I have been asked to do a faculty workshop a week from Friday, where they more or less asked for “cool web stuff” (not quite what I did for students last week).
The working title (because I Do Not Start Work Until I Have a Title) is “Silly / Useful Web Tricks”. This name is a riff from one that goes back a few years, (Not So Stupid) Browser Tricks, though half of the ones there are dead or not relevant.
I need some new tricks.
So when I say ‘web trick’ I do not mean an app, or a whole site, but a single purpose tool (maybe even smaller in scope that a SPLOT) that does one interesting thing a teacher might be able to use OR uses the web in an interesting way that might generate an idea for a new tool. Nothing that involves modifying code or installing server libraries. Stuff that works right off of the web.
Kind of like “Chicken on a Skateboard” or an Orangutan named Morphy with a toy horse.
I started jotting down ideas in en Evernote, using stuff in my own browser bookmarks and sifting back maybe 2-3 years in my pinboard Cool Tech collection.
My working idea is to make a buffet of this I can choose from in presentation/ workshop mode.
This is just from abut an hour of combing and just a starting point, but if you have orthers sweet ’em my way or leave a comment below.
Text Tricks
- Text Mechanic http://textmechanic.com/
- Voyant Tools http://voyant-tools.org
- Wordnik https://www.wordnik.com/
- Ngram Viewer https://books.google.com/ngrams
Visual Tricks
- Web Spirograph http://nathanfriend.io/inspirograph/
- Overlap Maps http://overlapmaps.com/
- SPLOT Image Pool http://splot.ca/collector/
- pechaflickr http://pechaflickr.net
- Juxtapose https://juxtapose.knightlab.com/
- BBC Dimensions (where did this site go?) http://howbigreally.com
- Multicolor image search http://labs.tineye.com/multicolr/
Tricks You Can Hear (Audio)
- Hatnote listen to Wikipedia http://listen.hatnote.com/
- Jam With Chrome http://www.jamwithchrome.com/
Media Mixing Tricks
- Timeline http://timeline.knightlab.com/
- MapStory http://mapstory.org/
The Web in Real Time
- This is Now http://now.jit.su/
- Twistori http://twistori.com/
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Reference Tools
- Find obscure stuff https://millionshort.com/
- World Time Clock http://www.timeanddate.com/
- Prompt students to make a copy of a Google Document http://www.alicekeeler.com/teachertech/2014/12/10/google-docs-force-students-to-make-a-copy/
This is a very rough cut, and I know there are like 32,465,000 more. Ideas? Skateboards?
Top / Featured Image: A collaged image combining two images from Wikimedia Commons. I found these doing a Google Images search (filtered for “license for reuse” on “Animal Tricks”
On the left, cropped a bit because, like iPhone vertical videos, portrait oriented photos work better for featured images, is “Morphy, an Orangutan with his toy, a horse, on a walk with his keeper in a traveling circus” as a Creative Commons Germany licensed image from Wikimedia commons. And on right, for the sheer fun of it’s name, is Creative Commons licensed photo Chicken on a Skateboard
I’d say that the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) would count as a trick, e.g. for getting past broken links or for the joy of “walking back” a website in time.
I sent off too soon; should have included the following:
Maybe some good ideas in the gallery of what people have made with/via Mozilla Webmaker: https://webmaker.org/en-US/explore
And, perhaps too big in scope, Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles bookmarklet that allows you to “edit” any webpage, i.e. write a custom headline on today’s New York Times or reimagine a brand (nothing to install…just a bookmarket); good for reimagining one’s world in productive, active ways.
Thanks, Wayback and Mozilla are good ones that ought to have been in the mix.