Teaching+Resources


 * Web Resources to Enhance Your Professional Development **

Cult of Pedagogy Education Week - Teacher Edutopia--What Works in Education NEA Classroom Management Colorin Colorado (teaching English language learners) Teaching Tolerance
 * Teaching **

The English Companion Ning National Council of Teachers of English ReadWriteThink
 * Teaching English Language Arts **

My Footprint
 * Teaching Online Courtesy/Ethical Behavior **


 * (Free) Web Applications to Enhance Your Instruction **

**Social Networking Applications:** Create a class page/group where you and your students can gather to form a virtual community.

Goodreads Consider how you might use this site to encourage your students to talk about what they’re reading and for you to share what you’re reading. You can also interact with your favorite (YA) authors.

Nicenet A free site that allows you to create online discussion (conference) threads like those used on course delivery platforms such as Blackboard and WebCT.

Ning A social networking site that allows users to create discussion forums, post pictures and videos, and create their own pages. You can create a free education site with a maximum 150 members.

**Personal Learning Networks:** Subscribe to RSS feed to engage in inquiry and professional development related to current issues of your choosing.

PageFlakes This site allows users to subscribe to RSS feeds and upload widgets in order to create, personalize, and publish pages on any topic. Example: Buffy Hamilton’s English Teacher Resources site

Netvibes This site also allows users to subscribe to RSS feeds and upload widgets in order to create, personalize, and publish pages on any topic.

Delicious Online social bookmarking allows you to access and organize your bookmarks online from any computer. You can also search others’ delicious pages. Consider how you might use this to bookmark sites for your students as they begin the research/inquiry process and how you might encourage them to do the same.

**Blogs:** Communicate with parents, students, and larger school community; present an authentic publishing forum for students’ writing; use for critical analysis of multimodal texts

Word Press This site allows users to set up free blogs.

Blogger This site also allows users to set up free blogs. Example: Great Sentences

Edublog This site allows you to create and manage student blogs and post podcasts, videos, and photos. It also features helpful video tutorials

Check out YAL Author John Green’s Blog.

**Wikis**: Collaborate on texts by making edits; create own pages and discussion forums

Wiki Books A free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit

PB Wiki

Wiki Spaces These sites allow users to set up free wikis. Example Wiki: The Unquiet Librarian

**Audiobooks and Video:** Download, listen to, and view texts and video

Lit to Go: MP3 Stories and Poems This site contains free downloads of stories and poems in MP3 files.

Internet Archive This site contains a database of sites where you can download audiobooks and video.

Project Gutenberg On this site, you can download over 33,000 free ebooks.

**Multimodal Resources:** Experience texts that incorporate several modes of communication including words, images, animation, video, audio, etc.

National Public Radio Example: One of the 'Little Rock Nine' Looks Back

American Rhetoric Text, audio, and (sometimes) video of famous speeches – from real life and the silver screen. In addition, the site defines various rhetorical devises and provides examples of each.

Public Broadcasting Service Real audio and streaming broadcasts of various programs and segments

Online Speech Bank Text, audio, and videos of various speeches

Incompetech.com Provides royalty free music, searchable by type and “feel.”

This I Believe (National Public Radio) Listen to these essays as models of how you and your students might share the results of your inquiry and take action.

Story Corps Listen to these interviews and stories as models of how you and your students might share the results of your inquiry and take action. This site provides a wealth of information, including a teacher/librarian guide for participating in the National Day of Listening.

**Digital Storytelling:** Write using multiple media such as sound, text, pictures, and motion; think about more than the print-based story to make deliberate choices about how to best relay the intended message

Photo Story 3.0 for Windows Download Photo Story for free and create slideshows of digital photos that incorporate text, music, narration, etc.

The Center for Digital Storytelling This site contains examples of digital stories and discusses and promotes digital storytelling, especially for classroom instruction.

**Sharing and Critically Evaluating Images Online:** Create and/or comment on images in order to look at visual rhetoric and the critical reading of images as texts

Voice Thread A free web-based application that allows users to upload images and video accompanied by written or recorded text. Other users can comment. The producer or the commenter can mark aspects of the images about which they are commenting to emphasize their points.

Museum Box A free web-based application that allows users to upload images accompanied by written text. They can create three-dimensional “boxes” on their artifact/topic.

**Poster-Creating Applications:** Digitally create and edit posters with multiple images that are typically of higher-interest than traditional posters or PowerPoint presentations

Glogster A free web-based application that lets students to digitally create posters either by editing images and/or by creating collages of images. They can share their posters online with a larger community or send them to select individuals.

**Sound-Recording Applications:** Record and/or edit sounds/audio files on multiple tracks, including music, narration, sound effects, etc. to create professional-sounding podcasts.

Audacity Download Audacity for free to record and edit sounds on multiple tracks, including music, narration, sound effects, etc. Tutorial for Audacity Be sure to download the Audacity software and the Lame MP3 Encoder, which allows you to export your completed project as an MP3 file.

**File Conversion Applications:** Convert and save video and sound files found online for later use; converts You Tube videos to save for future lessons

Zamzar Free, online conversion of Internet media (e.g., YouTube videos) into downloadable files

**Online Surveys and Polls:** Create and disseminate surveys; collect, store, and analyze data

Survey Monkey You can create a free basic account and then solicit anonymous feedback from your students; or it could be used for pre- and post-assessments particularly of changing attitudes and perspectives (probably not for traditional tests, though).

Poll Everywhere Instant polling results from mobile devices. Free accounts support up to 30 responders.

**Student-Centered Explorations:** Allow students to purposefully interact with content rather than passively listening to a teacher deliver content via a lecture or reading about it in a textbook

WebQuests This site contains a searchable database of WebQuests and tips for creating your own.

CyberGuides This site contains a searchable database of CyberGuides and types for creating your own.

Homemade PowerPoint Games This site provides free, downloadable PP games that you can use or modify to suit your needs. It also provides templates so that you can design your own games.

PowerPoint Games This site provides free, downloadable templates for several different types of games including, Jeopardy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Weakest Link, Wheel of Fortune.