Here are some of my favorite sites, applications, and resources for information online, most are free. I hope you enjoy the list, if you have any other suggestions please leave a comment. Note, I'll be updating and adding to this list over the next week so check back. 4/23 opened the article to comments - they need to be approved though to cut down on spam, please make suggestions, corrections, and additions.

Debut Video Capture Software: Record video from webcam, capture devices or screen

Debut is a simple, easy to use video recorder that lets you capture video files directly on your PC using a webcam (video camera), or capture device (from video). This software can also capture and record almost anything that can be played or displayed on the computer screen. The program saves the video on your hard drive as avi, wmv or many other file types.

CLAMWIN Free Antivirus Software for the PC

ClamWin Free Antivirus comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge.

Scribus: Open Source Desktop Publishing

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.

FreeMind - mapping software

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click "fold / unfold" and "follow link" operations.

ImageBurn

Image burn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit!

FooBar2000

It is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.

VLC Media Player - cross-platform media player and streaming server

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

CamStudio (Alternative to Camtasia and Captivate)

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos(SWFs)

Audacity (Audio Editing Software)

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

Open Office

A FREE open source alternative to Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc., no strings attached, I've been using it for years!

aTutor

ATutor is an Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS) designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind.

Moodle

Moodle is a free, Open Source content management system package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities.

Sakai Project

Sakai is an online Collaboration and Learning Environment. Many users of Sakai deploy it to support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration.

Seamonkey (Alternative to Dreamweaver)

PeaZip

PeaZip free archiver utility is a portable, open source archiving, encryption and file split tool. PeaZip is cross platform and runs on 32 and 64 bit Windows (9x, 2000, XP, Vista) and Linux.

WinSCP

WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows.

Alice.org

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming.

Celestia

The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Free Software Directory

Directory of free educational software.

FaxZero

FaxZero lets you send a fax to any fax machine in the United States (including Puerto Rico) or Canada for free. You don't need a fax machine yourself, but you do need a valid e-mail address.

Directory of Open Access Journals

Welcome to the Directory of Open Access Journals. This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 3337 journals in the directory. Currently 1121 journals are searchable at article level. As of today 179753 articles are included in the DOAJ service.

ERIC: Education Resources Information Center

ERIC provides free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to full text. ERIC is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

KnowledgeWorks - Map of Future Forces Affecting Education

BBC Learning Online and Advice

Get information about online learning and advice from the people across the pond at the BBC.

Librarians Internet Index

Librarians' Internet Index (LII) is a publicly-funded website and weekly newsletter serving California, the nation, and the world. Every Thursday morning we send out our free newsletter, New This Week, which features dozens of high-quality websites carefully selected, described, and organized by our team of librarians. Topics include current events and issues, holidays and seasons, helpful tools for information users, human interest, and more.

Pew Internet & American Life Project

The Pew Internet & American Life Project produces reports that explore the impact of the internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation

The Foundation has compiled more than 100 pieces of education related data and statistics to make you more aware of the current state of education in Ohio and of the nation, and the need for improving education in your community. You can choose to view all of the data, or select to view data by categories.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

FREE makes it easier to find teaching and learning resources from the federal government.More than 1,500 federally supported teaching and learning resources are included from dozens of federal agencies. New sites are added regularly.

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education.

MathCasts

Are you looking for answers to common math questions? Are you a parent looking to help your child with their math? Are you a math educator hoping to connect with other math educators? Then this is the site for you. The 'Mathcasts' are created by kids for kids -- this is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to learn more about math!

Questia: Online Research Resource

This is an online library made up of a collection of copyrighted and public domain full-text works.

MetaGlossary.com

MetaGlossary harvests definitions from the entire web, the world's largest, constantly-updated repository of information. Hence, it surpasses traditional dictionaries, which grow more out of date with each passing day. MetaGlossary is as dynamic as the web, offering the most current information out there on the most contemporary topics.

Encyclopedia of Life

A biodiversity database on the web. It is a global effort of natural history museums, botanical gardens, other research institutions, and scientists. They currently have 20 full-time people working on the content and ask for others to get involved. Definitely a great resource and something I'll be checking often.

INFOMINE: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections

NFOMINE is a virtual library of Internet resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level. It contains useful Internet resources such as databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information. Librarians from the University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, the University of Detroit - Mercy, and other universities and colleges have contributed to building INFOMINE.

