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This looks like a really interesting new blog from NPR which examines the intersection between language, culture, and identity in everyday life (topics that often arise in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology). This could be an excellent source of authentic reading material for L2 learners, a source of culture learning, and also a model source of the blog genre.

Wordle isn't necessarily ESL focused, but it does do fun things with language. Teachers can use this application to create vocabulary word splashes that are visually appealing to students, or teachers can let students play with their own words. For example, students can input an essay and world will pick out the most frequent words and put them into a cool design. It's a simple and easy way to manipulate language.

Jena, I'm glad you posted this. I think that this has some great potential for introducing vocabulary in the pre- or -post phases of a lesson for different skills or content classes. I like that you can choose different fonts, # of words that can be displayed and the direction of displayed words. You can also embed this into blogs and wikis. For a good blog post on using word clouds in the classroom, you might want to check out Nic Peachey's post on this subject: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/09/using-word-clouds-in-efl-esl.html As an aside, in my opinion this guy is perhaps one of the most active technology/CALL ESL people on the web. I get a lot of great ideas from reading his blog posts and other resources.

This is very interesting.. It can be used by teachers of vocabulary and writing.. I like the fact that it can be used ina number of ways. Thanks Jena

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this already (so forgive me if this is a repeat!), but basically Tumblr is like a blog hybrid that allows you post just about anything (as the site states: "Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors to your theme's HTML."). The site is very creativity-oriented, and seems like a potentially very useful online resource for students to express themselves creatively, to write and publish for a real audience, to gain exposure to cultural dimensions of the target speech community, and to enhance their digital literacy.

This blog post discusses how both Google Drive and Evernote can be used to create E-portfolios. Both of these technologies are free and easy to use. For classrooms integrating the use of Ipads, this post has a number of tips on using the Ipad applications of these platforms for portfolio creation online.

Found this interesting blog post about how you can pretty easily use corpora to validate claims about idiom frequency. I think this could be a useful technique for evaluating certain kinds of textbooks as well as selecting fixed expressions for your own teaching content/materials.

This is an excerpt from an International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) publication that shares some case studies and a lesson plan for employing cellphones in the classroom. Students use texting, blogging, QR codes, and call into a Talk Radio style voice blog (podcast/webcast kind of thing).

The New York Times has a blog named 'The Learning Network'. They post several activities everyday. These include cloze texts, multiple choice reading comprehension questions, puzzles and videos with discussion questions. They also have a word-of-the-day page where they post a new word everyday with its meaning and a sample sentence. I check their page from time to time to see if any of the activities would be appropriate for my students. You can also assign them as homework or students can work on them on their own.

This is the blog of a EFL teacher in Japan who has a technology focus. He introduces some pretty good CALL tools and also provides some lesson/activity ideas and resources that you can use yourself. He's got some really interesting ways of using video and shows off some neat things with a WiiMote.

Learn a Language with free online language lessons, interactive games, and fun lessons. Learn up to 8 foreign languages with Visual Link Languages. Pick a language and start learning.

This website is neat as it has a updating blog and a culture section for language learning.

My blurb: How do you use QR codes when students have limited online access? Did you know you can use QR codes offline? This website explains how to use a text feature that requires no online access. I thought this was an interesting option when working in classrooms where students may have varying access to technology. Their blurb: Smartphones during EFL classes? How can that be productive? Raquel Gonzaga is a blog writer in the field of technology resources for ELT classrooms. In this post, she considers how QR codes can be used to involve and motivate students in the EFL classroom.

The Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) is an organization that helps people create short, first-person narratives that educate and/or inspire positive change. The organization hosts a number of workshops on digital storytelling, and distributes stories in a number of traditional and media formats. The website provides information about the organization's mission, features selected digital stories, and connects to a textbook, blog, and newsletter. If you plan to include digital storytelling you your classroom, whether ESL or any other type of class, the CDC looks like a great resource. I was able to review portions of the textbook, and it looks great!

StumbleUpon is a website that was not created with language learners in mind, but it can be a useful tool in the language classroom. You can sign up for free, and then you pick interests, such as English, humor, cats, politics, etc. When you hit "Stumble," you get new pages generated based on your interests. There are articles, videos, memes, blogs, pages dedicated to motivating writers, and so on, and most of the content is in English. Though not everything is authentic, there are pages on here that would be useful for reading, listening, and writing especially. The website is fun to use and based on students interests, which should increase student motivation. One activity that can be done with it is to ask students to share with the class (in person or perhaps on a discussion board) one or more websites that they stumbled upon. It would get students to use English to describe what they came across. One downfall for the classroom, though, is that you never know what you will get, so the content may not always be useful or level appropriate. Content is sometimes also more appropriate for teenage or older users.

There has been a lot of discussion on the web about how one can create their own Personal Learning Network (PLN). This term represents a purposeful approach to using technology to network with other professionals who share similar professional interests and goals. This article explores a number of technologies that are used for creating a PLN. For staying abreast on recent developments in technology and the use in teaching, I believe that developing a PLN is a must.

"Learn real English language from English speakers around the world on elllo with free listening, reading, and vocabulary activities and downloads." Elllo is a library of over 1200 ESL listening passages. One really nice feature of the site is representation of many varieties of World Englishes (Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle speakers are featured). The site is fairly low-frills, but I find that to be a good thing- it's very easy to go directly to what you want and use a listening passage for your own purposes. I wrote a longer evaluation for my CALL blog this week, which you can find here: http://dancallblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/evaluating-call-resources.html

When I taught Listening and Speaking, I found ello.org to be a really good source for listening passages about all kinds of subjects.

"Make a newspaper clipping with your own headline and story. In example to surprise friends and coworkers, send a birthday greeting or to give your next blog entry a special look." This could be a creative way for students to summarize a story or a movie. They could use this tool to write a review including main ideas and a recommendation. The fact that it generates into a mock newspaper clipping is a fun and creative way to share their findings.

This blog post describes how to set up Google Voice for students to use in classroom assignments or homework. It's a very low tech demand on students; all they need is a phone. The teacher would have easy, computer access to a virtual voicemail archive of all the student messages. It's probably easier than using VoxoPop and seems like it would be pretty easy to make spoken homework assignments a reality, plus there are probably some neat in-class applications as well.