Tools for Teachers - BigHugeLabs

This week I was introduced to a great free online tool in my tech tools and instructional strategies class.  Bighugelabsis a website that has many applications in the classroom. I was in a room full of middle school, elementary, and high school educators and all of us came up with ideas of how to use it in our content area. The website actually has several different areas that could be used in a classroom setting. Badge Maker, Magazine Cover, Map Maker, and Motivator were my favorites.

Also, you can use all of these without registering for the site, but they do have the option of signing up for a free educator account. The educator account would give you the capabilities to download your students' creations, pre-register them without email addresses, and gives you ad-free access to the site. I applied for my educator account today - I'll update later to let you know when I get confirmation.

• Badge Maker - Students can create badges with pictures and short descriptions. This could be used for many subjects - historic figure studies, character studies, math, science, foreign language, etcetera. The badge maker gives you the option of including a large chunk of text, which some of the others do not.

• Motivator - I thought this would be a good source for short, simple statements/descriptions.

• Magazine Cover - this is similar to Badge Maker, but has small text boxes that could be used to short facts or adjectives describing the topic.

 If you haven't used it, I highly recommend you check it out. I'm looking forward to using it with my students soon. I think the BadgeMaker would be great for studying the historic figures of the Renaissance!