sometimes you would would go through all the registration process and seriuosly provide all the information asked from you and once you are registered you find out that you have been a victim of spam sites. You will start getting all sorts of emails into your inbox to the extent that you can no longer filter your friends emails from the spam ones. I hope you are not into a situation like this because I have gone through it and I really hate it.

 You always need to be careful when submitting your email address to others. There are several websites that sell your email addresses to advertising companies especially that are into pornography and sexual materials ( like Viagra, herbal medicine...ect). Have you ever got an email from a company telling you about a magic recipe to grow or make bigger your genital organs and staff like that? I am sure you might and might even wondered where the hell they got my email. It is from spam sites you have registerd with or being tricked to submit your email address to.

Luckily there is a solution for this. There are many online free services that offer disposabe or one time use email addresses. You can use these emails to test whether the website you want to register with is really what it claims to be or not without having to risk your inbox. I have collected some of these free tools for you to keep and bookmark . Try the followings:


1- Disposable

 Disposable is a free web service that allows its users to create multiple email addresses easily and for free. It does not require any sign up and you can immediately check the inbox upon the creation of email address.


2- Mintemail

Mintemail is another free disposable email service. It generates a disposable email address for each visitor. You can use this email address with fishy web forms and sign ups.


3- 10Minutemail

10Minutemail as its name suggests is a free to use web service that provides its users with disposable email address that lasts just for ten minutes. But if you want more time you can click on the timer and add another ten minutes.


4- WhySpamMe

WhySpamMe is another free service that lets you create disposable email instantly. What make this website different from others is the fact that once you create your own disposable email with WhySpamMe then all the messages sent to your disposable address will be forwarded to your real email address. So when you think the emails are spam then you can quickly delete the disposable address and you are done.


5- Dudmail

Dudmail lets you create your own disposable email address and provides you with a URL. This is the link you can use to check the messages sent to your disposable email address. You can also sign up with Dudmail using your real email address and all emails sent to your disposable address will be forwarded to your real email, and like WhySpamMe, you can delete your one time address whenever you want.


6- TrashMail

TrashMail is a free web service that provides its users with disposable emails to be used in sign ups. It works in the same way Dudmail and WhySpamMe do with only a slight  addition which is that TrashMail also allows users to set a life span for their disposable email address and when this is over then the email is expired too.

7- BugMeNot

BugMeNot lets you get disposable login details for a number of popular news,reviews, download websites that normally require users to register. This is a good service especially for those who like to read online newspapers. Sometime you are reading an article say Washinton Post then suddenly a window would pop up with a message prompting you  to register to continue readin which does not make sense because once you register they will flood your inbox with their daily news. In cases such as these you can use BugMeNot to solve the problem.


8- GishPuppy

GishPuppy is a free disposable email service. It provides users with disposable email addresses to use in unsecure sign ups. It works like WhySpamMe and other tools in that it forwards emails sent to disposable address to the real email and once a user thinks that he is a victim of spam then he can delete the dispoable email address instantly and stop receiving spam emails in his inbox.

9- Mailnesia

Mailnesia lets you generate your own disposable email address that you can keep as long as you want. It also provides you with an account to check for emails sent to your disposable email. Emails can stay there as long as two months after which they will be deleted.

The Most Watched Youtube Videos of 2011 ( The Official List Provided by YouTube T

Today as I was going through my mail I found a post by Official Google Blog entitled " What were we watching this year ? Let's rewind 2011". This is an article that features the most viewed YouTube videos of this year. I will share it with you here but you can check it at Google Official Blog as well .



Most-viewed YouTube videos globally (excluding videos from major music labels) 
(playlist)

1. Rebecca Black - Friday (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
2. Ultimate Dog Tease
3. Jack Sparrow (feat. Michael Bolton)
4. Talking Twin Babies - PART 2 - OFFICIAL VIDEO
5. Nyan Cat [original]
6. Look At Me Now - Chris Brown ft. Lil Wayne, Busta Rhymes (Cover by @KarminMusic)
7. The Creep (feat. Nicki Minaj & John Waters)
8. Maria Aragon - Born This Way (Cover) by Lady Gaga
9. The Force: Volkswagen Commercial
10. Cat mom hugs baby kitten

Most-viewed YouTube channels globally (excluding channels from major music labels)

1. machinima
2. IGNentertainment
3. RayWilliamJohnson
4. expertvillage
5. BlueXephos
6. smosh
7. realannoyingorange
8. roosterteeth
9. thelonelyisland
10. barelypolitical

Most-watched videos from major music labels globally (playlist)

