Web App Resources for the English Teacher
Teaching aids usually refer to manila papers with graphs drawn all over, or picture cards and posters. Some former students might even remember the age of the acetate and the projector, a high-tech gadget in those days.
What does a teaching aid mean in this day and age?
For one, it means multiple choices, especially when one factors the Internet in. With the growing number of web applications specifically geared towards teaching and learning, teachers have so many aids to choose from for the different lessons they have in their planners.
Second, teaching aids are now more accessible. Most of the online aids are free; all it takes is a little know-how.
Third, it’s a necessity. Chalk on blackboard might still work fine, but teachers have to refrain from doing it every day of the school year. Diversity in lessons and in teaching lessons has to be thrown in to compete with all the other distractions present in today’s students’ lives.
Here are some good web apps for English teachers:
- Chalksite lets students and parents gain access to grades and assignments, and give them a chance to communicate with teachers. It is a teacher’s personal website—easy to use and chock full of features like student profiles, individual student accounts, messaging, grade entry, calculations, discussions and blog comments.
- Edublogs is ideal if the teacher is just looking for a simply way to distribute information to students and other teachers. Edublogs is an education community with free WordPress-powered blogs and ability to embed videos and podcasts. If anyone wants to find out how Edublogs can be used for teaching, click here. This includes class publications and newsletters, online discussions, student blogs and multimedia content.
- Empressr lets teachers go beyond multimedia presentations by allowing sharing of multimedia content, with video, audio and images. Teachers can put together slide shows and upload them.
- Engrade is an online gradebook, where teachers can create grade and attendance books, post homework deadlines in a calendar and add student reports. It claims 200,000 teachers, parents and students are using its services.
- Google Presentations let teachers produce more sophisticated presentations and also share them. Google Docs is an example of Google Presentations, which gives users the same functionality as Microsoft Powerpoint. It is shareable and can be collaborative.
- Mindomo is mostly for mindmapping, which is perfect for brainstorming. It allows teachers and students a lot of freedom in adding and organizing information, producing and managing project plans, and encouraging critical thinking. Mindomo is quite sophisticated and has more features compared to similar applications like Freemind.
- Moodle is meant to publish teaching content online. It is a free content management system that can handle up to 200,000 students in one online “university.” Since it is also an education community with over 300,000 users speaking in more than 70 languages, there’s also the added advantage of fast feedback to questions and more options for collaboration.
- Schoopy, a classroom organizer, lets schools publish their own website. These websites can contain class calendars, assignment information, quizzes, images and files, to be accessed by teachers, students and parents.
- ZapReader utilizes how speed reading can increase comprehension, increase IQ, aid in getting better grades and inculcate a love for reading. With ZapReader, anyone can speed read just by pasting the text to be read, and press Zap It.
- SchoolTool is a downloadable, open source application for school administrators with technical knowledge. It offers a grade book, attendance tracker, calendar and content management features. SchoolTool can even create report cards.
Sources:
Catone, Josh. “Back to school: 10 terrific web apps for teachers.” Retrieved October 14, 2009 from
http://mashable.com/2009/09/07/web-apps-teachers/
“Ten Excellent Online Apps for the Innovative Teacher.” Retrieved October 14, 2009 from
http://www.topeducationdegrees.com/online-apps-innovative-teachers
(Published 26 October 2009, Smart Communications Inc.)
