Geoffrey's ESL Links

Vast archive of free worksheets

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MyVocabulary.com offers free vocabulary lessons, word lists, and word puzzles designed for middle school and high school students. The vocabulary lists are based on books commonly used in middle school and high school classrooms. MyVocabulary.com also offers word lists and activities based on SAT vocabulary. Visitors to MyVocabulary.com will find stand-alone vocabulary lessons as well as activities to complement the reading of specific stories. Applications for EducationIf you're planning a series of lessons on one of "standard books" for middle school or high school, MyVocabulary.com could provide you with some good vocabulary lists and lesson ideas to get started. Students prepping for the SAT should take some time to explore the SAT word puzzles offered by MyVocabulary.com

Great online note taking app. Send notes to class afterwards or post on class blog

Online resources any ESL teacher should know about

Phrays is a simple site that publishes a new word of the day everyday. Each word is published with its definition and part of speech. Visitors to the site are encouraged to write and submit a sentence using that word. Registered users can read the sentences submitted by others and vote for their favorite sentences.

Zipcast is a new service from Slideshare for conducting online presentations. Using Zipcast you can share your slides, talk to your audience, respond to your audience, and have your audience interact with each other in realtime on one page. The best part is you can do all of this without having to download anything. Using the free version of Zipcast your presentation can be private or public (a small ad is inserted at the bottom of your presentation). The premium version of Zipcast removes ads and allows you to password protect your presentation.

Beautiful destop backgrounds...

Everyday Life Life is filled with chaos, and we have to learn how to work and solve problems in the midst of it everyday.   These interactive lessons give you the opportunity to experience these daily challenges without real-world consequences. Are you an educator? Learn more about the Everyday Life project.

This ESL listening Web site created by Randall Davis helps ESL/EFL students improve their listening comprehension skills through practice with self-grading quiz pages.

I frequently use in my classroom is ViewPure. ViewPure allows you to display YouTube videos without displaying the "related videos" and advertisements that appear next to each video. There are two ways that you can use ViewPure. You can copy the url of your chosen YouTube video and paste it into ViewPure where it will then strip away everything but the video. The other option is to install the ViewPure bookmarklet and click anytime you're viewing a YouTube video.

Live Minutes - Free Webinar Hosting Live Minutes is a new service offering free hosting for webinars. It takes less than thirty seconds to set-up a webinar on Live Minutes. To get started just click "start sharing" and a meeting space is created for you. That meeting space is assigned a URL that you can share with the people you want to join you.  Live Minutes offers a good selection of tools that you can utilize to share ideas with others. You can talk to each other using either the Live Minutes audio or by connecting through Skype. Live Minutes offers a collaborative whiteboard for drawing. Uploading images and documents for others to see and comment on is also an option. And in the future Live Minutes will allow you to share videos during your webinar.  Applications for Education Live Minutes could be a great way to quickly host a live online tutoring session with students. The option for drawing free-hand on the whiteboard could be very handy for illustrating concepts that are difficult to type quickly on a keyboard or that lose meaning when someone is just explaining rather than showing.

Screen Leap is a free screen sharing service that I recently learned about through a post by Vicki Davis. To share your screen using Screen Leap just visit the site, click "share your screen," enable the Java applet, and send the sharing code to the person you want to view your screen. The person receiving your invitation code will be able to see your screen when you have Screen Leap activated.  Applications for Education  Screen Leap could be a handy little tool for those times when it is easier to show someone how to do something than it is to tell them how to do it. I'm thinking it could be particularly useful when you're trying to walk someone through setting up an account on a new-to-them web service.  Here are some other screen sharing services you might want to try:  Quick Screen Share  Join.me  Big Marker

Scriffon is a simple service for writing and publishing online. Scriffon isn't a blogging platform, it's a writing platform. That means that you cannot edit the layout or navigation on the page on which your writing is published. Each writing that you publish is given it's own url. You can go back and edit your writing even after it has been published. If like, you can use multiple pen names under your Scriffon account name too.  Applications for Education Scriffon could be a good way for students to anonymously post their writings online and get feedback from others. For teachers or students who are reluctant to put their names on the web, using a pen name is a good way to publish without putting your real name online.