Free language education for the world!
DuoLingo is engaging, interactive, fun, and challenging for anyone who want to learn another language. They currently offer Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, and English, but they are working on adding more. Try this site out and invite your colleagues to join you in broadening your language skills!
This FREE web-based tool is perfect for teachers who want to digitize their instruction and even try out a ‘flipped’ lesson. Build your canvas easily with a variety of elements including images, text, pdfs, PowerPoints, videos, quizzes, and more.
Mozilla Popcorn is a free web-based resource that allows you to integrate the web into video production.
Make your own EduBoard with EduClipper! See how easy it is to curate web content and infographics to share with others on this Pinterest-like site. Try it out and see what creative content teachers are already posting.
This new site was launched on April 18, 2013 with a specific purpose. It brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.
Both of these sites have hundreds of interactive math games that would be great with an interactive whiteboard!
Johnnie’s Math Page is for K-5 while Johnnie’s Middle School Math page is for older students.
A fun and free online tool that lets your students make their own storybooks. An iPad app is also available.
ReadWriteThink is a site developed by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. In addition to wonderful lesson plans and websites, there are dozens of interactive tools for students of all ages. From ABC match, letter recognition for younger students to the Word Matrix that helps older students understand the concepts of connotation and register.
Smithsonian’s History Explorer was developed by the National Museum of American History and offers hundreds of free, innovative online resources for teaching and learning American history.
The resources emphasize learning history by “reading” objects for the stories they hold about the nation and its many peoples. Learning activities feature selected artifacts.
Did you know you have a digital recorder on your computer? It is a free and easy way to record the words of students as they read the words of others or their own. This program is loaded on all Shelby County machines or it can be downloaded to your computer at home. (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
A “3-ring binder for the web.” This is a great tool for organizing online resources in an easy-to-use format. You can create a livebinder and share it or look through ones that have already been created by others.
Would you like to have your students participate in a videoconference with experts in their field? Perhaps you’d like to collaborate with another classroom in another part of the world? For resources to find Virtual Field Trips and collaborations, check out our Distance Learning page.
Are you tired of getting to school and realizing you left a file you needed on your home computer? Evernote will let you access notes, documents, images, from your computer, iPad, or smart phone. It is a download for your computer and an app for your iPad or phone. There is an Android app as well. It is searchable to help you find things quickly.
This site showcases student creativity in learning SAT vocabulary. BrainyPics are pictures which illustrate a word while BrainyFlix uses video. Beware that many of the videos are blocked (youtube), but it’s still a great site whether you simply look at what others have done or submit some of your own.
Create infographics using this free site. You can add charts, videos and maps to your poster, then embed it in your blog to share with others.
Xtimeline is a free web-based timeline. Easily create and share timelines with pictures and videos. There are numerous timelines already created that may have the information you need.
This is an easy timeline for young students to make. The only way to save it though is to act like you are going to print it and save it as a PDF.
Timeglider lets you build your own interactive timeline for free. You can use it for history or to plan your project. It lets you zoom in and out, add pictures, and a legend. You can collaborate with others to make a timeline.
Teachers often struggle to find just the right questions to get their students to think deeply about a subject and thus become engaged with it. Students will learn if you can engage them with the material. This site can help you figure out just the right questions for your students and subjects. Intel has a nice section on questioning and forming questions.
Online diagramming and collaboration; try out the free desktop version.
Tools for teaching the Common Core from ASCD
Wolfram Alpha is “an engine for computing answers and providing knowlwdge.” Trying to describe just what this means is very difficult, so you might want to watch their 1 minute video to understand.
It has always been great for higher math, but now it’s useful for the basics as well. Type 7+4 in Wolfram Alpha and you’ll not only get the answer in both numeric (11) and written form (eleven,) but an illustration on a number line and using manipulatives. You’ll also see the typical amount of time the problem can be solved at different ages.
Check it out and be sure to look at the examples. http://blog.wolframalpha.com/
Free Reading can help you with your reading instruction or as a site to help parents help their children. It contains activities and intervention materials for early literacy skills, beginning with phonological awareness and goes through the steps of learning to read through fluency and writing. It has words to download that can be used as flashcards for student practice. Click on the Audio link to hear songs using vocabulary words. You can play the songs while letting the students see the words using a projector. There are videos showing examples of how to teach certain concepts, games and more.
Google Lit Trips have been around for awhile, but we didn’t realize it wasn’t on Tech Treats. They have trips already created for grades K-12 so look and see if some of the literature you are studying already has a lit trip you can use. You can create your own to go with any book or story. They have a handout that explains how to do this, just scroll down the page and click on it link to download. You may want your students to make one of their “summer vacation” or where they wanted to go.
This site is predominantly printable worksheets, but don’t miss the interactives! They would be especially useful with an interactive whiteboard.
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