Found something really cool? Add it to the list! We're always looking for great ideas. Or try playing with some of the technologies linked below for your own uses. We'll start with this list for ideas when we make plans for the 2014 Tech Showcase. 

 

See all pages: Tech ideas  |  Mobile apps  |  Equipment and other  |  Lists of technologies  |  Using tech in the library  |  Training

 

A

Audacity - Free open source software that can be used for sound recording and editing. Record audio, convert tapes and records, edit sound files, and re-mix sounds. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Animoto - Customize videos and share

 

B

Batchgeo - Create a Google Map Mashup with your data, just by uploading a spreadsheet. (2011 Tech Showcase) 

BiblioBoard - a free authoring tool that allows users to create their own multimedia Anthologies and make them accessible to individuals and libraries around the globe.

BibMe citation generator to help students create citations for books, articles, websites and more in APA and MLA styles. (2010 tech showcase)

Big Marker – free web conferencing service and community that allows you to hold meetings or webinars and view and mark up documents with whiteboard tools (no text tool). Connect with webcams, VOIP and chat. Phone-in option available also. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Blendspace -- create digital lessons in 5 minutes

Blooki.st - blogging platform that, oddly enough, lets visitors wander through photographs, essays and personal stories (added 05/07/2013)

blubbr -- allows you to string together YouTube clips to create interactive trivia games or "Trivs." (added 4/3/2013)

BringFocus -  -- helps you finish work quicker by being focused. (2012 Showcase)

bubbl.us -- online mind-mapping

Buncee -- also edu.buncee.com - digital storytelling with students, encouraging engagement through multimedia lessons and projects; create cards, etc. It is a lot of fun 

 

C

ChartsBin -- visualize your data

CitationMachine - citation generator to help students create citations for books, articles, websites and more in APA and MLA styles. (2010 tech showcase)

Clipping Magic -- quick, easy way to clip a photo from its background.

CommaFeed -- open source Google Reader replacement.

Common Sense Media - has an educators section that includes complete lesson plans, activity sheets, and videos for topics like: digital citizenship, cyberbullying, digital footprints, research, and information literacy. It is a great place to find ideas for middle school internet safety and research classes. (2010 tech showcase)

Corkboard.me - online sticky note sharing site. Arrange pictures or notes any way you want. Easy to share and use.  (2011 Tech Showcase)

Cowbird - Cowbird makes it easy for anyone to author beautiful multimedia stories, incorporating text, photos, sound, subtitles, roles, relationships, maps, tags, timelines, dedications, and characters — mixing elements of traditional storytelling with elements of technology. (2012 Showcase)

Creately - Online diagramming/information graphing tool that lets you create, share and collaborate. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Cube Creator- Educational tool for students to create “cubes” of information to identify and summarize key elements of a biography, mystery, story (2012 Showcase)

 

D

Dashlane - your secure personal data assistant. Buy online, fill in forms fast, save your purchases, IDs, passwords & important info in a place only you can access. (2012 Showcase)

Digress.it - Wordpress plug-in that lets you comment on a text paragraph by paragraph.  Use it to get public comment on blogs, reports, or even books. (2011 Tech Showcase) 

Digital Public Library of America -- 

Doodle - fast and free online tool for scheduling group meetings. No more fights with out-of-date Outlook calendars; let attendees mark their own availability on the doodle site.  (2010 tech showcase)

Downloadr - fast way to batch download photos from Flickr. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Dropbox - allows you to store your documents online, access them from multiple computers or from an iPhone, iPad or Android, and share them with others. Files sync automatically, so no more digging through email attachments to find the latest version. (2010 tech showcase)

 

E

Easel.ly -- quick and easy infographics

Easy Notecards - A place for students and teachers to create, study, print and share interactive notecards for their textbooks. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Edmodo is an easy and safe way to teach basic social networking/digital citizenship skills. Edmodo lets teachers create accounts where they can add students (without a required email address!) to groups or classes, monitor discussions, collect assignments, and even do RSS feeds--for free! A great way to teach appropriate social network behavior or even handle overseas pen pals. (2010 tech showcase)