1. Jennifer Lopez - On The Floor ft. Pitbull
2. LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock
3. Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song [Official Video]
4. Nicki Minaj - Super Bass
5. Pitbull - Give Me Everything ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack, Nayer
6. Pitbull - Rain Over Me ft. Marc Anthony
7. Jessie J - Price Tag ft. B.o.B.
8. LMFAO - Sexy and I Know It
9. Katy Perry - E.T. ft. Kanye West
10. Katy Perry - Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)

Some highlights from other categories

• Zach Wahls Speaks About Family was the most-watched political video
• Japan Earthquake: Helicopter aerial view video of giant tsunami waves was the most-watched news video
• 25 Ways to Wear a Scarf in 4.5 Minutes! was the most watched “how-to” video
• iPhone 5 Concept Features was the most-watched science/technology video
• Immortals was the most-watched movie trailer
• Mountain Biker gets taken out by Buck was the most-watched sports video

You can also check out the most-viewed videos of the year in fashion, beauty, sports, gaming,travel, fitness, food, science, tech reviews, family, pets and wedding proposals.

Posted by Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager

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YouTube for Schools Provides Free Educational Videos to Include in The Classroom

With the release of YouTube for Schools, YouTube has finally joined the bandwagon of  websites promoting educational content. It has been a major concern for teachers all over the world that the main resource of videos on the internet is most of the times banned in schools. The inappropriate content that accompanies videos in YouTube together with the mature subject matter and distractive ads found  in most of YouTube pages have raised a red flag for any pedegaogical use of this video platform in formal classroom settings.It is true that there are many free web tools that can be used to overrun this problem but the thing is most of the schools have denied access to it.

Educators now can breathe a sigh of relief. Youtube for Schools has been designed specifically to tend to their digital needs. It features educational videos from several renowned educational partners  (around 600 in total) includingSmithsonian, TED, Steve Spangler Science, and Numberphile. And instead of featuring irrelevant videos or indecent content on the playlists, Youtube for Schools features exclusive playlists of free educational videos. These playlists are also broken down into differentr categories such as Math, Social Studies, Language Arts, English and Science. These labels are further divided into corresponding grades.

This is what Brian Truang , Youtube Project Manager, said about Youtube for Schools :

"We’ve been hearing from teachers that they want to use the vast array of educational videos on YouTube in their classrooms, but are concerned that students will be distracted by the latest music video or a video of a cute cat, or a video that might not be appropriate for students.YouTube for Schools is just the latest initiative in our ongoing efforts to make YouTube a truly valuable educational resource, and to inspire learners around the world with programs like YouTube Space Lab. "


 Watch this video to learn more

Extract Email Addresses from Docs and Web Pages Using Easy Email Extractor

Easy Email Extractor is a desktop application that lets you extract email addresses from files, folders, documents text strings and web pages. Can you imagine how hard it is to pick up emails from a long document with several paragraphs? It can be a real time consuming task and we , educators , highly value our time and will not just waste it on trivial chores that technology can do at the tip of a click.

Easy Email Address is a free service that works on Windows and is sized under 1MB. It is down to earth easy and does not require any technology wizardry. Just head over to  Easy Email Address main page and download the application. Do not worry the file is not heavy and will not take so much space from your RAM. Once downloaded and to better use this app all you need to do is to direct it towards the source from which you want to fetch email addresses and it will automatically carry on the task required. It is really amazing how easy it is and how much time you will save using it.

Easy Email Address is completely free with a friendly user interface. Download it and give it a try to see by yourself.

Detect Fake Emails Using Block Disposable Email Address

Block Disposable Email Address ( DEA ) as its name suggest is a web tool that allows its users to detect whether emails are fake or valid. This is a great tool for web masters and bloggers. If you are running a forum and have a section for subscribers then you can use DEA to filter subscribers' emails and block fake ones. I do not think this tool can be of much use and benefit for teachers and educators but I would say those of you who have their own personal websites can try this tool. I am using this tool here in my blog and I do not accept subscribers with one tine emails.

Block Disposable Email Address is very easy to use and you do not need any advanced technology skills to run it. Just head over to the main page, provide the email you want to check and you will get the result in text format .

If you liked this tool and you want to try it then head over to Block Disposable Email Address.

DeadFake Send Fake Emails to your Friends

DeadFake is a fake email service. It is a tool to prank your friends online. The idea behind this service is to make your email look like it is coming from someone else with his or her email for instant ( obama@whitehouse.gv ). The service is all fake and can be used to make fun at your friends. This tool does probably not mean anything to you as educators being used to come to my blog to read articles related to technology and education. But the reason why I am including this tool here is to draw your attention to the spam mail you might be getting in your inbox in the form of emails coming from people you know and as soon as you open them you become a victim of phishing or your computer crashes or run the risk of loosing your private information like pin codes and passwords.

