As promised, I’m following up my previous list, The Best Ways For Students (And Anyone Else!) To Create Online Content Easily, Quickly & Painlessly, with a “Part Two.”

I’m not going to repeat the background I shared as an introduction to the last one, but I hope you will review it before you read this one.  I used the same criteria in determining which sites I should include in Part Two, including the one that no registration is required to use these sites.  And, as in the previous list, these sites either include an email function within the site itself (meaning that you don’t need to have your own email to send the link to a friend or a teacher for posting elsewhere) or it provides a unique url address and/or an embed code that you can post on a blog or a website like Jottit.

Just because the site appears in Part Two doesn’t necessarily mean I think it’s not as good as the ones that I included in Part One.  I was just running out of space in that first post.  And, as in the first list, I’m not listing them in any kind of ranked order, unlike my other The Best… lists.

Here they are:

BAKE A BIRTHDAY CAKE: Who needs to send a birthday card when, instead,  you can send a virtual Birthday Cake that includes a message of your choice on top of it?

CREATE A GROUP OF PHOTOS THAT FIT A CATEGORY:  The site that lets you do this, oSkope, is a candidate to be on next year’s list of Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education (see last year’s list).  It allows you search for images, drag them into a virtual “folder,” and then email the link.  It’s a great website for students to develop and use categorization skills.

DESIGN A 1930’s ENGLISH VILLAGE: You can easily create a 3D Virtual Village of a 1930’s English village and describe what you’ve put where and why you put it there.

SEND A NOISY PAINTING: Choose a masterpiece from the National Gallery, decide what sounds go with it, and then email a Noisy Painting.

CREATE A RACE-CAR DRIVER: In yet another bizarre example of viral marketing, users can create their own Race-Car Driver and have him/her “say” a message using the site’s text-to-speech feature.

INVENT A GADGET: Go to the Gadget Maker, come up with an invention, describe what it does, and email it to a friend or teacher.

CREATE A SURREAL PAINTING: The introduction to the Surreal Painter says it all: Ever look at a Picasso painting and think, “I can do better than that”?   Now’s your chance….

SEND A VOICE MESSAGE: For this one, you need a microphone.  If you have one, Daft Doggy Voice Recording is the easiest way to record a very, very long message and email the link to a teacher, yourself, or a friend.

SEND A MONKEY EMAIL: In one of the more famous examples of viral marketing, you can pick a chimp, dress him/her up, and have him/her speak your message at Monk-e-Mail.

BUILD A TRAIN: Use The Train Messenger to build a train, car by car, and learn about train history.  When you’re done you can send the train off with a message.  Read it when its received, then click on it to see the train moving in the environment you chose.

SEND A “DOGGIEMAIL”: Place a cat or dog of your choice into a famous painting, add some of the weirdest accessories imaginable, make your animal friend say a message, and send off the link.  Doggiemail is the site that’s proud to bring you this ability.

SEND A TALKING POSTCARD: This Talking Postcard viral marketing site allows you to watch an extremely short video about a variety of places, then choose one to send with a talking message from you.  I think it’s a particularly good site when you’re working on geography.

These next few sites I’m going to share do not have an “internal” email feature.  They provide you with a link and/or embed code which you have to either send using your own email or put directly into your own webpage:

MAKE A SIGN OR FLAG: Sign Generator has many examples of signs, flags, and countless other designs that you can customize with your own words.  They in turn will host it and provide you with its url address and, in some cases, and embed code.  I’ve had students use their Safety Signs and Flags.  If you go to their main site they have a zillion other options, too.  However, I find a few pretty objectionable, which is why I limit the links on my website to just these two sections.

MAKE A SLIDESHOW: I shared a couple of slideshow applications in my previous list.  Gifup is just a little more complicated than those two, but it does allow you to grab any image you want off the Web.  You might want to read more about it in a post I wrote last month.

CREATE A CROSSWORD PUZZLE: You can make online crossword puzzles at Puzzled and Just Crosswords.

MAKE A ZILLION DANCING PEOPLE: This last one is lots of fun.  Pictaps lets you draw a person and then turns your drawing to a bunch of dancing people having a good time.  I’ve had students use it and then describe in writing what their person looks like and what’s going on in the animation.

That’s it for now.  If you’ve found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Also, you can see more “Best Ways….” at Part Three of this series.