Elephind -- search the world's historical newspaper archives online 

Eventbrite - online event registration (2012 Showcase)

Evernote - where good ideas go to thrive.  Software designed for note taking and saving different types of files in one place, accessible via your computer, the web, or smartphone.    (2011 Tech Showcase) 

 

F

Favstar.fm -- From Aliza Sherman on Facebook: "Aimee Giese (@greeblemonkey) just told me about Favstar.fm - an app that shows you a mix of tweets favorited by your followers and popular tweets. You can also make Favstar lists of your favorite Twitter peeps to see more of what they favorite."

faxZERO - freely send a fax to anyone in the U.S. or Canada via the web. (2010 tech showcase)

Feedly - a solution if you are tired of the plain look of Google Reader. This browser add-on creates a magazine/digest feel for your existing Google Reader account and allows easy sharing with other social networks. (2010 tech showcase)

Flipboard -- an app to organize things from the web into your own personalized magazines (2014 Tech Showcase)

Flixtime - An online, easy to use photograph and video slide show creator.  Create basic 60 second videos for free, or pay a reasonable fee to make longer videos and have more editing options. (2011 Tech Showcase)  

Foodspotting 

Freedom - If the internet is distracting you from your work, Freedom is the world-famous app that locks you away from the 'net so you can be productive. 

Fur.ly - .shorten up to 50 URLs into one. A convenient application of choosing multiple URLs and combining them into just one.  Perfect for a teacher wanting to create a web quest where students are guided through multiple resources, or to send a potential WLA conference goer several pages about the Fall conference (2011 Tech Showcase)

 

G

Georeferencer -- on the David Rumsey maps site.  Overlay old maps with new ones to see changes over time.

GIMP - an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Glogster - provides an environment to design interactive posters. The user inserts text, images, photos, audio, videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation. (2010 tech showcase)

Goodreads -  the largest site for readers and book recommendations in the world. (2012 Showcase)

Google+ - the new social network developed by Google that is set to compete with Facebook. It emphasizes the simplicity of deciding what you share with what people. No longer do you have to worry about who sees what you post. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Google Apps for Business - An enterprise suite of web-based messaging and collaboration applications for businesses, schools and other organizations.  In 2011, Wyoming state government transitioned 10,000 employees to Google Apps with the expectation of saving over $1 million annually.  Google Apps includes as a core offering, Gmail for business, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and more for $5 per user per month.(2011 Tech Showcase)

Google Cloud Print - Connects your printers to the web. You can make your home and work printers available to you and anyone you choose, from the applications you use every day. Google Cloud Print works on your phone, tablet, desktop computer, and any other web-connected device you want to print from. (2012 Showcase)

Google Forms creates instant survey forms! Create a simple form with your Google account, customize it, email it to your recipients or embed it in your website and get your responses automatically compiled in a Google Doc spreadsheet. www.google.com/google-d-s/forms (2010 tech showcase)

Google Fusion Tables -- create map mashups easily

Google Goggles - Take a picture of text or an object, Goggles scans the image and searches across Google products (“everything,” images, places, news, shopping, videos, books, blogs, discussions) for more information, including translations. Available on iPhone and Android. (2012 Showcase)

Google Public Alerts

Google Sites - Free website creation (2012 Showcase) 

Google Translate - A free translation service that provides instant translations between 64 different languages. It can translate words, sentences and web pages between any combination of the supported languages. (2012 Showcase)

Google Voice - Make every phone your only phone. Google Voice gives you one phone number that works on every phone you're around. (2012 Showcase)

 

H

Historypin - a Google Maps mashup site that lets people overlay historical photos over the top of current day Google maps. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Hootsuite - The way to manage an organizational Twitter account.. Monitor and post to multiple social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, using the HootSuite dashboard.(2011 Tech Showcase)

 

I

ifttt - A powerful way to automate tasks across several popular internet services such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, etc. using a simple phrase: if this, then that. (2012 Showcase)