Computer and Information Science Papers: CiteSeer Publications Research Index

CiteSeer is a scientific literature digital library and search engine that focuses primarily on the literature in computer and information science. CiteSeer aims to improve the dissemination and feedback of the scientific literature and to provide improvements in functionality, usability, availability, cost, comprehensiveness, efficiency, and timeliness in the access of scientific and scholarly knowledge.

Wikiversity

Wikiversity is a learning community. Learning is a major part of life and never ceases. Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project which aims to further the discovery and distribution of knowledge in a very natural way, by helping each other to learn. You can use Wikiversity to find information, ask questions, or learn more about a subject. You can explore knowledge at Wikiversity through advanced study and research. You can also use Wikiversity to share your knowledge about a subject with others by building learning materials around your knowledge.

Lab Notes: Research from the Berkeley College of Engineering

Lab Notes is published online by the Marketing and Communications Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.

Health & safety

"BAM!" is a new e-zine for kids (ages 9-13) that answers their questions on health issues & recommends ways to make their bodies & minds healthier & stronger. For teachers, BAM! offers fun, interactive learning activities related to middle school health & science. Published quarterly, this first issue focuses on physical activity & how infectious disease, asthma, safety, disability are related to physical activity. (CDC)

EduTools

EduTools provides the most complete independently-reviewed analyses anywhere of selected course management software, including product comparisons, reviews, and automated decision-making tools.

W3Schools

You will find FREE Web-building tutorials, from basic HTML and XHTML to advanced XML, SQL, Database, Multimedia and WAP.

National Center for Education Statistics

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.

uStream.tv

Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream or by broadcasting through their own site, empowering them to engage with their audience and further build their brand.

Mogulus.com

Blip.tv

A service for budding videobloggers, podcasters or Internet TV producesr - a nice, affordable, streaming video service.

Eyespot

Eyespot provides video editing and sharing software that can be easily embedded in any website. Unlike other video editing solutions, Eyespot technology is easy-to-use, intuitive, and accessible for all end-users. Our solution includes next generation video sharing technology, enabling users to share not only via email and embed codes but also to mobile phones, portable players, and other connected devices.

GameGum: Free Flash Games

GameGum is a flash gaming community. Created to support game players and developers, we provide our users with the tools to find, play, and interact with our diverse collection of flash games and their authors. Game authors and publishers may submit their games to our portal easily, gaining rank and popularity depending on the users' response.

FlashMeeting

The Flashmeeting Project includes an application based on the Adobe Flash 'plug in' and Flash Media Server. Running in a standard web browser window, it allows a dispersed group of people to meet from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Typically a meeting is pre-booked by a registered user and a url, containing a unique password for the meeting, is returned by the server. The 'booker' passes this on to the people they wish to participate, who simply click on the link to enter into the meeting at the arranged time.

TestDesigner.com

Allows teachers to create tests free and browse through a library of subject-specific assessments created by other educators.

eLearningGuru.com

RulesofThumb.com

A rule of thumb turns information you have into information you need. The goal of this website is to gather every rule of thumb on earth into one gargantuan, easily searchable online reference database that will be accessible from anywhere in the world and continue to grow forever.

BigThink

This is a digital age, one in which a wealth of accessible information empowers you, the citizen-consumer. But where is the information coming from? How accurate and unprocessed is it, really? Ask yourself this: how empowered do you feel debating a television screen or a newspaper? Our task is to move the discussion away from talking heads and talking points, and give it back to you. That is Big Think's mission. In practice, this means that our information is truly interactive. When you log onto our site, you can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today's leading thinkers, movers and shakers. You can search them by question or by topic, and, best of all, respond in kind. Upload a video in which you take on Senator Ted Kennedy's views on immigration; post a slideshow of your trip to China that supports David Dollar's assertion that pollution in China is a major threat; or answer with plain old fashioned text. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or heck, throw your own question or idea into the ring.

LibWorm:

This beta helps you "search the biblioblogosphere and beyond." When you want to start your search on the Internet but only want to find library-related material, this tool can help. By pulling information from over 1500 RSS feeds in categories like academic libraries, government libraries, law libraries, podcasts: librarianship, medical libraries and more.

LearnHub

LearnHub is for people who love learning and sharing knowledge with others. It is a set of tools that make learning online fun and engaging, and teaching online easy and effective.

