Online tools and resources take made it easier for teachers to instruct students, and for students to collaborate with those teachers and with other students and parents. These "Spider web 2.0" teaching tools aren't magical, but they may seem to defy definition at times since they save time, help you to stay organized, and often have up little space on a computer. Some of these applications are Spider web-based, which ways that they tin can be accessed from whatsoever figurer.

The following list is filled with tools that will make a teacher's, or those enrolled in the all-time online education programs, life easier. The categories are listed in alphabetical order and the links to each tool are also listed alphabetically within those categories.

Aggregators

The following list includes gratuitous tools that you can use to stay on top of current events, including headlines and blogs.

  1. Aggie: Aggie is an open source news aggregator that'due south also a desktop application. It downloads the latest news and displays it in a Web page.
  2. Awasu: Awasu is a land-of-the-art feed reader that comes loaded with features for both casual personal use and professional person, loftier-powered information management. Utilise this tool for content archiving, coupled with an advanced search engine, and use advanced features to manage your configurable channels. The personal edition is costless to download and use.
  3. Bloglines: This is more of a personal news aggregator than a bookmark tool, but it's sophisticated and highly useful for teachers who want to stay on meridian of current events in any given topic.
  4. FeedReader: This is a free reader that is elementary to utilize. It supports podcasts.
  5. RSS Reader: This RSS reader is able to display any RSS and Atom news feed (XML).
  6. WikiNews: Anyone can contribute, and manufactures are written collaboratively for a global audience. They strive at all times to meet the policy of using neutral point of view, ensuring that their reporting is as fair every bit possible. Since this is a wiki, you can combine this site with other objectives in a project for your class.

Bookmark Managers

Bookmark managers brand information technology easy to build a personal directory where researchers can tap into sites and materials that have been saved online and share them with others in well-nigh cases. The following bookmark managers are gratis to use, but they all have different angles. In other words, teachers and professors can exercise more than with these sites than save a folio or two.

  1. del.icio.us: This is a popular social bookmarker, but it's an easy tool to employ if you accept a handle on how to employ tags.
  2. Diigo: Turn your students onto this tool, which works like a bookmark manager with a highlighter or with sticky notes. This is an ideal style to research for a newspaper or to create a new project for form. This site works much similar MyStickies, simply without Diigo's highlighter.
  3. Facebook: While Facebook is a social utility that tin can connect y'all with friends as well every bit with students, you lot can also use this tool to bookmark Web sites and specific Internet pages.
  4. LinkedIn: Sometimes you merely want to get away from the students. LinkedIn provides a style for you to communicate with your peers instead (or not), and it's also useful for bookmarking.
  5. Pinterest: With Pinterest, teachers tin organize and share anything from lesson plans, ideas, and crafts using a virtual bulletin board. Teachers tin also employ this tool to network with other educators.
  6. Twitter: Twitter is a service for friends, family unit, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of answers that tin can be no longer than 140 characters and spaces per mail. Use this tool to assist your students stay upward-to-date, equally you could advertise a Twitter address that students could employ to learn nearly school projects, reading assignments, and other announcements. Yous can likewise employ this tool as a bookmark manager for research.
  7. Yahoo! Bookmarks: Yahoo! Bookmarks is not intended to be a social bookmark site like the others. Instead, it essentially allows y'all utilise your personal bookmark list at whatsoever estimator. In fact, it acts and feels very much like your browser's built-in bookmark manager.

Classroom Tools

You lot need tools to aid assess class progress. You need tools to help keep students and parents apprised of the students' progress. You need all sorts of tools, you need them at your fingertips, and you need them to piece of work efficiently. Some of those tools are listed below.

  1. Animoto: This web tool completely simplifies the cosmos and sharing of videos. Teachers volition take no problem creating lesson plans or presentations for students.
  2. Charles Kelley Quiz Generator: Create multiple choice or bilingual tests. Though some of the quizzes generated hither tin can but be used on this website, others tin be put on your own website.
  3. Crocodoc: This spider web tool allows teachers to convert Microsoft Role and PDF documents to HTML5, making them easily viewable. Teachers tin can display students' documents in their browsers and edit as needed.
  4. CuePrompter: This gratuitous service allows teachers to use their browser equally a teleprompter. All users have to practise is write or cut and paste their script online and press a button to start the prompter.
  5. Engrade: Engrade is a free online gradebook that allows teachers to manage their classes online every bit well as post grades, assignments, attendance, and upcoming homework online for students and parents to meet. Engrade is free and easy to use. Join over 10,000 teachers, parents, and students using Engrade today.
  6. Forvo: This online pronunciation lexicon comes in handy for foreign language teachers. Users tin can hear any word pronounced in any language.
  7. Grammarly: Several universities employ this tool as a grammar checker. Students can apply this equally a method to ameliorate the process of peer editing because it checks for more than 250 points of grammar.
  8. My Project Pages: Built by teachers for teachers, employ myprojectpages.com to create structured online inquiry-based learning activities for the courses you teach that enable your students to engage in meaningful learning experiences while online.
  9. Online Stopwatch: But as the name suggests, this tool is a web-based stopwatch teachers tin use for timed exams and other assignments.
  10. Schoopy: You can post homework in more than ane location on SCHOOPY. The beginning identify you lot should consider is the calendar, where you lot can post of import dates and notices. Nonetheless, you lot may choose to use the Assignments/Quizzes/Files tool depending on how yous would like to contact students.
  11. Slideshare: Ok, then you're still with PowerPoint, but y'all tin can jazz that presentation up at Slideshare. This site takes your .ppt file (also works with Open Role and PDF files) then you can share information technology with your students (and the world at big). You can add together music, embed videos in comments and more than – all for free.
  12. Survey Builder: Survey Builder allows you to hands create and manage online surveys suitable for Internet-based oral history projects, course evaluations, and other endeavors that involve collecting feedback. You do not demand to know how to build a Spider web page that has forms, set up a database to shop entries, or do any of the other technical tasks that are ordinarily required to produce interactivity on the Internet.
  13. Teacher Planet: Teacher Planet is a i-stop spot for instructor resource. Teachers can download any number of lesson program templates, worksheets, ESL-specific resources, and other tools.
  14. Web Affiche Wizard: This costless tool allows educators to create a lesson, worksheet, or class page and immediately publish it online.
  15. Yugma: Teachers can utilize the gratuitous spider web conferencing characteristic with Yugma and also share their entire desktop in real-fourth dimension with one educatee. This can exist extremely helpful in ane-on-one advising with students.