Image Chef - Free creative community where you can express yourself using photos, text and more (2012 Showcase) 

IndieGoGo - A crowdfunding solution that empowers ideas and enables people to donate funds easily. It offers tools and support to help you promote your campaign and raise funds quickly, easily and securely. (2012 Showcase)

Infogr.am -- easy infographics

Inkscape  - Open source vector graphics editor (2012 Showcase)

Instagr.am - a way to share moments of your life through pictures taken on your iOS devices (android support is coming). Using retro filters you can share photos you take with your social networks easily and artistically. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Instapaper - facilitates easy reading of long text content. We discover web content throughout the day, and sometimes, we don’t have time to read long articles right when we find them. Instapaper allows you to easily save them for later, when you do have time, so you don’t just forget about them or skim through them. The times we find information aren’t always ideal for consuming it. Instapaper helps you bridge that gap. (2011 Tech Showcase)

iTools - Find and share the best tools to get whatever you want done. Simply. (2012 Showcase)

 

J

Jing is a free, simple software solution for easy screenshots and short screencasts. Enhance your reference and instruction with visual aids captured with Jing. (2010 tech showcase)

join.me -- a simple screen sharing tool for meetings on the fly.

 

K

Kizoa - slideshow maker

KnightCite - tool to help students create citations for books, articles, websites and more in APA and MLA styles. (Comparison with BibMe and Citation Machine in presentation slides.) (2010 tech showcase)

 

L

Learnist - Curate the web to share what you know (2012 Showcase) 

LeechBlock - A simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them. (2012 Showcase)

Library Extension -- Chrome extension that searches your local library when you're searching materials on Amazon

LibraryThing - A cataloging and social networking site for book lovers. You can create a library-quality catalog of books, contribute tags, ratings and reviews, participate in member forums or join the Early Reviewers program. (2012 Showcase) 

Lifehacker - overwhelmed by all the tools out there? Don’t know where to look? Try Lifehacker – a site dedicated to helping you streamline your life and be more productive both online and off. www.lifehacker.com (2010 tech showcase)

Linoit -  Online sticky note sharing sites. Arrange pictures or notes any way you want. Easy to share and use.  (2011 Tech Showcase)

LiveBinders - Your 3-ring binder for the web. See a great example for Free Technology Tools for Teachers.

 

M

MailChimp - Create professional looking email campaigns with concrete analytics all for free. (2012 Showcase)

Many Eyes - A free interactive visualization experiment by IBM Research and the IBM Cognos software group.  It is a collection of data visualizations which allows users to create visualizations of their own data, discuss their discoveries, and be involved with the visualizations and data sets of others.  Once registered you can rate data sets, select items to watch, and create & participate in topic centers. (2011 Tech Showcase)

MapBox - Easily add fast beautiful maps to your sites and apps.

MapBuilder - A mashup development tool to build custom Google and Yahoo maps without any knowledge of the Google/Yahoo Maps API and JavaScript. MapBuilder lets users tag locations on their maps, and then publish the map either on MapBuilder.net or their own website. (2012 Showcase)

Masher - an online video-editing and messaging tool. You can create your mashes by uploading and combining your videos and images with the extensive footage, music, transitions, special effects and skins all for free. Create a movie, video greeting card or slideshow. When you’re ready, easily share your mash by email, post to your blog or website, or publish to your favorite online social network. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Mashpedia - aggregates content from multiple web services to provide an integral and real-time outlook of every topic. It allows users to discover and consume related digital materials loaded from Wikipedia, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, newspapers, magazines, books and further sources in one single place. (2010 tech showcase) 

Mendeley - a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research.

