Teacher Tool Box
Recommended Tools and Guides
I've often been asked what tools do I use for creating my websites, videos, tests, and my bookkeeping tutorials. The tools I've listed below are the one's I've actually used or I'm planning on using and recommend for teachers/instructors, small businesses, affilaite marketers, or anyone needing to create websites, videos, tests, or courses.
How can you actually tell, if a product is actualy any good or a waste of money ? Although some products offer free trial versions, most of the time you have to spend your money and try it out. I'm guilty, I've bought some lemons and no I couldn't make lemonade. In many of my recommended products below, I've included an example of how I've used the software or tool.
Up Front
So you know, by you purchasing these products you are supporting my site because I make a small commission on sales. Notice I said small! While I do recommend and use these products, you do the research and see if any of my recommendations might be helpful to you. Some of my recommended products are actually free.
They say a pictures worth a thousand words. Nowadays, video is king. We've all gotten a little bit lazy. I'd rather watch the movie version than read the book version.
Video Makers
Experience the fastest animated doodle maker on the planet. This first-to-market A.I. technology simplifies video creation to save you hours. It does all the heavy lifting to produce premium quality videos on any topic.
Animaytor is an innovative video software that gives you professional animation videos at your fingertips. Studio quality and highly engaging explainer videos to capture, fascinate and get you customer attention.
Stand Out From The Crowd & Crush Your Competition With Customizable “Talking 3D Avatars”.
Doodly Is The First And Only Whiteboard Animation Software To Allow Anyone, Regardless Of Technical Or Design Skills To Create Professional, Realistic Whiteboard Videos In Minutes.
Create Your First Cartoon Explainer Video In The Next 60 Seconds!
RenderForest provides free tools to create professional intros, animations, slideshows, promos, and logos without any trchnical skills needed.
They have free and pay for versions of the software.
Muvizu-Teachers all over the world use Muvizu to deliver lessons and create memorable content that comes alive for students.
They have free and pay for version of the software.
I'm no dunce and I'm pretty sure you're not either. I used these tools to create my site videos myself. I couldn't afford to pay $500 for someone else to create a 2 minute video. If I can do it, you can too !
For more examples of the Videos I Created see my Bean Counter Lectures.
Documents-Spreadsheets-Presentation Tools
LibreOffice is a powerful and free office suite, used by millions of people around the world. This office suite also provides you with the capability of working with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity. LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most versatile Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).
Free PowerPoint backgrounds and presentation templates that are easy to customize and edit for your presentation needs.
Learning Management Systems
Moodle is the world's most popular learning management system. Start creating your online learning site in minutes!
SonicLMS is not just a learning management system, it's an entire website builder.You can build your website with it, and have awesome eLearning features under one roof. No need to worry about additional plugin compatibility or third party software integrations. SonicLMS comes with a lightweight pagebuilder, blogging system, course, lesson, exercise creation, quizzes and much more.
My Website Tools-HTML Editors
Just like Videos are King, a website is almost a necessity nowadays.
Website X5
I used this tool for creating this site, my "sister" sites, and my bookkeeping and accounting tutorials. I did it myself and so can you !
Examples of my sites I created using Website X5:
Bean Counter-This site-My Main Site
Kompozer
KompoZer is a free and easy to use complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in premium WYSIWYG web editors such as Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs. I used this for creating my downloadable Bookkeeping Testing product.
Unfortunately, in order to determine how well you understand a topic requires testing. None of us like em; but, they're a necessary evil.
Testing Tools for Quizzes & Exams
Hot Potatoes
Hot Potatoes is a free suite of quiz/drill-authoring software created at the University of Victoria, Canada. It includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive exercises:
- multiple-choice quizzes (JBC)
- gap-fill exercises (JClose)
- text-entry (short-answer) exercises (JQuiz)
- crosswords (JCross)
- jumbled-sentence/jumbled-word (drag-and-drop) exercises (JMix)
- ordering/matching (drag-and-drop) exercises (JMatch)
I use this for creating my own quizzes and tests.
Click the link below to see examples of the bookkeeping and accounting tests I created using Hot Potatoes.
For those wanting to purchase my bookkeeping quizzes.
iSpring
Test Your Learners’ Knowledge with Free Quiz Maker. Easily create online assessments and track quiz results to evaluate the effectiveness of your eLearning.
QuizFaber
QuizFaber is a freeware software for Windows that enables you to create multimedia quizzes as HTML documents. This program simplifies quiz-making in HTML without any prior knowledge of HTML or JavaScript. The quiz is ready to be published on Internet, in a local network (with Intranet protocol) or on a local PC.
Other Tools
Diagram/Flow Chart Maker
Diagrams.net
I'm repeating myself; but, a picture is worth a thousand words. Use this free online tool to supplement your classroom activities. Free online diagram maker.
An example of how I used this tool.
Ebook Creator
If Videos are King, then Ebooks are Queen.
Designrr
Designrr creates a beautifully designed ebook direct from your Website, Microsoft Word, Google Docs...and more.
A sample of an ebook I created using Designrr.
Free Accounting and Business Guides and Tools
Text Books, "Cheat Sheets", and Learning Aids.