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StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives. Since 2003, StoryCorps has collected and archived more than 45,000 interviews with nearly 90,000 participants. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to share, and is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, and millions listen to our weekly broadcasts on NPR's Morning Edition and on our Listen pages. We do this to remind one another of our shared humanity, strengthen and build the connections between people, teach the value of listening, and weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that every life matters. At the same time, we will create an invaluable archive of American voices and wisdom for future generations. In the coming years we will build StoryCorps into an enduring institution that will touch the lives of every American family.

"PopuLLar is a European Union,  funded, innovative, education project designed to harness music, the primary social interest of secondary school students, in to their language learning. There is a huge need to motivate secondary school students, in particular, to learn languages, focus digital competencies and be creative; and music is the key. The project will ask students to write their own lyrics to songs of their choice. They will then translate their songs in to the target language they are learning, The students will then record their song (audio or video) and share it with students all over Europe. Students will be able to combine their love of music, with creativity, literacy, digital competencies, group collaboration and, most importantly, use LWULT languages. PopuLLar is a project that is 'Owned' by the students, they work autonomously and collaboratively, teachers are guides to the project process. The project will create to enable the project to be replicated autonomously: ■    Sample guides and videos ■    A replicability package for teachers ■    A community space for productions ■     A repository of examples of the use of music in language       education There is no limit to the number of schools that can use the project."

Popplet is a great service that combines the best of online sticky note services like Wallwisher with collaborative mind mapping functions. Popplet allows you to create a wall of multimedia sticky notes that you can share with others. Your stickies can include videos and images that you pull from other online services. You can also upload media from your desktop to your sticky notes. Popplet offers a browser bookmarklet that you can use to add content from other webpages to your Popplet pages. Invite others via email to collaborate on your wall of sticky notes. The mind mapping element of Popplet is the option to connect your notes. To do this just click one of the small circles that hovers near your note (Popplet calls them "Popples") while you're editing. Click those small circles will launch a connected blank note that you can edit. Popplet is available for iPads.

"EnglishForEveryone.org is your resource for printable English worksheets. On the left of this page you will find an index containing hundreds of quality teaching materials. To open a PDF file for printing, simply click on the topic of your choice then select the desired worksheet from the links on that page. You are welcome to use any of the materials on this website without asking permission, granted that our strict copyright policy is respected. If you'd like to thank us, please tell your friends about this website and consider linking to our web pages (see our Terms of Use to learn how). We appreciate your interest and support, and hope you find our materials to be beneficial for use in the classroom or at home. "

"50 Essential Vocabulary Sets in 3 Different Sizes -- Use these flashcards for teaching English, Spanish, Chinese or any other second language. The BIG CARDS make it easy to present vocabulary to the whole class. The MID-SIZED CARDS are great for teaching small groups of students. The SMALL SETS OF PICTURES work well for playing language learning games such as Down-Pass or Go Fish. Best of all, they're all FREE! Currently we have 968 total images and 2904 total flashcards. Enjoy!"

Meograph is the easiest way to create multimedia stories. With no training you can quickly create stories about the news, history, travels, life events, and more by combining video, audio, pictures, text, links, maps, and timelines. Then share by embedding anywhere on the web, or though your favorite social network. Meograph is being used by major media organizarions, companies around the world, thousands of schools, and tens of thousands of storytellers. We are domocratizing multimedia expression and are building an entire suite of easy-to-use creative tools.

Textivate is an online facility for creating and sharing interactive browser-based activities. Text re-ordering, gap-fills, text re-construction, anagrams, matching, memory, hangman, flashcards, millionaire and lots more - all automatically generated based on any text and/or list of matching items that you put into the textivate text box. Much of the site is free to use, and subscribers can upload resources to share with their students or embed activities on a blog or website. It is browser-based, so it works on desktops, laptops, ipads etc. The activities are ideal for whole-class work with any interactive whiteboard. You can see video tutorials here: http://textivate.posthaven.com/video-tutorials To help you get started, browse the hundreds of public resources on the site, or click on "textivate now" to see the range of activities available.

Creaza Education is a great suite of tools that includes a video editor, an audio editor, a cartoon creator, and an excellent mind map builder. To access all of these tools create an account on Creaza Education then select "tools" after you sign in. Creaza Education's mind mapping tool is actually an installation of Mindomo. Mindomo is one of the most feature-rich mind mapping tools that I've used. The user interface is clear and intuitive as every important function happens through clearly labeled drop down menus. Mindomo allows you to include videos, pictures, and audio files in all cells in your mind map.

wireWax is a new service (still in beta) that takes the concept of YouTube annotations and makes it much better. On wireWax you can build interactive tags into your videos. Each tag that you add to your video have another video from YouTube or Vimeo or an image from Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram. A tag can also include an audio track from SoundCloud or a reference article from Qwiki. What makes using wireWax different from using the YouTube annotations tool is that clicking on your tags (what YouTube calls annotations) does not send you outside of the video you're currently watching. This means that you can watch a video within a video or view a picture or listen to a different audio track within the original video. When you click a tag in the original video the video pauses and the tagged item is displayed. wireWax allows you to add tags to any YouTube video that is publicly viewable and has not had embedding disabled. I tried wireWax with this five minute video. It took a while (15-20 minutes) for the video to process for tagging, but once it was processed it was easy to create a tag. To create my tag I just advanced the video to the spot I wanted to tag, drew a box around the person I was tagging, then selected the wireWax YouTube app to put a video within the original video. Check it out below by advancing to about the 1.5 minute mark. Applications for Education wireWax could be a great tool for adding new layers of information to educational videos. If you're creating videos for your students or your students are creating videos to share with others consider tagging key points at which viewers might have questions. At those points insert tags that reveal clarifying information in the form of a video, an image, or an audio recording. 

