Ed Tech Ideas

Paragons of the Week is a reoccurring post highlighting resources that I find to be worth mentioning. I come across 100s of useful tools for educators each week. Below are the top 3 “paragons” that I found this week that I feel teachers might dig. To view previous Paragons, click here.

1. Free OCR

Free-OCR.com is a free online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool. You can use this service to extract text from any image you supply. This service is free, no registration necessary, and you don’t even need to supply your email address. Just upload your image files. Free-OCR takes either a JPG, GIF, TIFF BMP or PDF (only first page).

2. Number Quotes

Similar to Number Gossip, NumberQuotes is a site that gives you all kinds of random information related to any number you enter. Facts like, “1,099 Burger King Whoppers laid next to each other would reach as far as 1.44 American football fields.” Now who doesn’t need to know that?

3. Engineering Interact

Engineering Interact is a good site for children aged 9 to 11 that provides fully interactive, engaging game environments tailored to the National Curriculum. Engineering Interact has been created by the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering.