Add sizzle to your online announcements!

Here are a dozen quick and easy ways to liven up your announcements page in any LMS. The criteria are free, easy, able to be pasted into an announcement, short learning curve and preferably funny…

By Matt PooleDirector of Online Academics, ANU

1. ISSUU

• Take any publication and turn it into an online book with animated page turning, bookmarks etc.

• http://issuu.com

2. Magisto• Feed it a few seconds of video and a few photos,

select a theme and music and get a slick video.• http://magisto.com

3. Jing• Free, simple and obvious five minute screen

recording with free upload and streaming.• http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

4. Says-it.com

• Take photos of signs, delivery trucks, etc. and add your custom text and logos. 'Looks real!

• http://says-it.com/

5. Wordle• Paste some text in to make a visual "word cloud."• http://wordle.net

6. Revolvermaps• Paste in an animated globe showing the

general locations of your students.• http://revolvermaps.com

7. Make a GIF• Instead of pasting in a picture,

paste in an animated gif!• http://makeagif.com/

8. Visuwords

• Make an elegant visual chain of concept relationships and paste the picture.

• http://visuwords.com/

9. Diy.despair.com

• Take your photo and make it into a custom tongue-in-cheek motivational poster.

• http://diy.despair.com/

10. LMGTFY• Records an animation of Googling a

question and obtaining an answer, then says "was that so hard?"

• http://lmgtfy.com 11. Cooliris

ExpressCreate an animated wall of pictures from an online image feed like Picasa or Flickr.http://www.icyte.com/system/snapshots/fs1/b/f/5/6/bf56bbe1a1e19f047e69c163160e6a21436f6233/index.html (or just Google Cooliris Express!)

12. Go2web20.net• Want to find the latest and greatest additions to this list?

Check here for the bleeding edge...• http://go2web20.net/

(Any more?)