TappedIn

Collaborate with other educators, the site is a great resource, check it out.

Livemocha

Is a community space designed to allow people to learn and practice speaking a language with native speakers. Livemocha is a web based language learning solution integrating online instructional content with a global community of language learners.

Edu2.0

A free community of learners.

Curiki: Global Education Learning Community

Community of educators, parents, and students working together to develop educational materials that everyone can use for free.

Dspace

DSpace, was originally developed as a MIT research repository - to save, share, and search their digital research materials. But last summer, July 2007, the DSpace software platform copyright is held by DSpace Foundation and is freely available to anyone under the BSD license. What does this platform do for you? The platform captures your data in any format – in text, video, audio, and data, distributes it over the web, and indexes your work, so users can search and retrieve your content. It preserves your digital work over the long term. Just a note, please be sure to read their terms of use and copyright policy to make sure they are compatible with your goals and objectives for your content.

DimDim

Dimdim is the world's first free web meeting service based on the open source browser-based web 2.0 service allowing anybody to share their desktop, show slides, as well as talk, listen, chat, and broadcast using their webcam.

Scholarpedia

Is a free peer reviewed encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world.

Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a collection of open-content textbooks that anyone, including you, can edit right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears near the top of each Wikibooks module. Contributors maintain the property rights to their contributions, while the GNU Free Documentation License makes sure that the submitted version and its derivative works will always remain freely distributable and reproducible. See Wikibooks:Copyrights for more information.

GROU.PS

GROU.PS is a platform for social groups to get together. Use it for any purpose. Choose your template and pick all the modules that you want (wiki, blogs, photos, links etc). And get your group web site without waiting. No branding, it’s free! Plus it's integrated with 3rd party services such as Flickr and YouTube.

FutureLab - Innovation in Education

A community that incubates new ideas taking them from the lab to the classroom.

Creative Public

Useful site for anyone starting a freelance graphic or web design career. A $49.95 fee buys unlimited access to forms, manuals, pricing guides, contracts etc

Dropsend

Email up to 1GB of files

Formsite

Web forms and surveys in minutes

Twitter

I'm officially 'addicted' to this service! And if you'd like an explanation then look at the CommonCraft Twitter video.

Tweeting for Companies 101

An article giving a good overview of how to use Twitter for your business.

University Webcasts/Courses

Annenberg Media

Free sign up is required for first-time users. Annenberg Media uses media and telecommunications to advance excellent teaching in American schools. This mandate is carried out chiefly by the funding and broad distribution of educational video programs with coordinated Web and print materials for the professional development of K-12 teachers. It is part of The Annenberg Foundation and advances the Foundation's goal of encouraging the development of more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge.

Berkeley Courses

MIT Courses

MIT Courses with Video

Web Lecture Archive

The Web Lecture Archive Project is a joint venture between the UM-ATLAS Collaboratory Project, the University of Michigan Media Union, and CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. One of its goals is to implement an electronic archival system for slide-based presentations on the Internet.

Carnegie Mellon

OLI courses are freely available online courses and course materials that enact instruction for an entire course in an online format.

Open Yale Courses

Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to seven introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

Open University in the UK

The Open University (OU) is the United Kingdom's only university dedicated to distance learning.

John Hopkins

Provide free, searchable, access to JHSPH's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world. Extend the reach and impact of JHSPH OCW and the "opencourseware" concept.

John Hopkins Podcasts

Curious about the likeliest breakthroughs on the medical horizon? The best ways to counter today's nuclear threats? Or the real reason the Titanic went down so fast? Then check out these podcasts at John Hopkins.

As noted on their website, Johns Hopkins University is a small, privately endowed institution that opened in 1876 as America’s first research university. It was founded for the purpose of expanding knowledge and putting that knowledge to work for the good of humanity. They are now expanding to the internet and offering their resources through podcasts and online videos. This is a good site to checkout!

Lewis & Clark Law School Podcasts

Notre Dame's Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Swarthmore

About Swarthmore: The college was founded in 1864 by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Philadelphia as one of the first co-educational colleges. It is a private university set on a 357-acre campus and today is non-sectarian, but still reflects many Quaker traditions and values. The page listed above lists faculty lectures in subjects from Astronomy to Peace and Conflict.

