An interesting writing tool, no sign up. When finished read others writing on the same word.
"simple. you'll see one word at the top of the following screen.
you have sixty seconds to write about it."
This is an excellent resource and one which i use with my schools very often.
The examples are good, and it also provides a scaffold for Microsoft Word that you can download.
http://www.amathsdictionaryforkids.com/ is also made by the same person and is worth a look.
What it is: Boy's Life Magazine is a great place to reach those boys in your class that are reluctant readers or writers. On the Boy's Life site, you will find a Comic Creator where students can create a comic strip. The Comic Creator is easy to use, offering enough tools for boys to really customize their comics but not SO many that they get lost in the forever search of pictures. A great balance!
How to integrate Comic Creator into the classroom: The Boy's Life Comic Creator is a great little tool to help your boys connect with writing and story telling in a way that they enjoy and understand. The tool is simple enough to use as a writing station/center on classroom computers. The comic does need to be created in one sitting, there is no way to save and come back to a comic later. Completed comics can be printed off and shared.
An excellent presentation on wikis & writing and how they can be used to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. Also shares some meaningful stats regarding language development, explains and gives examples on web 1.0 & 2.0 tools and social media.
A blog post describing various options available for publishing students writing online...Goes into the pros and cons of each service...worth a read...
VocabularySpellingCity has a new summer word study program that allows children to sharpen academic skills as they play. These simple assignments are a daily workout for the brain, building literacy skills such as vocabulary, spelling, and writing.
Canorus is a free extensible music score editor. It supports note writing, import/export of various file formats, MIDI input and output, scripting and more! Using a Qt4 framework Canorus offers a fast and modern GUI and cross-platformability. Canorus runs on Linux, Windows and MacOSX. Canorus is free (libre) software, licensed under GNU GPL.
"For students and teachers, the Google Docs collection provides a streamlined, collaborative solution to writing papers, organizing presentations and putting together spreadsheets and reports. But besides the basic features, there are lots of little tricks and hacks you can use to make your Google Docs experience even more productive. Here are 100 great tips for using the documents, presentations and spreadsheets in Google Docs."
PicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.
Fantastic for secondary English
Great website for learning about writing letters. Goes through requirements of both Personal letters, and Business letters. Lets you print/save the document as a final product.