perhaps an answer to virtually free email

OK, nothing is every truly free (so far this blogger is the closest thing I've found). Many of the "free" email accounts out there are riddled with spam and unwanted visual advertising. This can be harmful and confusing to some of my students.

I have heard about Gmail - it's from Google. You need a cell phone number to get an account (they need it to send you a text message to activate your account and can open up to 10). There is no full color, blinking advertising, but there is some text advertising similar to what you see when you use Google to conduct searches. It may be worth checking into.

Gmail

YackPacks and talking emails!?!?

Seems like a cool piece of free technology for the non-writers, but who definitely have something to say! I created one here, feel free to chime in with a comment.

My Yack

Here is another cool spoken language solution for those with great difficulty writing. Now you can send emails as recorded speech without having to change anything about your email account or how you access it. Cool and free!

Springdoo

Charting the C's 2006

Had a great time at Charting the Cs. I wanted to quickly publish some of my favorite on-line resource I got from the conference. I'll come back and organize this stuff later. For now, I just need to get it posted....

http://www.eduscapes.com/tap/topic93.htm electronic books resources and links
www.tumblebooks.com - excellent but not free. You can get a 30 day free trial subscription
http://www.weread.org/kids/ - Just a few online story books and games. Not much here, but worth a look.

http://www.allkindsofminds.org/ptk/writingbasics.aspx - This is an interesting overview on the writing process from a developmental perspective. There are also a couple of cool demonstrations on how it feels to try and write with a disability.

www.unitedstreaming.com - a fee based service that has tons of videos, lesson plans, pictures and articles which can be used to build background knowledge and interest in topics for students to build literacy from. Free 30 day trial allows access to all the content. Check it out!

http://www.learningmagicinc.com/goodies/categories/lang.html - this is a collection of ready-made books for use with Intellitools studio or suite.