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Stannard gives a quick overview of http://www.rhymes.net, which helps you find words that rhyme with other words. But he doesn't mention that the site speaks the word too! There are also many other tools, such as a dictionary, words with multi-syllables, quotations using the word, phrases, abbreviations, etc. Great for vocabulary work, pronunciation, and writing poetry.

"Direct instruction of vocabulary can help students learn enough words to become better readers, and becoming a better reader can in turn help students learn even more vocabulary. So how do we teach students to learn or acquire new vocabulary? Research suggests that vocabulary instruction should include the following components: definitional and contextual information about a word; multiple exposures to a word in different contexts; and encouragement of students' active participation in their own learning of the new words.1 Here are 15 vocabulary activities that you can integrate into your classroom starting tomorrow!" Includes a number of visual/drawing activities. Should make vocabulary building more fun. Could be adapted to younger children. Some activities have a downloadable worksheet.

"What you see here are candid submissions from people who have engaged in a little exercise. Here's how it works. Think about the word Race. How would you distill your thoughts, experiences or observations about race into one sentence that only has six words?" This National Public Radio blog makes the perfect starting point for a multicultural lesson for ESL/EFL students. The entries are sheer poetry and give a great deal of content to think about the issue of race and one's place in society, for better or worse. Each 6-word "poem" makes us, as one contributor said, "Look past race to underlying humanity."

Put in a Web address and lingro turns all the words into clickable links to a dictionary. You can hear the word read out. Further it remembers the words and lets you review and study them. So far 11 languages, including Dutch and Chinese. A fabulous tool for students--better than a dictionary. See Russell Stannard's training video at

This site creates several kinds of activities and games: interactive map, riddles, fill-in, crossword puzzles, dialogue with audio prompts, dictation, jumbled word or sentence, matching, word search, and quizzzes. You can store your creations for repeated use. Thanks to D. Gonzalez for sharing this.

Claims to have "All the words in the world pronounced by native speakers." If you ask for a word to be pronounced, another user will pronounce it for you. You are asked to help by recording your own native speaker pronunciation. Looks like an interesting use of social media.

"Collect up gifs related to any vocabulary area you want to teach or revise. Embed them in an html page on your desk top and start a collection. Each time you add new ones send the html page to your students. (They will need to have a live connection on their computer to be able to view the gifs) Ask them to make notes of any words they relate to the images they see." This is another neat little tool with notes on how to use it from the very extensive collection by Nik Peachey. I'd suggest having the students make animated vocabulary gifs of words they want to learn/find useful.

Downloadable app to use Word Magnets on your own computer (requires registration). Sentences are broken up into words that can be rearranged and moved around the desktop to make poetry, re-create a target sentence, or make new sentences and punctuate it. See Russell Standard's http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/magnets/index.html for how to download and use this app.

Save a word by adopting it. Great fun!

"The Frayer Model is a strategy that uses a graphic organizer for vocabulary building. This technique requires students to (1) define the target vocabulary words or concepts, and (2) apply this information by generating examples and non-examples. This information is placed on a chart that is divided into four sections to provide a visual representation for students."

Start your presentation, type a few words and then search for a copyright free creative commons-licensed image to illustrate, add charts or graphs, and select theme, layout, and filters. Share and view on any web-enabled device or embed in your website or blog. Help your students create beautiful presentations on the iPads. Free.

This is an amazing site -- the news of the day is provided in three different levels of English, so you can select the reading level that is just right for your students. You can also have the news sent to your email. There is a word translation link also. Still free!

This is a collection of texts and accompanying images created by users that you can use for ESL/EFL activities. Have students create and add their own digital stories connected to a theme or short story they have searched for and read. You can also search by a key word, such as a grammatical term they are studying (e.g., "used to"). Thanks to C. Arena.

Insert a URL on this page and it will render a readability score using Flesch, SMOG, etc., plus statistics such as number of words, sentences, etc. This could be helpful to determine readable authentic materials for ESL/EFL learners. However, I suspect most webpages all run pretty close to the same level. This would be interesting to experiment with, and especially useful for electronic books and content materials.

The paper concludes that while there are some preliminary positives about online PLC's, educators' thinking about online PLC's has not moved beyond the scope of traditional PLC's. In other words, more time will be required to truly evaluate their impact, but in the meantime, blended traditional and online PLC's seem to offer the most promise.

Read a summary of the report or the full report at:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=368 This link is not working as I post this, so I need to check back later

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.

"he success of social media content writers is practically dependent upon thorough proofreading. If you skip this part, your writing and marketing efforts will be useless. Spelling, punctuation, word usage, and grammar mistakes can ruin the overall impression your content makes."

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.

Top 10 Ways to Use Wordle's Word Clouds for Classroom Lessons