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SimplyBox is a great way to add some Web 2.0 to your research. This would be esp. useful with group objects where students can then look at what each other group member has found. Use SimplyBox for Education, and get the free app (also has fee-based district or school-wide application that can be hosted and access controlled safely, and boxing from any application). The teacher could start the ball rolling, and have students join in, boxing their own sites and info. Esp. good for visual learners. This page has three good help videos: Overview, Sharing, and Twittering with SimplyBox. Fairly easy to use, once you get used to it.

"Watch interesting, authentic videos. Learn the vocabulary that matters to you. Speak and get instant pronunciation feedback." Stills from videos with descriptive voice over, or clips, with captioning. Record your own voice and get a score. Users can also slow down the descriptive speech with a button click. Looks like a great practice device, with a wide variety of voices and accents.

This is a great set of podcast questions by students to be used as the basis of a cross-cultural exchange. Nice examples to get your students going. These examples are from 16-17-yr-olds. Students get some writing practice, too, by inputting the questions they read aloud.

"Create and share great video lessons with your iPad or browser." This is a great tool for getting students talking, or for creating a lively presentation. You can upload a picture, or draw from scratch, as on a blackboard or whiteboard. Easy to use, free download, and available from the App Store for smart phone or iPad.

This looks like a cute app for the very young. You upload pictures and arrange them in a set, create one or more questions for each, which you record. The user taps to hear the questions and taps a place on the picture to answer it. TinyTap also has a market with free and purchaseable games already made. Lots of potential for ESL vocabulary practice, since once you get by the interface it doesn't look childish at all.

Phone to Mac copies music, photos, video, and more from iPod, iPad and iPhone to your desktop. This transfer software will help you get your older Mac (up to 10.6) or Windows PC in touch with your mobile life. Download the app to your desktop computer, install, and plug in your mobile device.

"Description: A breathtaking array of 'learn to code' Apple, Android and Windows phone apps. Learn C++, Python C#, HTML, SQL, JavaScript, Java, CSS, php and Swift via the site or apps. These are 'must try' tools for anyone starting out with coding. The site even has a 'Code Playground' to experiment with your code." I haven't had a chance to try out any of these, but this should be an interesting starting point to get students coding.

"As part of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), students need to "ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century." Many teachers have little to no formal training on how to teach about climate change. Along with the ever-changing research and the controversy that comes with it, some teachers inevitably shy away or even prevent students from digging deep into the content. Some suggest that teachers might be getting climate change all wrong. Since teachers can't rely on books to stay current with all the new research, digital resources are the only effective way to stay on top of such a dynamic field. Consider these practices when using technology to teach about climate change:" Sites include NASA Global Climate Change, Climate Kids for younger learners, Global Oneness Project, and Earth-Now to analyze realtime data.

The blog for the Flickr group that collects pictures to use with EFL/ESL students. Join the crowd-sourcing, and use this blog to get ideas for teaching with pictures.

Shelly Terrell offers FREE webinars every Friday at around 21:00 GMC/UTC at americantesol.adobeconnect.com/terrell/. This page gives a list of topics for upcoming webinars. Get somefree prof development with inspiring examples of how to use Web tools with your students.

"Mouse Mischief integrates into Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, letting you insert questions, polls, and drawing activity slides into your lessons. "Students can actively participate in these lessons by using their own mice to click, circle, cross out, or draw answers on the screen. " This sound like a great tool to make your presentations interactive, get students attention and help them learn as you teach. Sorry--looks like Windows only. Originally from Gre Duncan's blog: http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2012/02/add-little-mischief-to-your-next.html

Project this web page in your classroom and have at it! A nice application to get a low-cost alternative to the whiteboard.

This might be a nice way for students to get listening practice. Though set up to read blog-to-sound, students could also read the blog while listening. he teacher might also set up a blog and insert texts or words specifically for students to follow on audio.

"Based on the motivational theories of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, the game encourages students to assess themselves not on how smart or talented they are, but on how hard they work. And the reward for completing quests with characters is significant: Help the Cheshire cat from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and he'll help you turn invisible so you can sneak through the virtual world a la Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak. "The more characters from literature you get to know, the more powerful you become," says Schell. "

R. Stannard shows how to use ELT Pics, which is hosted by Flickr. You can also get an email feed to show pictures as they are updated. A nice way to garner resources for writing or student projects. Pictures are crowd-sourced, and curated by EFL teachers. I use pictures often for teaching writing: description, emotions, cultural comparisons, if-clauses, etc. Don't miss the "Making Collages" part of this video, as it includes PicMonkey, which has templates for collages. ELT Pics also has its own blog with ideas for using images.

Have you ever tried this idea?

Integrating technology into the classroom by means of WebQuests is a great way for students to get involved in real life learning

This site is going EFL/ESL in a big way, using video: "We recently found out that 22frames.com is becoming a popular site for learning English as a second language (ESL). It turns out that watching captioned videos provides a way to not only learn formal English but also idioms and other cultural concepts. To find videos, you can browse through categories or make caption-only video searches on your interests. Even more, we have been devoting significant time and resources to developing ESL-specific features that are motivated by our users' feedback." "Recently, we found out that many of our users are using the site to supplement their English learning (see: http://www.22frames.com/esl.aspx ). They also began to pitch ideas we could implement to make the site even more useful for this activity. With so many requests, we decided to seriously consider these ideas and devote significant time and resources into realizing them. Now, we are turning our site into a substantial and FREE English learning resource. We are aware of a couple sites out there that are also focused on using captioned videos for English learning, so we've been focusing on the unique user-motivated features. Therefore, my goal here is to let you know about our free resource and that we are opening the door to requests for anyone who might desire features that have not been implemented elsewhere. Perhaps, you can share this with your colleagues/readers/etc as it will help us better gauge which features to prioritize and to increase the rate with which we will release new features. Please note that we are really serious about considering whatever feedback we get. I'm also pleased to announce our first feature, which we expect will help in learning/teaching popular English idioms. Idioms are a big deal in learning English, and it is clear that watching them used in real situations will increase the rate with which they are learned. We therefore processed a large group of YouTube videos in o

22 Frames is going to the ESL/EFL market, and is free. First features are idioms.

"Shawnee High School Language Arts Literacy teacher Kristin Giles came to the ETTC recently to seek out websites to support her research paper unit. Here are some of the places she visited on the World Wide Web:" A list of links to info/advice/help with research skills. Nice way for a teacher to get herself prepped for teaching the research paper.