8 (free) websites to create cool student projects online

Creating an online project is a great way to help students to demonstrate that they have learned something. Below you will find 8 websites that offer great options for any teacher and all are free to use. The first five have screenshots of examples that I created.

Fake Movie Poster
Creating a movie poster is a great school project. With this simple website, the task is that much easier. Students simply upload an image, add a few details for the text and then share their completed poster with the teacher. This project works is a great for history, science, or as a final project after reading a novel.

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Photovisi
Here is another website to create great poster projects. With this site you can add many photos to create a collage or other types of posters. The site features many templates as well as a wide selection of other enhancements to make stunning posters.

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Be Funky
This site is better known for its photo editing but it also allows users to create photo collages. You select your layout, add your photos and then add text and your project is done. Final products can be saved to your computer, shared to Flickr or other social media sites.

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Poster My Wall
Yet another terrific site for creating poster projects for the classroom. The site is easy to use and navigate. Just select a template and change or add content as you desire. Every aspect of a poster template can be changed and you can add more pictures or text if you need. Once done there are a variety of ways in which the final poster can be shared including email.

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Mural.ly

Mural.ly is a fantastic online tool that appears to be intended for business but would work really well in the classroom. The site allows you to create online poster like presentations by adding pictures, text, websites, documents, and a host of other bells and whistles. The site also allows others to collaborate on the poster with you by a simple email invite and then they can join in. Mural.ly is a great resource for group projects and it is free to join and free to use.

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Word Draw

Word Draw is a site that offers free professional looking templates for newsletters, flyers, labels, and resumes. The sites newsletter templates are categorized for education, business, family, holidays, and by month. The templates must be downloaded and are compatible for all versions of Microsoft Word.

These templates can also be utilized for a class newspaper, projects or even reports. 

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Tackk

Tackk allows you to create online posters that can be shared via email, social media or be embedded onto a webpage or blog. As soon as you arrive on the website you can start creating your poster by editing their ready made template. You can easily add a title, body text, pictures, videos, and even songs. You can add content from You Tube, Instagram, Vimeo, Sound Cloud, Hulu, and Spotify. Creating an online poster with Tackk is so easy to do. 

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Picovico

With Picovico, you can turn simple photographs into cool videos. Once you sign up (it's free) you begin by choosing a video template and then adding your pictures from Facebook, Flickr, or your computer. You can set the order of your pictures, add captions to them and add text slides if you wish. Next you add music, either from their library or add your own from your computer. Your last step is to add a video title and any additional text and you're done. Completed videos can be uploaded to You Tube or Facebook and can even be embedded into a website or blog. The site does have a 30 picture maximum but that is long enough for most people.

7 outstanding science based websites you may not know

1- The Why Files

The Why Files is a website that helps students understand science through current events or maybe it helps kids understand current events through science. Either way, the site provides a variety of opportunities for students to learn about science in interesting ways. The home page looks like a newspaper and contains a few news stories from around the world. Each story explores is explored from a science perspective and includes pictures, diagrams, and charts to help students understand the topic. In addition to news, the site contains a classroom activities pages with discussion questions and quizzes from stories found on the web page. There is also an interactive section where students can learn about science based concepts through games and activities. Due to its focus on current events, the Why Files is just as useful to social studies teachers who may want to use it for current events and infuse some cross curricular science content.

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2- Science (and More) to Music

Science (and More) to Music is a very neat website where you can find songs about a wide variety of topics from science, to social studies and even math. The songs are all written and performed by the sites creator Dr. Lodge McCammon. Some of the songs contain lesson support material, some have videos, and all songs have lyrics that accompany the music. Science (an more) to Music is a fantastic resource for teacher to utilize.

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3- Science Bob

Science Bob (AKA Bob Pflugfelder) is a website that wants to make science more fun and interesting for kids. The site offers a variety of learning opportunities for visitors including a science questions and answers section, and research section with a huge collection of links to websites, and science fair ideas. The parts that kids might find most interesting are the three areas set aside for science experiments. There is the experiments page which lists materials and instructions for simple experiments that can be done at home or in the classroom. There is the experiments blog which is another page that shares simple experiment ideas only this page has pictures. Finally, there is the video page where you can watch Science Bob perform even more amazing science experiments. Science Bob is a fun and educational website that teachers and parents should take the time to explore. Teachers can integrate ideas from the website into their lessons while parents can use the website to help support their children's education.

