Resources for Teachers & Students

Many teachers have started using online tools to make the process of sharing information easier with students as well as many web-based tools to bring some fun into the classes and make the communication with students and their parents more effective. Likewise for students it is a dream to be able to do more work in a shorter amount of time, which then enables them to have more free time for social and recreational activities. We’ve compiled a list of some of the most useful technological tools which can be used by both teachers and students to advance learning techniques, enhance teaching productivity, bridge academic challenges and help improve classroom relationships.

MindShift: How We Will Learn

Teaching Strategies: Innovative ideas – projects, processes, curricula, and more – that are transforming how we teach and learn.

Technology is revolutionizing the world of education — replacing familiar classroom tools and changing the way we learn. MindShift explores the future of learning in all its dimensions — covering cultural and technology trends, groundbreaking research, education policy and more. The site is curated by Tina Barseghian, a journalist and the mother of a grade-schooler.

eLearning Industry

The eLearning Industry contains eLearning, Instructional Design, and Training jobs, comprehensive articles on how to use the best eLearning tools, reviews of the latest eLearning industry research, and advice direct from the world’s eLearning experts.

eLearning Industry is the largest online community of professionals involved in the eLearning industry. At eLearning Industry you will find the best collection of eLearning articles, eLearning concepts, eLearning software, and eLearning resources based on the Top eLearning Authors. The site is designed to share the knowledge via eLearning articles, tweets, ppp, etc. help instructional designers and (or) eLearning professionals to find a project or a temporary basis job and to build a safe online community of professionals involved in the eLearning industry.

4Teachers

4Teachers.org works to help you integrate technology into your classroom by offering online tools and resources. This site helps teachers locate and create ready-to-use Web lessons, quizzes, rubrics and classroom calendars. There are also tools for student use. Discover valuable professional development resources addressing issues such as equity, ELL, technology planning, and at-risk or special-needs students.

4Teachers.org also offers very targeted advice and solutions. The Assign-a-Day software helps teachers communicate with students who miss class, while a program called Think Tank helps students develop a Research Organizer (a list of topics and subtopics) for reports and projects. Be forewarned, a trip to this online teaching tool could last all day — there’s so much there!

Teach ~ Make a Difference

Teach ranks and scores hundreds of education blogs. Check out the top 100 and beyond to stay up to date on what people are talking about in the education space. Click here to learn more about the Teach100

Teach is also a comprehensive resource for information on becoming a great teacher. It provides information on how to become a teacher, teacher salaries, teaching credentials, teacher certification tests, alternative teacher certification, and much more (although pertaining mainly to the USA). Their aim is to provide all the information necessary to become a teacher no matter where you live.

Help Teaching

Custom and pre-made teaching resources for Printable and Online Tests, Activities, Lessons, and Games

A platform for educators: teachers, tutors, trainers, and homeschooling parents. Click Here for their list of Top 100 Free Education Sites 2015

Super Teacher Worksheets

Printable math worksheets, reading comprehension stories, spelling lists, handwriting practice sheets, grammar worksheets, holiday printables, activities and much more for teachers, parents, tutors, and home school families. Subjects include math, reading, writing, science, social studies etc.

An impressive number of free worksheets covering an array of subjects and grade levels makes SuperTeacherWorksheets is a great online teaching tool. The worksheets are crafted by actual teachers, parents and researchers who write and illustrate them well. There are also other teaching tools, certificates and even help writing report card comments. Members have full access to all of our printables.

Participate Learning

Participate Learning empowers teachers to improve student outcomes by helping them find and share free peer-rated and peer-reviewed educational resources to take advantage of the preponderance of broadband and internet-connected devices in their classrooms. The apps are clearly classified by topic, grade, and discipline, and the website also provides information on how to use the featured apps.

Participate Learning delivers thousands of apps, videos and websites – professionally vetted by expert teachers - that are searchable by keyword, category or Common Core State Standard. Additionally, any teacher can create and share Collections of their own favorite apps, videos, websites, or files (either web-based or uploaded) around a specific subject or lesson plan.

Think Inclusive

Dedicated to inclusive schools and communities as Tomorrow Is Too Long to Wait for Inclusion

Strategies & Resources for Positive Behavior Support in Inclusive Classrooms

Magical Maths Toolkit

A site where Maths teachers across the globe share resources to aid the development of OUTSTANDING teaching pedagogy.

