Chalkfly - Order School Supplies and Support Teachers in your Community

Chalkfly is a office and school supplies online retailer looking to match wits with Amazon, Staples, and other office supply stores.  There are several categories from over 50,000 supplies that users can choose from.  Chalkfly hopes that users will like their site because it has an easy and simple user interface which will make for a more friendly shopping experience.  Chalkfly has a 365 day return policy, offers of free overnight shipping, and 24 hour customer service.

In order to further separate itself from competitors, Chalkfly will donate 5% of every sale to a school or teacher of the customer's choosing.  Teachers can sign up and include their name and school name in the online registry for parents to complete shopping on the site for their classroom (Similar to a wedding or baby registry).  Customers can also look for a teacher to donate to even if they don't have a registry but have signed up for the website.  If a teacher is not on the list, customers can add their own as well.  If a teacher or school is not selected, Chalkfly will make the donation to a school or teacher in close proximity to the customer.  Learn more about the Registry HERE.

In order to make Chalkfly successful, it would be worthwhile to share it with local businesses as a method of supporting your school while buying supplies they already need.  Teachers could also share with parents for when they are purchasing supplies for their students in the teacher's classroom.

When doing a price comparison, they were cheaper on my favorite pen (Pilot G2) by a penny.  With free shipping and supporting teachers and schools in my area, it is a logical choice in choosing to shop with Chalkfly.  

PrintFriendly - Clean Up How You Print

As a social studies teacher I would have my students complete a current events journal by using articles found on the Internet.  I also required students to include a copy of the article for each entry.  I remember getting several pages for articles because of ads and pictures that were not necessary.  It was a waste of ink and a waste of paper.  With a service like PrintFriendly, students and teachers can use the service to clean up a website to only include the important information for a page and make it more....printer friendly.

To use the service, users can copy and paste a link and get a print preview or they can get a bookmarklet for their browser that will allow them to easily print articles from sites they visit.  It might be worthwhile to have computer lab assistants put this bookmarklet on computers in the lab.  If you have your own blog or teacher website, you can also get a button that visitors can use.

To learn more about PrintFriendly, see the video below.

Reveal.js - "Cubed" Presentation Tool

Reveal.js or rvl.io is a new browser based presentation tool that makes presentations in a cubed type format.   Users can create a presentation and then go left, right, up, down and vice versa.  The editing is simple and presentation styles are applied to the slides while being edited so that users know exactly what they are getting.  Presentations can be viewed in any modern browser, including mobile devices.  Themes and transitions allow users to make sure the presentation appears just the way they want them too.  Presentations are private, but can be published and made available to everyone.   Users can also export their presentations for when internet is not available.  The presentations are HTML documents, so if users have HTML experience, they can alter the code using the HTML editor.

Users can sign in using OpenID, Google, Yahoo!, or AOL.  For more information and to see rvl.io in action, see the video below.

Moku - Your Docs, Your Notes, Your Pals

Moku is currently in beta and requires an invite code to use at this point.  However, the software seems very promising as a note-taking tool and a method of collecting and collaborating on documents all within the browser (IE not included).  All notes and documents are securely stored in the cloud.  With all documents, users can highlight, sketch, and create text-based notes on any document saved in the cloud.  The markups are saved on a transparent layer over the original document, therefore not risking "damaging" any document. Users of Moku have the option to keep documents private or share with others.

Screenbird - Screencasting Tool

Screenbird is another option for users looking for a screen-casting tool.  There is no sign-in required to use the service and when finished with the recording, users can get a private or public link to their video.  Users can record just a part of the screen or the entire screen and even redo parts of the recording if necessary.  With the free (Basic) account users can record 150 minutes of video and the video will expire in 6 months.  The free account does limit collaboration though.  To learn more, see the video tutorial.  If looking for a quick option to screen-cast, this could be an option for you.