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Teaching and learning with technology can be both challenging and engaging for instructors and students. While technologies make it easier for instructors to create learning opportunities, provide prompt feedback, and improve student engagement with content materials, they also pose challenges. Following are some practical guidelines for using technology in teaching. They may help you manage technology-supported teaching more effectively, avoiding some of the common pitfalls.

"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."

Tons of web tools to use in your virtual classroom.

Tons of web tools to use in your virtual classroom.

"Welcome to our free, royalty free stock photography collection of over 1000 images and growing! You'll find stock photos covering a range of categories such as textures, animals, technology, water, fire, jobs and careers, buildings and more. These stock photos are 100% free and are also royalty free."

Draw Island is a free online tool for creating drawings and simple GIF animations. Draw Island offers you your choice of four canvas sizes on which you can draw. Draw Island offers two canvas sizes for creating simple GIF animations. To use Draw Island just head to the site and select a drawing tool. You can draw free hand (or should I say free mouse?) or select pre-defined shapes to use in your images. When you're done drawing just click the save button to download your drawing or animation. 

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.

Fun Educational Apps is an excellent site for finding detailed reviews on educational apps. These apps are rated on a 5 star scale and include photos. Best of all, these reviews breakdown the app into 3 categories such as: what I liked, suggestions, and general opinion.

Vialogues is a website that is designed to enable users to host conversations around a video. Users can upload videos to Vialogues or use YouTube videos as the centerpieces of their conversations. After you have selected a video from YouTube or uploaded a video of your own, you can post poll questions and add comments that are tied to points in the video. Your Vialogue can be made public or private. Public Vialogue's can be embedded into your blog or website.

Spider Scribe is an online mind map creation service. Spider Scribe can be used individually or be used collaboratively. What jumps out about Spider Scribe is that users can add images, maps, calendars, text notes, and uploaded text files to their mind maps. Users can connect the elements on their mind maps or let them each stand on their own. You can embed your interactive Spider Scribe mind map into your blog or website. If you would like to see how Spider Scribe works, check out Russell Stannard's series of how-to videos or watch this two minute demo. Spider Scribe has a free product for students and educators.

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.

Realtime Board is a free tool for hosting online, collaborative brainstorming sessions. Realtime Board provides a blank grid on which you can type, draw, and post pictures. You can connect elements on your boards through a simple linking tool. The boards that you create on Realtime Board can be shared publicly or privately. To help you communicate with your collaborators Realtime Board has a chat function built into every board.

We all have had many years of experience in learning in face-to-face settings in both classrooms and seminar rooms. Although the face-to-face learning environments are often complex and unpredictable, we are very familiar with them and have developed high levels of skill in working in these environments. We cannot assume, however, that the skills, strategies, and techniques that we so effectively use in face-to-face learning environments will also work well in online learning.

A list of web tools for teaching and learning

Podcasting for the ESL/EFL Classroom, a totally free, 5-week, hands-on, TESOL - Electronic Village Online (EVO) workshop aimed at English teachers from all over the world. Learn how to create, produce and publish your own podcasts for the ESL/EFL classes. http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/48521330/Podcasting2012 

Webinars acerca del uso de varias herramientas (twitter, qrcodes, facebook, digital storytelling, mobile learning, comics, blogs, etc.)

Computer Assisted Language Learning: an Introduction