Now that you learnt about DeadFake, you can use it to have fun with your friends but nothing more. Remember the principle behind it is to always scrutinize your emails info before you click on any links included in them. Always make sure to check the headers in suspicious emails. The legitimate email will always have the " from" email address in the " sender" field.

Send Anonymous Emails using The Free Send Email Service

Send Email is a cool service. I just learnt about it today and want to introduce it to you in case you do not know it. Send Email is  an anonymous emailing service. It allows its users to send emails anonymously. This service is free and down to earth easy. It does not require any sign up or software installation.
I am including Send Email here in my blog because there are many teachers who do not prefer to use their email addresses with their students, well at least some have told me so. Now they can use this service to do the same job their 'official '  email address would normally perform. No more excuses for not integrating technology into education .

How can I get started using Send Email ?

It is very easy to use. Just head over to Send Email main page and scroll down . Fill in the three boxes as shown in the picture below. Provide the email address to which you want to send anonymous email, write the subject and then proceed to the body of your email. When you finish , write the captcha and click send and that's it.

Email yourself Content from Web Pages Using CC: to me

cc:to me is a cool web application. It allows its users to send notes, pictures and videos from any website right into their email inbox. This is a really handy tool for educators for they can now share content of web pages or just part of it with their students or colleagues instantly and all for free. I have tried cc: to me and found it great and therefore I am recommending it to you.

How can I get started using cc:to me ?

It is very easy to use and does not require any advanced technological skills.All you need to do is head over to cc:to me and sign up for a free account. The service is still free till this moment and pro accounts will soon be available too. There is a bookmarklet that you can drag and drop into your browser. Whenever you stumble upon a good article and you want to share part of it be it a video, text, image or all of them just drag and drop the part you want and that's it. Yes it is that easy , watch this video to learn more.

Nine Free Video Editing Tools You Need to Know

I have been receiving several emails from teachers and educators who are faithful readers of my articles in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning.They all ask me to provide them with video tools that would enable them to edit and customize video clips to be included in their lessons. There are many out there but it would take some time to go around looking especially with the growing spam content  many websites offer to its surfers.

I have already covered some video tools in my previous articles and all these tools can be found under the label Free Video Tools. If you look to the right side you see a widget called Categories, scroll down and you will find this label. Anyway today I decided to assemble the maximum possible of these tools in one article. So I will not be covering the tools I already talked about in the past articles but will particularly include new video tools. Using these tools you would be able to edit your videos the way you want. You can for example cut off certain scenes, add background music, integrate animations and many more. Well not all the these tools offer the same features but the basic functionalities like uploading , editing, and sharing are present in all of them. All the tools covered here are free.

Here is the list:

1- Magisto

Magisto is a cloud based video editing tool that allows its users to :

• Edit videos without the need for any advanced editing skills
• Tag people in videos
• Share videos in different social networking websites
• It is free and easy to use

2- WeVideo

WeVideo is another video editing tool that enables its users to :

• Edit videos online
• Share edited videos with friends in social networks
• It offers 1 GB storage space

3-  CellSea

CellSea is a free video editor and converter that does a number of things:

• It lets you add videos from your computer or from anywhere online
• It allows you to download  edited videos in 3GP, AVI, MOV, MP4, and FLV
• It is free and easy to use
• It has a very user friendly interface
• It requires a registration

4- Stroome

Stroome is an online  collaborative video editing tool. It offers several features :

• It lets you connect to a community of online video editors
• You can search and find clips created by the community members and use it in your own projects.
• Real time video editing either alone or with friends
• You can tag clips for archiving

5-  Kaltura

Kaltura is a " Wikipedia of video, audio and animation". It offers its users :

• The ability to create easy to use platforms for video projects
• Users can create their own personalized video pages and invite others to add or edit it
• Users can embed their collaborative projects anywhere online.

6- VideoToolBox

VideoToolBox is a video editing program. It allows its users to :

• Upload videos and edit them the way they want
• You  can mix videos, add or  change audio tracks
• You can also add watermarks, paints and text notes etc
• You can convert,  cut , crop, demux, and merge several video files into
• It is free and easy to use.

7- PhotoBucket

PhotoBucket is a very famous video platform. It allows its users to :

• Upload videos from the web or from their computers
• It offers several editing options such as adding text, titles, music to the background
• It also lets you cut and crop videos and add transitions effects
• It allows you to embed and share videos on video sharing sites and social networks

8- Overstream

Overstream is a great video editing tool. It allows users to :

• Add subtitles and comments in any language  to videos
• Easily create and synchronize subtitles to any video
• Store the edited videos on Overstream server and send the link to your friends to see it
• It supports most of the video providers

9- Lightworks

Lightworks project offers a lightweight, free and open source video editing software that offers the same features other pro softwares offer such as CutPro. Adobe Premiere, Avid Video Premiere.











