Triptico - A sweet suite of tools

I first discovered Triptico a while ago and then, one day I went to the site and there was a message that due to bandwidth costs it would no longer be available... needless to say, I was bummed.  However, I recently discovered that it is back!

What is Triptico?  It's a collection of simple-to-use applications:

My current favorites are Word Magnets, Student Group, Student Selector.

Word Magnets is a digital version of refrigerator magnets.  However with this version you can select from many different backgrounds (42 of them) or even upload your own.  Once your list is created, you can move them around and add words on the fly.  You can even change the color and size of the words.  Finally, the ability to save your word lists is great as well (let's you save your class list of students, for example).  So many ways to use this tool.

Student Group lets you randomly assign your students to groups.  It's fast, fun and colorful.  Again, you can save your class lists so you can literally create groups on the fly.

Student Selector will randomly pick a student from your class list (you can save it or even use the one you made for Student Group).  You can turn off the animation on this one to speed it up, but it's still fun!  Swap out names for words and you can have some vocabulary fun!  You are limited to how long each name (or word) can be... which is too bad.

I like Triptico because it is easy to use and the usefulness of many of the applications are apparent pretty much immediately (you probably already have analog ways of doing many of the tasks).  However, like the best tools, I think that the more you use them, the more ways you will come up with to use them.

I don't think these are necessarily transformational tools (let's be honest, they aren't) but they are a welcome supplement and I think you will enjoy using them.  Take a look at all of the tools.

One last tip... if you use this tool a lot, you might want to create your words ahead of time in a word processor so you can save them as a sort of "master list". When you need the words, you can copy and paste them.

One final thought, since it is free, students can download it and use it at home (although they -and you- may need to download Adobe Air first in order to install it)... they can even save their "Tripticos" and email them in for the class to use.