Connexions

Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. Our Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone � from children to college students to professionals � organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons "attribution" license.

Stanford on iTunes

Stanford on iTunes U provides access to a wide range of Stanford-related digital audio content via the iTunes Store, Apple’s popular online music, video, and podcast service.

University of Washington: Computer Science & Engineering

Sofia: Sharing of Free Intellectual Assests

The Sofia initiative was launched by Foothill-De Anza Community College District in March of 2004. The goal of Sofia is to publish community college-level course content and make it freely accessible on the web to support teaching and learning.

LectureFox: Listing for Free University Lectures

Bowdoin College Podcasts

Bowdoin is an independent, nonsectarian, coeducational residential, undergraduate liberal arts institution founded in 1794.

University of Oregon Video and Podcast Channel

UChannel: University Channel

The UChannel (also known as the University Channel) makes videos of academic lectures and events from all over the world available to the public. It is a place where academics can air their ideas and present research in a full-length, uncut format. Contributors with greater video production capabilities can submit original productions.

Havens Center (UW-Madison)

The Havens Center is housed in the Sociology Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Southwest Tech CourseCasts

UCLA Course Webcasting

Courses offered in podcast format to listen to when convenient for you.

University of Pennsylvania: Wharton School of Business Podcasts

University of Glasgow

A course on the philosopher, Immanuel Kant and his theories on how we think, understand, and learn.

BBC - Radio 4 In Our Time Podcasts

Melvyn Bragg and guests investigate the history of ideas.

Harvard@Home

The mission of Harvard@Home is to provide the Harvard community and the broader public with opportunities for rich in-depth exploration of a wealth of topics through Web-based video programs of the highest caliber.

Harvard Business Publishing Ideacast

HBR IdeaCast is a free podcast featuring breakthrough ideas and commentary from leading thinkers in business and management.

MediaBerkman is a part of The Berkman Center for Internet & Society

MediaBerkman features conversations with and talks by leading cyber-scholars, entrepreneurs, activists, and policymakers as they explore topics such as the factors that influence knowledge creation and dissemination in the digital age; the character of power as the worlds of governance, business, citizenship and the media meet the internet; and the opportunities, role and limitations of new technologies in learning.

Haverford College: Podcasts

This is one of America's leading liberal colleges founded on the Quaker values of individual dignity, academic strength, and tolerance combined with rigorous academic programs. This podcast page on their site offers links to readings of Latin and (ancient) Greek texts. Although many have been produced by Haverford College, those recorded and placed in the public domain by others are also listed.

Western Kentucky University Pod/Webcasts

WKU, The Office of Distance Learning uses audio & video delivery technology to distribute online lectures to online students. This pilot project focuses on converting Tegrity lectures into Podcast and VODcast. Online students are given the option to stream the audio or video files, download MP3 audio files, download MP4 video files, read the transcript, view the power point presentation of the online lectures and even watch the whole Tegrity lecture.

Indiana University Bloomington: School of Library and Information Science

Provides links to media and RSS feeds within the university -- very useful link.

University of Arizona Podcasts

University of Chicago: International & Area Studies Multimedia Podcasts

University of Chicago: Graduate School of Business

The Chicago GSB Podcast Series to share thought leadership on current topics affecting companies and organizations around the globe. From our world-renowned faculty members to guest speakers who are leaders in their field, you'll be sure to hear ideas that are shaping the world of business.

University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog

Miller Center of Public Affairs: National Discussion and Debate Series

The Miller Center initiated a National Discussion and Debate Series. The Series features prominent national figures from government, the academic and business worlds, and civic leaders who will formally debate matters of national importance.

Directory of Podcasts about Historical People & Topics

Online Educational Videos

Ted Talks

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

MIT World

MIT World is a free, open streaming media web site of the most significant public events at MIT. It features speakers and guests from across the campus and around the world. The collection dates back to February 2001, and holds more than 500 video lectures.

Internet Archive: Open Educational Resources

This library contains hundreds of free courses, video lectures, and supplemental materials from universities in the United States and China. Many of these lectures are available for download.

San Diego State University: Educational Technology Alumni Conference Videos

Internet Archive: Advanced Placement (AP) Courses from Monterey Institute for Technology and Education

The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE) is an educational non-profit committed to improving access to education. This library of open educational resources features course materials for seven Advanced Placement courses from MITE. These high school level materials are available for free download.

