Discovery Education supports teachers in accelerating student achievement, bringing the wonder of Discovery into classrooms to ignite students' natural curiosity.
Scholastic Story Starters is a great tool that students will enjoy using to create short, creative fiction stories. Scholastic Story Starters offers four story themes; fantasy, adventure, sci-fi, and scrambler. To create a story on Story Starters a students picks a theme, enter his or her name, chooses his or her grade, and spins the big wheels of prompts. The student can spin the wheels until he or she finds a prompt he or she likes. After the prompt is selected the student can write his or her story using the letter, postcard, notebook, or newspaper format provided by Scholastic Story Starters. When the story is finished it can be printed.
Educreations is a global community where anyone can teach what they know and learn what they don't.
We're on a mission to democratize learning by extending the reach of great teaching.
Simply put, Vizlingo is a messaging tool that translates your words into video. It's easy! Just type, see and send.
Type any message into Vizlingo to see each word illustrated by a 1-2 second video clip. Send your messages anywhere - directly to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. For use across the web, copy a link. It's as simple as sending a text or tweet!
Vidtionary is a video dictionary. It defines and expresses words through images. It is suitable for language learners, both native speakers and students of English as another language (ESL or EAL). Vidtionary is also a good tool for teaching visual literacy and graphic design.
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.
Find Words that Express Your Thoughts
There are times when you know what you want to say, but you just don't know the right word in English. This can be very frustrating, but it is good to practice explaining the words you want so that you can get the word you want.
OneLook Reverse Dictionary can help you with this. You can also practice using the site by doing an online crossword puzzle.
This great blog created by Gareth H. Jones provides Spanish language speakers with clear explanations of some grammar points, concepts. expressions, and vocabulary.
Voki enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character. You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc. Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone.
Voki lives on your blog, social network profile and will soon be integrated in various instant messaging platforms. You will also be able to download it to most video supported phones.
Creaza is used worldwide by thousands of students and teachers every day.
Creaza offers you an integrated, web-based toolbox for creative work, both at school and in your free time. You use the toolbox along with various fully developed thematic universes: historical periods, fairy-tales, fantasy worlds, and current challenges, such as climate/environment.
You can combine these themes with your own uploaded content.
Creaza integrates professional and user generated content, creative tools and a social network in a new and innovative way.
"This is a blog to help intermediate to advanced English language learners (people learning English as a foreign language) improve their English skills!
Memorizing words and grammar rules is the easy part of learning English - it's the strange pronunciation and all the expressions and cultural references that are difficult to understand! That's why this website is here, to help guide you through the maze of English. Here you'll find something to help improve each language skill: speaking, listening, and reading, as well as vocabulary and grammar explanations!"
"Reading Bear is a fun way to learn to read. We teach over 1,200 vocabulary items. Our 50 presentations cover all the main phonics rules. All free and nonprofit!"
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.