Xtranormal, the relatively well-known site that lets you create animations with audio, is letting anyone send a Valentine’s Day greeting — no registration required.

All you have to do is go here, make your choices — including if you want to use their text-to-speech feature or record the greeting yourself — and then email it to your special friend.

Since it will only be available for a limited time, I won’t be adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About Valentine’s Day.

My students will love it tomorrow!

I’ve just updated The Best Tools For Creating Fake “Stuff” For Learning.

Additional suggestions are welcome.

I’ve just revised and updated The Best Collections Of Web 2.0 Tools For Education.

Feel free to suggest ones I’ve missed.

I’ve just revised and updated The Best Ways For Advanced ELL’s & Non-ELL’s To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (For Their Classmates & Teacher To See).

Feedback is welcome.

Choruzz lets you — without needing to register — search for music videos and create a playlist of them. You’re then given a unique url address for your list that you can share.

It’s very easy to use, and it meets my “Raffi” test — in other words, plenty of songs are accessible that you can use with English Language Learners.

I’m adding it to Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Music Sites.

SpeakPipe provides you with a widget to install on your blog or website that lets readers send you an audio message of up to five minutes in length. The message goes to your Speakpipe inbox, and you receive an email notification that you’ve received one. More importantly, at least for teachers of English Language Learners, you also get a url address for the message that you can post so that students can use it to hear themselves.

Ronnie Burt at Edublogs told me that it would work with Edublogs, and that set-up was easy, though I didn’t initially believe him. However, the site has clear instructions on how to install it into various blogging platforms. It took me less than a minute to install it on my ESL class blog (you’ll find it on the right side saying “Send Voicemail”) so, if I can do it, you know it’s easy

Unfortunately, the only way others can hear the audio comments that are left is if you manually post them, so it’s not ideal. But it’s a nice tool that free — at least, for now.

(NOTE: Great additional suggestions are being left in the comments section of this post)

It can sometimes be useful to be able to embed a document so it can be easily read and shared on a blog or website. There are many simple tools that make this possible, and I thought I’d create a quick list of them. I’m sure I’m missing some obvious choices, so I hope you’ll help me and others out by sharing suggestions in the comments section.

Here are my choices for The Best Tools To Use For Embedding A Document:

I was prompted to write this list after I learned about a new site called Group Docs today.

Scribd

embedit.in

DocStoc

How to Embed a PDF Document Into Your Website is a post from Make Use of that shares other ideas.

What simple tools am I missing, and I mean simple, please…

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You might also want to explore the 850 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

Google+ is now open to anyone age thirteen and above, which should make it a more viable tool for use in schools.

You can learn more about it at Google+ Is Now Open To Teens, Offers New Safety Features over at Read Write Web.

I’ve added this info to The Best Resources For Learning What Google+ Is All About.

Check This is an easy way to create a web page without having to register, and it lets you copy and paste images, too.

It’s an excellent tool to use for students to publish their work. It’s also very, very similar to many other sites listed in A Few Simple Ways To Introduce Reluctant Colleagues To Technology (and I’m adding Check This to that list). Because of how common these tools are, I’m a bit perplexed about why TechCrunch would write such a breathless review of the site this morning….

Music Shake lets you create….musical tracks quite easily, which you can then embed or post a link to it. You can do those things for free. However, you have to pay if you want to download your music for use in a video or other presentation. In fact, they just created an education arm where schools could purchase licenses for all their students to do just that.

I think it’s fine to just have students, especially English Language Learners, use it to quickly create music and then describe it and have students comment their classmate’s creations.

I’m adding it to The Best Online Sites For Creating Music.

You can learn about Music Shake at TechCrunch.