The “Magical Maths” Toolkit is a learning hub for Maths teachers around the world. The success of the Maths Toolkit led to the introduction of the highly acclaimed Educator Toolkit.

ReadWriteThink: Education Resources

Providing educators, parents, and afterschool professionals with access to the highest quality practices in reading and language arts instruction by offering the very best in free materials including Lessons, interactive, calendar activities and more right at your fingertips

Every lesson plan on ReadWriteThink has been aligned not only to the IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts but to individual state standards and Common Core State Standards, when applicable.

MindGenius

MindGenius is a cool mind-mapping app that brings the activities of researching and note-taking to a whole new level. With the use of this downloadable software (with a free trial of 30 days), you can make your day-to-day activities clearer and manage the overload of information you get.

Capture your ideas, visualise information, plan projects, manage tasks and share knowledge. With a simple user-interface and intuitive mind mapping functionality at its core, MindGenius helps you capture and visualise information easily, seamlessly turning ideas into actionable project plans and tasks, enabling you and your team to achieve more. MindGenius has been helping professionals, teachers and students around the world to maximise their effectiveness. MindGenius enhances and complements the productivity tools that you use every day.

Citation Machine

As a calculator is to math, Citation Machine is to research. This online teaching tool saves time, frustration, and gets students focused on learning and being professional in the presentation of what they’ve learned.

Citation machine helps students and professional researchers to properly credit the information that they use. Its primary goal is to make it so easy for student researchers to cite their information sources, that there is virtually no reason not to because someday the information that someone else wants to use will be yours

WritingHouse Bibliography

The fully automatic bibliography and citation maker. Save time by creating a cited page instantly in the MLA,APA,Chicago,or Harvard referencing styles! It's easy, fast and it's free!

If you just finished working on a challenging academic paper, the last thing you would want to bother with is writing a bibliography. Don’t worry; you can easily skip that part and still submit a perfectly-formatted paper with the use of this tool. Citation generator WritingHouse supports Harvard, Chicago, MLA, and APA citation styles, and automatically applies the citations according to the format you choose. This tool will help you save not only time, but nerves as well.

The Plagiarism Checker

Easy to use: Cut & paste your student's paper or homework assignment into the box below, and click the "check" button. This free plagiarism detector will find plagiarized text in homework and other essays/reports

Most teachers hope they’ll never have a need for it, but teaching in the real world means they probably will. All a teacher has to do is copy and paste a paragraph of a student paper into The Plagiarism Checker to see if work has been copied from anywhere on the web.

WordCounter Tool

NinjaEssays Word Count Tool is the easiest way to find out how many words and symbols your content contains. You can type directly into the box or paste the text you want to analyze. The tool will provide you with an accurate word and character count once you click the Count button. It’s completely free and easy to use

Counting words in the documents you type is not something you would want to spend your time with, and the usual word count tools in common word processors are not that convenient when you need to find the exact number of characters and words you type. The Word Count tool is much more than a character counter; you can also use it to find out how many times you have used a particular word in the text. If you have favorite words that you’re using too often, they are diluting your texts and making them less captivating. When you analyze the text with our word counter, you will easily see which words were too commonly used, so you can replace them with synonyms or rephrase the sentences to bring the content to perfection.

Tagxedo ~ word cloud with styles

Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text.

Tagxedo is another great resource for helping kids learn both writing and design skills, as it allows them to create and save word clouds like the one below. If they have to memorize a speech or quote, they can also design a word cloud that will help them recall every single word, and there are tons of design options to make every cloud unique!

Smore flyers & newsletters

Create beautiful flyers and newsletters in minutes and use them on social networks or even in print! Smore's built-in tools make spreading your message fast and effective making you look like a pro every time, even if you have zero design experience. Take your newsletter to the next level and easily share your news on Facebook, Twitter, and more.

This website gives you a free opportunity to create colorful flyers. Make a flyer with your contact information and tell your students to print it and place it in a visible place (such as on their fridge, for example). This way their parents can easily find a way to contact you whenever necessary.

Google Forms

Create surveys, graph data, and analyze results with ease on your own or with others at the same time. Choose from a variety of beautiful, pre-made themes or create your own with which to plan events, make a survey or poll, give students a quiz, or collect other information in an easy, streamlined way with Google Forms.