The Noun Project is an online catalog of free clip art that you can download and reuse for all kinds of projects. The catalog is divided into eleven categories including sports, safety, food, animals, and more. All of the images are either public domain images or Creative Commons licensed images. If the images are public domain you are free to reuse them without attribution without restriction. If the images are Creative Commons licensed, please note the attribution requirements.

"What is Snappy Words visual English dictionary? It's an online interactive English dictionary and thesaurus that helps you find the meanings of words and draw connections to associated words. You can easily see the meaning of each by simply placing the mouse cursor over it. Why use Snappy Words visual dictionary? Easy to use dictionary and thesaurus. Learn how words associate in a visually interactive display. Get ideas to help write content for your blog, article, thesis or simply play with words! No registration required. No limit on number of searches. Look up as many words as you need anytime. No software installation needed. All you need is an internet connection and a browser (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and others). It's free and fun! How do I use it? Type words in the search box and click Go or simply hit Enter. Once the words branch off the main query, you can double click a node to find other related words. To explore the features: Place the mouse cursor over a word to view the meaning. Double click a node from the branch to view other related words. Scroll the mouse wheel over words to zoom in or out. This helps you see more associations or view words and meanings more clearly. Click and drag a word or branch to move it around and explore other branches. What dictionary does Snappy Words use? The Snappy Words interface queries the WordNet lexical database developed by Princeton University and made available for students and language researchers. This dictionary groups synonyms into synsets through lexical relations between terms. These meanings and semantic relationships are revealed graphically by the interactive web technology made available by Snappy Words."

AcademicHelp.net is a free writing guide with tutoring material on practically any type of academic or non-academic writing task. Our writing guides and samples cover a variety of life's spheres where you might face the challenge of having to write a document, a paper, or a reference. All our guides, along with their related samples, are logically organized in sections and subsections. AcademicHelp.net is a free resource aimed at nothing but helping us all become better writers.

Booktrust is an independent reading and writing charity that makes a nationwide impact on individuals, families and communities, and culture in the UK. We make a significant positive contribution to the educational outcomes of children from the earliest age. We work to empower people of all ages and abilities by giving them confidence and choices about reading. And we want individuals of all backgrounds to benefit from the wellbeing that a rich and positive engagement in reading and writing can bring.   Our work supports children and young people, parents and carers and indeed anyone who would benefit from the positive impact that books, reading and writing can have on their lives.   Vision: Empowering people through reading and writing.   Mission: Booktrust inspires everyone to enjoy books, reading and writing and the lifelong benefits that they bring. Our aim is to build a literate, connected and creative society.

Haiku Deck's web application is a great tool for designing visually-appealing slideshows. The latest update to the Haiku Deck web app includes support for charts and graphs. Now in your Haiku Deck slides you can create bar graphs, pie charts, and stat charts. You can adjust the values in bar graphs by clicking and dragging each column. Pie charts are made by typing percentages. Stat charts are simply captioned columns of statistics. The latest update to Haiku Deck also includes support for multiline slides. This is a feature that I'm not terribly excited about because it allows students to write more text on their slides than they could before. One of my favorite features of Haiku Deck has always been the text limitations which forced students to choose their words carefully.

Extensive Reading Central is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing an Extensive Reading and Extensive Listening approach to foreign and second language learning. It was started by Dr. Rob Waring of Note Dame Seishin University, Okayama, Japan and Dr. Charles Browne of Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan as a free service to the EFL community. Our aim is to keep this site as much as possible free. Our hope is the EFL community will assist us in building the site through collaboration. We have lots of exciting new features to make this possible under development.

In an ideal world, every time your company rolls out a new application or a major upgrade on an existing application, full-time trainers would handle the duties of educating end users. In the real world, however, help desk analysts not only provide support for these applications but are often asked to train users on them as well.

Tons of web tools to use in your virtual classroom.

Tons of web tools to use in your virtual classroom.

An online magazine of news, politics, and culture. Slate.com combines humor and insight in thoughtful analyses of current events and political news. Have your students read an article about a current event and write their thoughts and impressions.

"Are you ready to do some creative writing exercises? Story Spinner is a generator of millions of creative writing exercises. There's a handheld version you can buy so you will have writing exercises wherever you go. And there's a FREE online version on this page that you can use over and over and over again."

Some call them 'connected educators' while other use the phrase 'digital teacher' and many prefer the term '21st century teacher.' Whatever terms you use to describe modern teachers, it's important to know what the terms actually mean. There's a fabulous wiki devoted to just this topic here which houses some incredible bits of information. It's by Andrew Churches who has curated quite a treasure trove of useful information for any teacher looking to outline what he or she actually does as a modern educator.