Our Instructors' Top Tech Tools
Check out the favorite creativity Tech Tools our team of online instructors uses and recommends.
“Canva has become my favorite go-to tool for creating professional quality collaborative graphics from infographics to invitations, newsletters, and posters.”
- Shannon Mersand
Canva is a free web-based graphic design app that allows you to design presentations, social media graphics, infographics, menus, posters and more. Additional features can be purchased. Canva works on all platforms.
“I love Adobe Spark. It's an easy tool for creating videos, basic portfolios and infographics.”
- Maggie Rouman
Adobe Spark is a free web-based graphic design app that allows you to create social graphics, web stories and animated videos. Adobe Spark works on all platforms.
“Visio is great for diagrams and to bring an image or a word/phrase from Word and save it as a .gif for icons or other purposes.”
- Jane MacKenzie
Visio is a fee-based diagramming program connected with Microsoft Office and Office 365 that allows you to create robust data-linked diagrams. Visio is available for Windows 7 and above.
“Audacity is a neat free app for recording and editing sound when introducing modules, adding commentary to web pages, and providing audio feedback to a student.”
- James Erbe
Audacity is a free, open source, downloadable program that allows you to create and edit simple and multi-track audio files. Audacity works on all platforms.
“This is useful when creating podcasts and embedding audio in our courses. Free accounts provide 180 minutes of audio storage.”
- Dennis T. O'Connor
SoundCloud is a free hosting platform for audio files. You are able to create a global audience or share your files with only specific individuals. You can also create a SoundCloud of your favorite podcast and musicians. Additional features and storage space can be purchased. Playlists work on all platforms.
“I can make a short video and then send the link to students. Students may ask questions, and it works well with complex project assignments to help reduce confusion.”
- Dr. Mary Beth Crum
Flipgrid is a free web-based platform that allows you to create a discussion where participants respond in video format from their laptop, iOS or Android device. Additional features can be purchased. Flipgrid works on all platforms.
“I live by Jing for giving student feedback.”
- Susan Manning, Ed.D.
Jing is a free downloadable app that allows you to create unedited screencasts of up to 5 minutes, as well as mark up images and save them locally or host the image on Screencast.com for easy sharing.
“I use Screencastify for creating videos. It's a Chrome extension that allows you to screencast then upload to Google Drive and/or YouTube.”
- Maggie Rouman
Screencastify is a free app for use with Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, and the Chrome Browser. Additional features can be purchased. Screencastify works on all platforms that can run the Chrome browser.
“FastStone Capture is shareware worth buying. I use it primarily for screenshots. You can 'draw' on top of the FastStone to create quick how-to screens.The scrolling page screenshot lets you capture a long page when you need to. Faststone is good for brief screencasts too.”
- Dennis T. O'Connor
Faststone Capture is a fee-based downloadable app that allows you to capture and annotate images of anything on your screen. It also allows for editing and annotating videos. FastStone Capture is available for Windows OS only.
Featured Resource - Video Project Rubric
This is a detailed rubric you can use to assess video projects.
Tech Tip: Finding the Right Tech Tools
Merlot II
"MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community. Search peer-reviewed open educational resources (OER), create Course ePortfolios, Bookmark Collections, and Learning Exercises, and build your learning materials with our Content Builder."