Gathering all information you need from students and parents becomes easy with this online tool. Google forms can be used for giving quizzes to your students, sending surveys to parents, planning events, or collecting any other type of information easily. You can connect a form to a Google spreadsheet and automatically see the inserted updates.

Polldaddy

Surveys your way. Create stunning surveys, polls, and quizzes in minutes that match your brand, budget, and vision. Collect responses via your website, e-mail, iPad, Facebook, and Twitter.

Creating a poll and embedding it on your site takes only minutes with this online tool. My experience with polls tells me that they create an increased amount of interest and attract return visits to the website. You can use Polldaddy to survey the attitude of parents towards the policies in your classroom.

Audioboo ~ Radio Reimagined

Bringing advocates, activists and content producers together to explore the intersection of media, tech and social justice.

If you have a website, this tool will be a nice addition to your arsenal by allowing you to record messages and share them for free. This is the best way to get your message to people because parents and students don’t exactly like reading through long texts of weekly or monthly updates.

HITRECORD

HITRECORD is an open-collaborative online community working together as a production company, and this website is where we make things together.

We all enjoy being creative and this website is a fantastic platform to encourage making different kinds of art and media together. Getting people to work together in big and small ways: writing scripts, drawing characters, animating scenes, making music, filming, acting, giving feedback, and editing everything together. The contributions to these bite-sized tasks can add up to larger projects and productions.

Fotobabble

Photo- and audio-powered solutions that Engage and attract audiences in an integrated way across mobile, web and social media.

Creating a fotobabble is an excellent way to explain simple procedures and policies needed for your classroom. All you need is to choose or scan an image or document and upload it to this service. Fotobabble enables you to record an audio message that will help you explain those procedures and policies. Allow your students to create and share branded and personalized messages with photos and voice. Tell compelling product or service stories with Talking Photos and Talking Slideshows. Run unique contests and promotions from Facebook pages and offer users the ability to submit photo entries with or without audio/voice. Drive high levels of audience interaction – content creation, voting, commenting, and sharing of user-generated submissions. Capture and share mobile photo and audio content on location and in real time.

YouTube EDU » Education

Whether you're doing research for a project, need help with homework, or just want to learn something new, YouTube EDU features some of our most popular educational videos across YouTube. This channel was generated automatically by YouTube's video discovery system.

There’s a lot on YouTube that isn’t classroom-friendly, but if a teacher does his or her homework, there’s likely to be a video on YouTube EDU about almost anything. Also, the material on YouTube is, in many cases, more entertaining than traditional classroom videos and will keep students’ attention. Furthermore, can’t find a video? Teachers and students can always create their own, if what they’re looking for doesn’t exist.

Google Earth

Travel the world with your students on Google Earth

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean.

Socrative

Visualizing student understanding has never been clearer. Socrative empowers you to engage and assess your students as learning happens. Through the use of real-time questioning, result aggregation, and visualization, you have instant insight into levels of understanding so you can use class time to better collaborate and grow as a community of learners.

Socrative is well known in the world of education, and there is a valid reason for its popularity. It helps the classroom became easier to handle as it enables you to use different educational games and exercises to engage the students, who can access the activities with their tablets, laptops, or smartphones for free with this online tool.

EdSurge : The Best in Education Technology

EdSurge is an independent information resource and community for everyone involved in education technology.

LEARNING STRATEGIES in Adaptive Learning · Blended Learning · Flipped Classroom · Personalized Learning · Professional Development · Project-Based Learning · School Models · Competency-Based Learning

Remind

Reach students and parents where they are through the Remind messaging platform that helps educators, students, parents and other users send quick, simple messages to any device.

All parents and students that opt in to the group you establish will get your short text messages sent via Remind. This is a very valuable tool of communication with students & parents. It’s free, takes minutes to set up, and allows you to send the needed information in the easiest manner.

EVERNOTE ~ Remember Everything

Modern life can be complicated. Simplify it with Evernote, the app to manage it all including capture task lists, notes, web pages, white boards, business cards, pictures, and even clip web pages to Evernote.

