Google+: Explore Circles

Paper rater

This is a free online Grammar Checker, Proofreader, and Writing Coach. Students can use this tool to improve the quality of their essays before submission. This is a great way to improve essay and assignment writing. This tool will check grammar, show you any areas where you may have plagiarised content and make suggestions for improving your writing style.

Website

Vocaroo

Vocaroo can easily become a super language learning and language practicing tool. Teachers can use this free, easy to use online recording tool for speaking tasks assigned as homework. So often speaking is only practiced in class, for limited periods of time, but this handy free internet based tool gives students a language lab learning experience right within their own homes, without any fancy recording equipment. All you need is a computer with a microphone and speakers.

Students could be asked to describe their bedrooms, homes, what they did that day or what they do usually do on the weekends or this could be used as an online verbal journal for students to comment on their language learning progress that week. Or, teachers could email out a recording and ask students to answer a few questions based on what they heard. The sky`s the limit! Students can record and playback the recordings, and when they have one they like, they can save it, and email it to the teacher, or post it to twitter, Facebook or any other social media network of their choice.

More here

Why Integrate Technology into the Curriculum?

There’s a place for tech in every classroom.

Technology is ubiquitous, touching almost every part of our lives, our communities, our homes. Yet most schools lag far behind when it comes to integrating technology into classroom learning. Many are just beginning to explore the true potential tech offers for teaching and learning. Properly used, technology will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy.

Integrating technology into classroom instruction means more than teaching basic computer skills and software programs in a separate computer class. Effective tech integration must happen across the curriculum in ways that research shows deepen and enhance the learning process. In particular, it must support four key components of learning: active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, and connection to real-world experts. Effective technology integration is achieved when the use of technology is routine and transparent and when technology supports curricular goals.

Many people believe that technology-enabled project learning is the ne plus ultra of classroom instruction. Learning through projects while equipped with technology tools allows students to be intellectually challenged while providing them with a realistic snapshot of what the modern office looks like. Through projects, students acquire and refine their analysis and problem-solving skills as they work individually and in teams to find, process, and synthesize information they’ve found online.

The myriad resources of the online world also provide each classroom with more interesting, diverse, and current learning materials. The Web connects students to experts in the real world and provides numerous opportunities for expressing understanding through images, sound, and text.

Technology also changes the way teachers teach, offering educators effective ways to reach different types of learners and assess student understanding through multiple means. It also enhances the relationship between teacher and student. When technology is effectively integrated into subject areas, teachers grow into roles of adviser, content expert, and coach. Technology helps make teaching and learning more meaningful and fun.

Source: edutopia.org

Brainshark

This is a great way for teachers and students to do digital storytelling (without using photos unless they want to, using powerpoint slides or other graphic image files). They can add audio to the images, and the program bundles it together and automatically records and processes the audio so when you click play, others can watch it like a video. It is extremely easy to learn to use. This free program also has a lot of great features to it (ability to share videos with selected people using the emails you input).

Website

Google Search Features

The Fastest Way To Memorize!

This is a new method of learning and studying material. Research concludes that it is the most effective way of learning. This method can be used by students for learning terms, quotes, events, dates.This can be used to better your education, your career and your life.

bab.la

The bab.la website has many other great features, such as Dictionary, Vocabulary, Translation, Games and so on. The Wording feature helpa with prepositions and sentence structure. Just type in the beginning of the sentence and it will offer you options for the next word in the sentence. The following video explains how the bab.la Vocabulary works:

Check bab.la here

I can has language play

Presentation by Jill Vaughan and Lauren Gawne at the Australian Linguistics Society annual conference 2011.

Mentimeter

This is a great tool for creating quick live interaction polls. Great way to get quick research or audience response.

Mentimeter.com