Kwik Surveys

Kwik Surveys offers user the ability to create "quick" and easy surveys or forms for completely free.  You have an unlimited number of questions, answers, and surveys that you can create.  Visit Kwik Surveys to see all the features that they advertise, saving me from the trouble of reinventing the wheel and typing it all here.  You can view a 2 Question Demo survey to get an idea of how it will look.  No sign up is necessary, just click on the "Create" button and start creating your own survey.  If you want to save your surveys you will need to create an account however.

Kwik Surveys will be a great way to start the school year and discover information about your students and retrieve results without all the paperwork.  I used a lot of surveys in my classes for the purpose of creating discussion in class.  This site would be useful in getting opinions on hot topics to discuss in classes such as Sociology and History. 

Newsy

Newsy is a site dedicated to merging news stories from various sources into one video clip.  They use various news agencies, newspapers, magazines, and websites to create the story thus provide various views on a news story. 

The news is broken down in to popular categories (US, World, Politics, Business, Tech, Health/Science, and Sports.  I like the organization of Newsy for the purpose of covering current events and getting different views.  It can help create discussion because of the different views you get about different stories.  You could easily adapt the stories from Newsy to many of the subjects in schools while providing an unbiased view.

TinEye - Reverse Image Search

TinEye is a reverse image search engine.  You can upload an image from your computer and search the Internet for it.  You can also paste a image URL and find other places that the image exist on the Internet.  What is neat is that you don't necessarily have to have the same file name.  TinEye will use Image Identification Technology, not keywords, metadata, or watermarks.  The site currently has 1.6 billion images indexed for you to use in your search.

TinEye would be a great site to use to check on students using images in a presentation but did not site the source for where they received the image.  It will also help with those teachers who have students publishing websites to ensure that students did not use copyrighted photos. 

Livestation

Livestation is a site that allows you to watch live TV and listen to radio.  The TV stations are centered around news stations, but Livestation would be a great tool for classrooms that are studying current events and want to see news from other parts of the world.  There are several channels that would be of interest to teachers and provide an alternate source to news.  News stations include Al Jazeera, BBC, NASA, and United Nations.  A valuable news source separate from network and cable news stations that most, at least Americans, are used too.  You can also watch the news from their mobile station on the iPhone and Blackberry.

OneExtraLap - Social Quizzing

OneExtraLap is a site dedicated to the idea of creating a quiz, making it social, and then turning that quiz into a competition.  It allows you to create and take compelling and content rich quizzes while competing with friends and earning points and badges.  Sign up is easy.  Username, Password, and Email address.

Each quiz is limited to 9 questions, but each question can have up to 9 answers, so you could also turn your quiz into a survey.  You can also tag your quizzes making it easy for students to find them online and take them.  I think a site like this could really take off if they created a way to create teacher accounts.  It would be a great way to create competition online for your students and provide another way for your to assess your students.  It is still in its infancy, but I think the site shows some promise of being useful and neat.