Evernote is a great, free resource that allows you to easily capture information using whatever device or operating system you use. It then makes this information accessible and searchable from anywhere. including all your lesson plans, resources, web clippings, lesson schedule, meeting notes, misc. notes, task lists, reference materials and much more. You can then access your notes anywhere and can even share notes with others. Students can use Evernote to take notes in class, share notes with other students, capture notes off of a whiteboard or poster using their smartphone camera, and much more. Evernote's Education Page is also a great resource.

Padlet notice board

Welcome to Padlet, the easiest way to create and collaborate in the world. Create beautiful reports and portfolios for students - by year, class, or subject. just $5 per teacher per month with unlimited free student accounts post trial.

Padlet – a blank wall to post links, images, text, files. You put anything you want on it, anywhere, anytime. Simple yet powerful. Eg: use Padlet to create a welcome board where students can introduce themselves. This is a cool way to familiarize young students with an educational technology tool because it’s easy to use and makes them interested in classroom activities.

TrackClass ~ Simple, yet useful student organization

TrackClass helps you get your school work organized and up to Date. From reminders to notes to assignments, grades and Exams, keep you focuses on important tasks, while the calendar keeps it all in perspective, you'll be on top of your studies!

Trackclass is a great, free resource for students. The site allows students to track their classes and assignments, and even will send reminders (email or SMS) for upcoming assignment due dates and test dates. There is also a note taking utility so students can take notes on it if they have a computer in school, or transcribe notes later. You can even attach files to each class and assignment to keep things organized. It is a great way for students to stay organized. There is also a version for mobile phones and the iPhone, so students can stay organized no matter where they are. Teachers could use this too.

Dweeber ~ homework collaboration

Dweeber, a social website that connects youth and helps them get homework done faster by working with their school friends online. It is a great resource for students who can't get together physically to work on homework or projects.

Dweeber is a homework collaboration site that also has tools to help students learn better. It is described as a homework social network. Students sign up, for free, and can add their friends, known as "dweebs" to their network. Students can work on homework together and help each other out. It even as a virtual whiteboard so that they can work together just as if they were in the same room. There is a message center, study sessions, and even a place to post links to web sites that you find helpful in doing your work.

Kerika

Work management for distributed and agile teams ~ use it for every kind of project to enhance team management, product development, design, marketing… Set up simple Kanban projects, with work items organized as cards on the task board, implement your own version of Agile with backlogs and sprints, or share ideas using an interactive canvas. Kerika adapts to your style of work...

Work the way you want to with interactive Whiteboards, customizable Task Boards or adopt agile Scrum Boards that you can share with others. Get stuff done by integrating tasks, content, workflows and conversations, on a board or a canvas. Manage teams and Capture your organizations best practices and standard workflows ~ Kerika adapts to your style of work

Basecamp ~ Work together the easy way

Basecamp’s unique blend of project management and collaboration tools is everything any team needs to stay on the same page about whatever they’re working on - To-dos, files, messages, schedules, and milestones. There’s nothing else like it!

Basecamp is everything you need to pull people together divvy up work, hash things out quickly, make big announcements, keep discussions on-topic, store and organize key files and assets, lay out milestones and deadlines, and have regular check-ins to make sure everything’s all right.. When you use Basecamp you’ll have an easy-to-reference, completely documented history of who said what, and when they said it, should the time ever come when you need to settle a disagreement between involved parties. Manage projects, client work, and group work fearlessly with Basecamp!

Slack ~ brings all your communication together in one place

All your tools in one place, integrate immediately in sync and searchable Everywhere you go. Slack is free to use for as long as you want and with an unlimited number of people ~ pay for extra features.

Organize your Team communications in one place via open channels, private channels & direct real-time messaging, archiving and search for modern teams. Connect all the tools you use to Slack and avoid all that constant switching between apps. Drag, drop, and share all your files with anyone you want. Add comments, star for later reference, and it’s all completely searchable.

Zoho

Zoho's suite of online productivity tools and SaaS applications allows step up productivity and manage all day-to-day activities

Zoho helps students manage academic presentations in an easily-accessible manner and organize large documents without losing their focus along the way. The platform is extremely simple to use and allows a high level of flexibility for the student’s convenience. It doesn’t matter what type of document you need to import or export; Zoho supports different formats that allow you to focus on your work without any distractions. You can also use the mobile-optimized version to access your documents on your smartphone whenever you need them.