As I said before There are many other important video tools that I have covered previously in this blog. I invite you to check the category labelled Free Video Tools to learn more about other tools.

Eclipse Crossword Easily Create Crossword Puzzles

Eclipse Crossword is a web tool that enables its users to create engaging puzzles instantly and with no charge at all.This is an important tool for teachers teaching languages. They can use it to review vocabulary and drill some items covered during the lesson. Other teachers can also find creative ways to use Eclipse Crossword in their classrooms. It is a proved fact that students love challenging games and would definitely enjoy working on assignments in the form of puzzles. Their logical, critical thinking will be largely enhanced and their spelling errors will also be minimized.

Some features of Eclipse Crossword

Here are some of the important features that Eclipse Crossword offers to its users:

It is free
It is easy to use
It has a student friendly interface
It requires a download but this takes only a couple of minutes
Crosswords can be printed or uploaded into other websites or blogs.

Head over to Eclipse Crossword main page and give it a try.

Online Safety Tips and Tools to Protect Kids and Inform Parents about Internet dangers

Internet safety, privacy issues, cyberbullying are but some of the major concerns of today's parents. It is true that the web revolution has positively affected many facets of our life, yet its downsides are equally devastating. We are in front of a double edged weapon that requires meticulous attention when using it.
It is impossible to imagine a house without internet connection. The web has crawled into our social texture to the point that we become dependant on its use in our daily life. Besides sending and reading emails, chat and socialising which are basic tasks users would constantly  perform, some people are using it now for e-commerce to buy and shop online, to read ebooks, to run businesses but regardless of the reasons why we have internet at home we should always pay heed to who shares with us this connection especially when it comes to kids.

Kids when unmonitored can have free access to the net and surf in dangerous places , meet strange people and even learn new bad things we never thought they would. And because of their immaturity, innocence and predisposition to easily trust others, . children are the most vulnerable category to cyber bullying and in many cases abuse. Do parents know about these alarming facts ? Of course the majority ,if not all of them know, but the thing is that  they feel helpless and lack the necessary education on the preventive measures they need in order to seamlessly monitor what their kids do online. This ignorance, shortage of insight or call it whatever you want is no longer excused. Parents need to seriuosly address this issue and to help them do so, I have laboriously worked on several resources to compile a list of some of the tools that parents need to be equipped with to face this looming danger that threatens our kids safety.You do not need to be a technology geek or have advanced computer skills to be able to use these web applications. They are mundanely easy and can be used by anyone with the basic internet skills which all of you possess since you are here reading this post.


1-Creepsquash

Creepsquash is a  web based monitoring tool that allows you to seamlessly monitor your kids Facebook activity without invading their privacy. Here is a short video to show you how to do it




2-  MinorMonitor

MinorMonitor is another web application that helps in  monitoring kids activity on Facebook. It can :
Provide you with your kids' details such as status updates, friend lists , photos, and checked in places
Automatically analyzes and identifies possible bullying, drug use, sexual references, solicitation, profanity and more.
Watch this video to learn more





Yahoo Safely

Yahoo Safely is the official Yahoo security tips website. It provides Internet safety tips for both parents and teenagers. It contains sections designed specifically for parents and kids to teach them how to use the internet carefully and responsibly.


Family Safety Centre

Family Safety Centre is a portal made by Google where it aggregates a huge number of Internet security tips, videos and articles. Besides the tools offered by Google services, users can also watch videos made by other parents on how kids can use the internet safely. Family Safety Centre also provides ways for parents on how to report abuse or inappropriate content on its services.






NetSmartz

NetSmartz is a great website that educates its users on Internet Safety for kids. It addresses parents, teachers, teens, educatos, law enforcement . This is what it says about parents :

Wired Safely

Wired Safely is another fantastic website that teaches about online  kids safety. It covers topics such as: cyberbulling, cyberstalking,cyber crimes, online harassement , identity theft, email safety, malware and adware, phishing, downloading music safely and online gaming safety.





SafeKids

SafeKids is much more of a blog than a website. It covers internet safety for kids and has several  articles all of which tackle the issue of kids surfing the net safely.








Cybersmart

Cybersmart provides activities, resources and practical advice to help teens, kids and parents safely use the internet. It also offers training and resources for schools and materials for library staff.







Solos

Solos is another website that offfers education on internet safety for kids and parents.