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4- Symphony of Science

Symphony of Science is a project that combines science videos with music to create new and novel ways to learn science concepts. The videos are from well known scientists like Carl Sagan and Bill Nye and the content shared ranges from dinosaurs, to astronomy, to global warming. Symphony of Science videos are an excellent resource to support science curriculum in the classroom of from home. Science teachers and students should take the time to watch these videos and bookmark this site because their library continues to grow.

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5- Succeeding with Science

Sellafield Ltd.'s science education section is built around fun and interactive educational games, activities, and videos to help students learn and love science. The student activities are sorted by age range from 4-7 years up to 16+ and there is also a teachers section. Each activity come with PDF lesson plans and support materials as well. Science teachers at all levels should find this site to be useful way to support their curriculum.

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6- Periodic Videos

Periodic videos is a science based website that features videos about all the elements on the periodic table. The site is the creation of video journalist Brady Haran, featuring real working chemists from the University of Nottingham. The site also contains other science based videos based on molecules, science based road trips, the symbols of physics and astronomy and more. Science teachers and students will likely find the site both fun and educational.

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7 - Understanding Science

Understanding Science is a site with a variety of resources to help increase student understanding of nature and process of science. The site offers options that will help both the science student and the science teacher. The site's Understanding Science 101 section and their resource library are places where students can explore to increase their content knowledge. Teachers can visit the sites various Teacher's Lounges to help with lesson plans, teaching tips and educational strategies.

The Why Files - The Science behind the news

The Why Files is a website that helps students understand science through current events or maybe it helps kids understand current events through science. Either way, the site provides a variety of opportunities for students to learn about science in interesting ways. The home page looks like a newspaper and contains a few news stories from around the world. Each story explores is explored from a science perspective and includes pictures, diagrams, and charts to help students understand the topic. In addition to news, the site contains a classroom activities pages with discussion questions and quizzes from stories found on the web page. There is also an interactive section where students can learn about science based concepts through games and activities. Due to its focus on current events, the Why Files is just as useful to social studies teachers who may want to use it for current events and infuse some cross curricular science content.

CK-12.Org - An online learning environment for teachers and students

CK-12.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to education. Their website offers a large collection of resources for students and teachers like Brain Genie which I previously shared. The bulk of their resources are math and science centered where students can learn about chemistry, physics, algebra, and geometry just to name four. They also offer resources for other content areas as well including history, English, and SAT prep. Their website is free to join and offers a wealth of learning resources and activities. Their site offers articles, quizzes, interactive lessons, videos and students can keep track of their learning as they complete lessons and activities and members can upload their own resources to the site as well. If you are a teacher or a student then do yourself a favor by going to CK-12.org and signing up.

A Large Collection of Education Games

One of the most time consuming things to do is to locate resources from around the internet. Educational games are a popular way to help kids learn and the Jefferson County, Tennessee School District has gathered a large collection of learning based games in one location on their district webpage. The games are geared for students in grades K through 8 in the areas of science, math, social studies, and language arts. They also have a section called "Interactive Websites" that identifies itself as K-12 and it has activities for the same content areas but with an additional page for assessment preparation. You could spend your valuable time looking around the web for educational games and activities or you could go to the Jefferson County webpage and utilize their extensive learning game collection.

Maps of World - A Great Learning Tool (and maps too)

If you think that the website Maps of World offers a huge collection of maps, you would be correct. If you guessed that the maps were of continents, nations, states, and cities then you would be right about that as well. What I discovered about Maps of World that I didn't expect was the amount of facts and information that accompanied their maps. Included with each map is the history, the demographics, the economic data and other useful facts of the continent/nation/state you looked up. They also feature road maps, printable maps, route planners, railroad maps, physical maps, and "Top Ten" themed maps. Maps of World is a great site for maps but it is so much more, it is a useful tool for learning about nations and their history.

Symphony of Science - Science Based Music Videos

Symphony of Science is a project that combines science videos with music to create new and novel ways to learn science concepts. The videos are from well known scientists like Carl Sagan and Bill Nye and the content shared ranges from dinosaurs, to astronomy, to global warming. Symphony of Science videos are an excellent resource to support science curriculum in the classroom of from home. Science teachers and students should take the time to watch these videos and bookmark this site because their library continues to grow.