Just when I think I’ve reached my “wow” capacity about what the Internet can do, I’m blown away yet again by something some very creative person came up with!

The new “wow” in my life is Live Binders, and here are the top 4 reasons why:

1. It’s FREE
   
2. It’s EASY
   
3. The potential is MIND BLOWING, and finally...
4. they give you access to a huge number of other people’s wonderful binders!  A virtual library listing fabulous resources that we parents and teachers have wasted an entire day searching for.

I know I have.  I sit down early in the morning with great expectations of getting a zillion things done, start my research, and get lost in cyber space only to come up short at trying to find what I was looking for, with little accomplished except a feeling of frustration + a headache. 

Sound familiar?  And how many times have I heard this frantic complaint on one of my mail rings:   “Does anyone know this site… it’s one of my favorites but my computer has a virus/crashed, or the school deleted everyone’s files over the summer!”

LiveBinders solves it all.

You can keep it private and allow only a select few to view your binder,  (giving access via a password) or allow the public access.  Besides having a library listing of all your favorite sites this is a great tool to use for educating your students!

Your students can find homework assignments, complete research, review articles, view YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, or whatever else you can dream up within the scope of the tools of LiveBinder, as additional design features allow teachers to upload resources in the form of PDF’s, images, presentations, documents etc.

So what are the benefits?

• It’s free
• It’s easy
• They have a bookmark icon that sits on your toolbar to instantly add sites to your binder, and you can add your binder icon to your desktop.
• It’s fun
• It’s something different that your students will enjoy.
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• It makes you look wonderfully computer savvy and up-to-date.
• Material and resources are up loadable from any computer, anytime, and anywhere with Internet access.
• Use your own blog to provide students’ access to your binder.
• This is a "new" kind of library for you to use other people’s binders to gather more cool website info.
• Use a binder to create a library of resources for yourself, students, and fellow teachers.
• Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts to share your binders and enjoy the power of networking.
• Total storage per account is 100MB, so you can create multiple binders!

These are just a few of the reasons LiveBinders was selected as one of the Top 25 Websites for teaching and learning in 2010!  Click on the link to start one today.

Great Binders:

One of the featured binders for this blog is an awesome summer reading binder made by a mom.  She has reading lists, online reading, literacy activities, reading programs &  parent tips!  Click on the link to check it out.

Many teachers in my mail ring have been asking about "cool apps" for their i Pods and i Pads for the classroom.  I even found a binder for that! Click on the link and then click on the "Apps Review" tab.     iPod/iPad binder. 

User "Sparkley" has also made a binder for Apps. Sparkley has 60 (!) other interesting binders as well as several on  Best Blogs! Click on that link.

Finally, I know how many of you love bulletin board ideas. I found an education binder designed by "KB Konnected" who has 73 binders (!) that I think many teachers  would be interested in.  Click on the link to check out her awesome bulletin board one.

I know you will have a blast checking out the many fun binders on this site as well as making your own.

My binder is entitled Great Sites for Elementary Teachers.  It’s private right now, as I’m in the process of building it, for now you can check my LINKS above on the menu bar.

Happy Binder-Building!