Mog - MOG is a new kind of online music service. One that lets you listen instantly to high audio-quality music directly from your computer’s web browser, our desktop app, your favorite mobile device or many other consumer electronic devices. With MOG there’s no need to download songs, manage an mp3 collection or buy music piecemeal. And with over 16 million songs legally acquired from every major music label and thousands of indies, it’s easy to create a music experience tailored just for you. (2012 Showcase) 

MP3Tag - Metadata editor for audio files (2012 Showcase)

 

N

NeoOffice -- OpenOffice for Mac OS

Newspaper Clipping Generator - Free and fun way to create newspaper clippings with your own headline and story.  Key in any info and it generates a newspaper clipping for you to use in a presentation, blog, report, etc. (2011 Tech Showcase)

NextStories - Install a NextStories bookmarklet onto your web browsers tool bar. When you're done reading a news article click the book mark and it will show you other articles related to it.  ( added 7/2013)

NoteFlight - free online music notation software that lets the user link to, embed, and share music scores online. Includes audio playback and midi capabilities. Great for students AND teachers! (2010 tech showcase)

 

O

Omeka - free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions. Omeka uses the Dublin Core standard. (2010 tech showcase) 

Open Library

OpenOffice - free, easy to use, open source office productivity software that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases. (2010 tech showcase)

Overstream - Add captions to any video. (2011 Tech Showcase)

 

P

paper.li -- create your own online newspaper from your favorite sources (2012 Showcase)

Papers 

PhotoStory3 - allows users to create a show and tell presentation from their digital photos. The software allows adding narration, effects, transitions and background music to create a Windows Media Video movie file with pan and zoom effects. (2010 tech showcase)

Picasa -  software lets you organize, edit, and upload photos. Web Albums provides 1GB of free storage that makes sharing photos a snap. (2012 Showcase)

Piktochart -- easy infographic creation

Pinboard

Pinterest -- see Pinterest How To Page for more links (2012 Showcase)

Pixenate -- online photo editing

Pixlr is a free online photo editing tool comparable to the full version of Photoshop. It has gadgets and tools to do just about anything you want to pictures on the web and from your computer. (2010 tech showcase)

Posteroven -- "Enhance your social media marketing. Create, download, and print a poster in minutes." (mentioned in the book Free Technologies for Libraries by Amy Deschenes)

Prezi is a web-based presentation application and storytelling tool that uses a single canvas instead of traditional slides. Text, images, videos and other presentation objects are placed on the infinite canvas and grouped together in frames. The canvas allows users to create non-linear presentations, where they can zoom in and out of a visual map. A path through different objects and frames can be defined, representing the order of the information to be presented. (2010 tech showcase)

PrintWhatYouLike lets you print the good parts of any web page while skipping the ads and junk.

Priveazy - Tired of playing privacy whack-a-mole with Facebook? Priveazy is a Chrome extension that walks you through settings to protect your online privacy on numerous common sites such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo. For those using other browsers, there is an online learning center. (2012 Showcase)

 

R

Remember the Milk - to-do list (2012 Showcase)

ResumeBuilder - Free tool where you select a template,  enter your information and it creates your resume (requires a free account, and saves your resume). (added 7/2013)

RSS Mix

 

S

Scribblar - Free, interactive online whiteboard for simple, effective collaboration. Audio, image collaboration, text-chat and more. Great for training or brainstorming. (2011 Tech Showcase) 

Scribble Maps

Scrible - Free toolbar that allows you to add annotations to web pages and save, organize, share, and export them. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Scribus -- open source desktop publishing

Simple Booklet -  Easily create free promotions, product guides and brochures you can post to your website and across the social web. Create newsletters, reports, flashcards, and walkthroughs you can post everywhere on the web. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Smore

Spotify - A free music service that sounds too good to be true. Listen to all the music that you want to when you want. (2012 Showcase)

Storify - Pull information from social media (tweets, videos, photos, and links) and use them to build stories with your own commentary to share on your social networking site or webpage. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Soundtracking 

StackLife -- Searches DPLA, Open Library and Hathi all at once w/results showing up as scrollable library shelves.

Storybook -- open source novel writing software for creative writers.

