Thinking tools

Diigo (web, iOS, Android) Create an outline of your project and place links to online resources right inside the outline. Save and tag your online resources for easy access anytime, anywhere. Annotate web pages and PDF's directly as you browse online. Organize your links, references and personal input to create a structured research base through Outliner. Share your research with friends, classmates, colleagues or associates.

elink (web) All in one content curation tool. Combine web links and share them in three beautiful ways. Create and send curated newsletters via MailChimp, Gmail or your preferred provider. Collect web content on any topic and turn it into beautiful web page to share with anyone. Embed curated content on your website that can be updated in real-time. For each one, elink pulls the title of the resource from the website, plus an image from the site; or you can upload your own. You can also add your own comment to each link. Once your collection is done, you can give the whole collection a header image, title, and description. Finally, you’ll choose one of eight layouts to display each resource on the page. What you get is a single page of image- rich links that you can send to anyone: Your elink gets a unique URL that you can share with others, almost like a mini-website of its own.

Evernote (web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac) In Evernote, users create notes, then organize them into notebooks, making it possible to store information for every area of your life in one place. Evernote is cloud-based, so you can access it from any computer or device. It syncs across devices, so if you add a note on your phone, you’ll see it the next time you open Evernote on your laptop. Audio clips can be used in place of notes. Notes can be shared with others. Whole web pages, images, or emails can be sent straight into Evernote. You can photograph or scan a document, and Evernote will scan it and store the text for future searching.

Feedly (web, iOS, Android, Kindle) In a personal Feedly page, bookmarks can be organized into thematic collections in the sidebar. When you click on a collection, you preview the most recent posts from that collection on the right.

OneNote (Web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac) Class Notebooks have a personal workspace for every student, a content library for handouts, and a collaboration space for lessons and creative activities. In OneNote, your notes are organized into tabs along the side.

Pinterest (web, iOS, Android) Users set up “boards,” where they “pin” items they want to save from the Internet. Because only items that contain some kind of image can be pinned, the end result looks like a really tidy bulletin board full of images that have captions.

Pocket (web, iOS, Android) Put articles, videos or pretty much anything into Pocket. Save directly from your browser or from apps. If it's in Pocket, it's on your phone, tablet or computer. You don't even need an Internet connection.

Symbaloo (web, iOS, Android) A visual bookmarking tool, and a home for all of your important links. Users create webmixes, collections of tiles (visual bookmarks) that take you to your favourite places online. A tile can take you to a whole website, a specific page, basically anything that has a dedicated URL. Once a webmix has been created, it can be shared with others via email or social media, or embedded on another website, which makes it a valuable tool for teachers.

Bubbl.us (Web, iOS) Web-based with nothing to download. Save your mind map as an image. Share and collaborate with others. One click presentation. Colourful and engaging. It's a visual thinking tool for structuring information, helping you to better understand, remember and generate new ideas.

Coggle (Web, added to Google Drive as a connected app) Coggle is an online tool for creating and sharing mindmaps. It works online in your browser: there's nothing to download or install. Whether you're taking notes, brainstorming, planning, or doing something awesomely creative, it is very simple to visualise your ideas with Coggle. Share with as many friends or colleagues as you like. Changes you make will show up instantly in their browser, wherever they are in the world.

Popplet (Web, iOS) Very simple, basic mind-mapping tool, that allows users to build rich, multimedia mind maps. Popplets’ maps are comprised of “popples,” bubbles that contain some kind of content and are linked together. Popples can contain text, uploaded images, hand-drawn sketches, and even embedded videos, which you can search for without ever leaving the site.

Sketchboard (Web, iOS, or as a connected app in Google Drive) Creative team sketching and diagramming on an endless online whiteboard, which feel like you’re working on paper, but better, because it’s all saved in the cloud. Sketchboard is integrated with Google Drive, so you can open a sketch from right inside your Drive, then go back into it later and edit it.