Biography Channel

Watch videos of past interviews and biographies on people in topics that range from political figures to your favorite mousekeeter.

BBC Video Nation

Current news from the BBC organized by category.

BookTV on C-Span2

This site provides online video of author interviews, opinions, reviews of nonfiction books.

Internet Archive: ArsDigita Computer Science University

ArsDigita University was a one-year, intensive post-baccalaureate program in Computer Science based on the undergraduate course of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The majority of the instructors were professors from MIT and the program was tuition free. After running from September 2000 through July 2001, seeing the first class to graduation, the program was forced to shut down.

University of California Davis: Individual Course on Quantum Mechanics

PBS Frontline

Selected FRONTLINE programs can be watched here in full - QuickTime and Windows Media formats.Since 1983, FRONTLINE has served as American public television's flagship public affairsseries. Hailed upon its debut on PBS as "the last best hope for broadcast documentaries," FRONTLINE's stature over 25 seasons is reaffirmed each week through incisive documentaries covering the scope and complexity of the human experience.

NOVA: Science Series from PBS

NOVA is the highest rated science series on television and the most watched documentary series on public television. It is also one of television's most acclaimed series, having won every major television award, most of them many times over.

Google Educational Lectures

Get the latest educational lectures through Google.

Google: Video Documentaries

Get the latest video documentaries through Google.

Google: Educational Videos in English

Google: Videos on "How Stuff Works"

Caltech Today: Streaming Theater

TeacherTube

The educational version of YouTube.

VideoJug

VideoJug is a library of factual video content, professionally-produced, covering every conceivable topic. The site strives to be a video "encyclopedia".

Open-Video.org

The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities.

Edublogs

Edublogs are completely free, without any advertising, and come with 100MB of free upload space (easily extended to 3 Gig) and a heap of great features.

FunBrain

Free resources for learning/teaching for K-8 students and teachers.

ThinkFinity: Lesson Plans, Interactives

A well designed site that delivers FREE online educational resources to strengthen problem-solving, creativity and critical thinking skills for success in the 21st century. The site gives you access to lesson plans, educational games, and activities. The site is supported by the Verizon Foundation and the content is created by educational organizations and experts. Check this one out -- you won't be disappointed!

Edutopia: The George Lucas Educational Foundation

Definitely a site to check out -- it was created to address the next generation of learning for our children.

Stats About All US Cities

They've collected and analyzed data from numerous sources to create as complete and interesting profiles of all U.S. cities.

Intute

Intute is a free online service providing access to the very best web resources for education and research. All material is evaluated and selected by a network of subject specialists to create the Intute database.

Our mission is simple - Intute exists to advance education and research by promoting the best of the Web in one easily accessible place, providing access to quality resources through a process of evaluation and collaboration.

Intute and its four subject groups are funded by Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), in addition the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) part funds Intute: Arts and Humanities.

TeacherExpress

This is a hard page to navigate but it might be worth a look. Software robots manage the page, they are responsible for checking all the links and mailing a status report, for taking new entries from email messages and inserting them into an appropriate category on the page, for removing entries from the page, based upon a number of criteria and for periodically re-ordering the links within categories, according to the level of use by users.

iTunes University

Project Gutenberg

There are over 25,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. And over 100,000 titles are available at Project Gutenberg Partners, Affiliates and Resources.

MathWorld

This site provides a wealth of information about math! Anything from algebra to number theory -- they have it on this site. It is well referenced, easy to navigate, and a definite must have for anyone teaching or wants to brush up on their math skills. As a visual learner I appreciated the video explanations of the topics and the interactive entries.

BrainPOP: Animated Educational Site for Kids

SimTeach: Second Life Education Wiki

SimTeach is a place for university instructional designers, faculty and administrators to find information and to share their own experiences designing, teaching and administering classes in immersive environments.

CommonCraft

If you've ever have questions about technology I recommend checking out CommonCraft to get their simple answer. Here is one of their videos describing Twitter.

Free Rice

Learn new vocabulary words and help feed hungry people. The site is made possible by sponsors who advertise on the site so the user/visitor doesn't have to pay a thing, you just have to use the site. And for each word you get right they donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program. So start playing today!

Are you Tigger or Eeyore?

Watch Randy Pausch's last lecture and you decide. I have to warn you, have some tissue around because you might need them.