 

T

Tagxedo - Turn words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning word clouds and word pictures, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text.  Easily saved and shared. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Task List Guru - Task List Guru is a simple, handy to-do list that helps you organize your workload in a more effective way, increasing your productivity without too much stress. (2012 Showcase)

Thinkfinity is a web portal that lets users search eight different educational content partners at once: ArtsEdge, ReadWriteThink, Science Netlinks, EconEdlink, National Geographic's Expeditions, Smithsonian's History Explorer, Illuminations (math), and EdSitemen to find tens of thousands of lesson plans, interactives, printables, and more. Most resources are aligned to standards. Also contains online professional development opportunities. (2010 tech showcase) 

ThingLink -- Create rich images with music, video, sound, text & more. Share and discover deeper stories through images.

Tildee

Tumblr - A micro blogging platform used to share thoughts or moments with friends and followers. Think of something in-between the 140 character limit of Twitter and a full blown blog. (2011 Tech Showcase)

TweetDeck - Twittering?  Want to be really social, try TweetDeck! TweetDeck is your personal real-time browser, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Typewith.me - An easy, quick way to encourage online collaboration. Sixteen people can simultaneously work together on a project at the same time.  Import a .pdf, WORD, or .html file. Chat option available as well.

 

U

unglue.it

Urbanspoon - A great restaurant tool, even for rural Wyoming. It has free mobile apps for Android, BlackBerry and iPhone users.  While you can search for information and vote on restaurants without an Urbanspoon account, you’ll need one to share experiences, post photos, get recommendations, create a wishlist of restaurants you’d like to visit, and more. Everybody who joins can make Urbanspoon a little better. (2011 Tech Showcase)

URLI.ST - list making and sharing service that integrates a generic bookmark engine, a link shortener and a sharing tool for discovering new websites, rather like Stumbleupon.com. (added 2013)

 

V

Versu -- from the creators of Second Life, an interactive storytelling platform that builds experiences around characters and social interaction. Sort of an online version of the create your own story books where the outcomes depend on your choices. Opportunities for writers to create and monetize content. 

Viewshare --  a free platform for generating and customizing views (interactive maps, timelines, facets, tag clouds) that allow users to experience your digital collections.

visual.ly -- infographic creator

Vocaroo - Vocaroo is a shiny new service for sending voice messages across the Web. Use a microphone for recording. Uses FLASH.  There is no limit on message length. Messages can be downloaded as a .wav or .ogg file. Messages will expire after 5 months. (2011 Tech Showcase)

VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in four ways - using voice, text, audio file, or video. Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too.  (2010 tech showcase) 

Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog, profile, and in email messages. You can customize your Voki to look like you and speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone.  (2010 tech showcase)

 

W

Weave - Weave makes sure that you never forget a to-do. Quickly enter to-dos wherever you are and get alerts when you have an upcoming to-do. (2012 Showcase)

Weebly - A Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to create free websites using a simple What You See is What You Get interface.  (2011 Tech Showcase) 

WifiDog is an open source captive portal software for authenticating and collecting usage statistics of public wifi users.  (2010 tech showcase) 

Wikispaces allows users to quickly create a free website or online space for easy collaboration. You don’t need to know any code to get it up and running.  (2010 tech showcase)

With 

WIX - Allows you to easily create a free flash based website. (2011 Tech Showcase)

Wordle allows you to create free word clouds from any large chunk of text, any blog, or delicious account. Build beautiful and customized visual displays of the most common words.  (2010 tech showcase)

Workrave - Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit. (2012 Showcase)

 

X

Xtranormal is simple text to movie web-based application. Pick one or two cartoon actors, type in their lines, insert a few actions, and publish.  (2010 tech showcase) 

 

Y

Yola is a free online web design tool that will help you and your patrons create professional looking websites. Simple and easy to use, Yola is especially good for librarians, small and home based business owners, genealogists and anyone else that wants a fully functioning website.  (2010 tech showcase) 

 

Z

 Zamzar is a web application that allows user to convert files without downloading a software tool. Users can type in a URL or upload one or more files from their computer.  (2010 tech showcase) 

Zotero - a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself. (2012 Showcase)