Scribblar ~ Teach Your Students, Online

Scribblar is an online Virtual classroom & collaboration tool that is perfect for online tutoring. It features live audio, chat, whiteboard, image sharing, document sharing and more.

Students can use Scribblar to collaborate on projects, teachers can tutor via the computer, and teachers can use it for collaborative meetings and projects. It gives the users a virtual white board on the screen and writing tools to create text, lines and shapes. They can even add images. There is also a chat window on the side bar so that users can talk to each other while working. There is even a live chat system if you have a microphone and speakers that students can use to work on homework problems together.Teachers could use this to help students with homework after school or on the weekends.

TutorsClass

An online tutoring platform that enables students and tutors to work together interactively on an online tutoring platform. This makes it possible for students to have sessions with tutors regardless of geographical location or time zone.

TutorsClass is an online solution for distance tutoring. You can use it to create your own tutoring profile and invite students who want to learn lessons in the comfort of their home. This web-based tool will enable you to create your own virtual classroom that will completely substitute offline classes for your students. You can schedule lessons and get secure PayPal payments from your students.

Google Docs

Google Docs ~ create, edit, backup & share documents online, for free!

You can upload any type of file (up to 250MB each) and you get 1GB of storage free. You can purchase additional storage at $0.25/GB/year, which is a good deal. There is no automatic sync built in.

Dropbox ~ cloud file storage and sync system

Dropbox allows students to access and back up their files anywhere. They can also share files with each other which is useful when working on projects. Imagine being able to access all of your files, photos, docs, and videos anywhere and never lose a file again anytime on your smartphone!

Dropbox is a service that allows you to sync your files on your computer with their system as a backup. This also allows you to access the files anywhere. You can also sync the files across multiple computers. This means that you have automatic backup of your files and 24/7 access to your files. I have it set up to sync a folder on my home computer and school computer so I don't have to worry about having multiple versions or forgetting a flash drive.

SugarSync ~ Automatic sync and backup

SugarSync is a cloud file sharing, file sync and online backup service that is simple, powerful and easy to use. Access your files anywhere, on any device and select the directories that you want to be backed up.

SugarSync - What's great about Sugarsync is that you can have it back up your files on their server, and sync the files among multiple computers such the files on your home computer are synced to your laptop and school computer etc. You can also access these files through any web browser, and there are apps for smart phones. You can even access them with a mobile web browser if you don't have an app. You get 5GB free and there are fee based plans with more storage.

Google Student Blog

Publishes news articles and updates from Google, designed for students.

Google Student Blog is a great resource for students who use Google's products such as Blogger, Google Docs, Google Earth, iGoogle ~ applications that are easy to use, useful, and free. Google Student Blog includes information, updates, how-to's, tips, and much more on how to use Google's applications as a student. If your students use Google's products, they should be reading the Google Student Blog.

GOOGLE for EDUCATION

Create classes, distribute assignments, send feedback, search and see everything in one place. Instant. Paperless. Easy. designed with teachers and students to connect the class, track their progress and achieve more together.

Tons of amazing resources from Google, from online course builder, Gmail, Calendar, Blogger, Sites, maps, classroom collaboration, Google+, hangouts, search browser, scholar literature, cultural institute and more all geared to boost productivity. Google provides easy tools to engage students anytime, anywhere, on any device. The resources are excellent quality, extremely useful, and free.

Home Schooling in South Africa Resources

An estimated 100,000 families are homeschooling in South Africa. Get essential homeschooling tips, advice and options from veteran homeschool moms as well as encouragement for parents who choose to teach their children at home.

Are you a (prospective) homeschooler needing direction or help? Do you have questions about how to start homeschooling in Aouth Africa? Or on your children getting their Matric / National Senior Certificate? Here are 2 good links with numerous options for the home educator. Click Here for a list of curriculum suppliers as well as a host of other contact details useful for moms teaching at home. Click Here for A brief description plus contact details of various high school homeschool options for South African homeschoolers, including internationally recognised certifications.

Resources for Teachers & Students

Strategies & Resources for Positive Behavior Support in Inclusive Classrooms

The Kin School Tekos Russia

The Monsorri Method

Why Waldolf - Film

Holistic Education Learning with Your Whole Being - Satish Kumar

Going natural in education

~ Lora Smothers

Education for Life: Where Joyful Learning Happens

What adults can learn from kids ~ Adora Svitak

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