Collaboration

Part of teaching is collaboration. Teachers need to communicate with peers, administrators, and students. The tools listed below – some free and some for a cost – will assist you stay on top of your projects with ease through open channels for collaboration.

  1. Basecamp: Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this trouble by providing tools tailored to amend the advice between people working together on a project.
  2. Edmodo: Extremely similar to Twitter, except specifically designed for educators, Edmodo facilitates collaboration and content sharing among students, teachers, and school districts.
  3. FirstClass: Using a personalized Web page as a communication hub, teachers can send letters to the main, choice up student assignments, change homework tasks for that evening, or accept students build their own Spider web pages. FirstClass volition run on a unmarried server with one administrator for any number of users. This tool is not gratis.
  4. Gliffy: This diagram editor is piece of cake to utilize, and you tin can save your work on their servers for costless. Gliffy Online has two ways to brand document sharing unproblematic. Collaboration enables others to see and edit your work by simply entering their e-mail address. Publishing creates a read-but, or public, epitome of your diagram that you tin can hands embed in a wiki, blog, or other type of web software.
  5. LiveText: LiveText is a Web-delivered subscription service for teachers featuring collaborative lesson-building activities. Unproblematic and easy to utilise, LiveText uses lesson planning as a focus for engaging the educational community. This is not a gratuitous service.
  6. Mindomo: Mindmapping is a highly productive method of visual brainstorming that y'all can use to program projects or to map out a cognition base of operations. Mindomo has an interface and feature set up that rivals other complimentary standalone mind-mapping applications such equally Freemind. Maps are shareable only require you to annals and login to save them.
  7. NoteMesh: Add some social flavor to your note taking with this collaborative wiki way class note taker. Users can mail service their lecture notes or contribute to existing lecture notes. NoteMesh wants to go classmates to collaborate to create a single definitive source for lecture notes.
  8. Schoology: Teachers can use this tool to share their instructional resource and connect with other educators.
  9. Skype: Teachers can collaborate on classroom projects while having their students visit a classroom in another part of the world using the interactive Skype in the classroom. Skype is a part of Microsoft, and information technology's complimentary to utilize.
  10. Twiddla: Twiddla is a great style to connect with students or other educators. Through its spider web-conferencing capabilities, teachers can brainstorm and share ideas.
  11. WebOffice: Similar FirstClass, WebOffice creates a virtual part surroundings for real-time meetings, and with the buy of additional audio and video components, creates an feel that'due south almost like being there. This is not a complimentary service.

Form Management

You may demand more simple classroom tools like a quiz generator. You may demand content, the power to communicate, system tools, and more. The following site offers at least one of these tools in combination with other capabilities. Most are open source and/or gratuitous.

  1. ATutor: Administrators can install or update ATutor in minutes, develop custom templates to give ATutor a new look, and easily extend its functionality with feature modules. Educators can quickly assemble, bundle, and redistribute Web-based instructional content, easily think and import prepackaged content, and deport their courses online. This is an open source tool.
  2. Bubbl.united states of america: Teachers can employ this tool for brainstorming and class discussions.
  3. Dokeos: Dokeos is a learning management system used in more than 600 companies and public administrations to manage e-learning and composite learning programs. This is open source software.
  4. dotsub: This tool will be helpful for teachers of foreign languages. For a fee, dotsub volition translate videos using subtitles and students and teachers can upload their own videos and create subtitles.
  5. Drupal: Drupal is an open source project that offers a flexible framework to prepare a social learning environment or a more than traditional learning environment.
  6. EduTools: The EduTools site has been re-launched as a community-driven site, showtime with the Course Management Organisation (CMS) site. They continue to offering feature-past-feature product comparisons and decision-making supports. In addition, the site now includes the ability for any user to submit reviews for new products that haven't already been reviewed or to add together their own feedback on specific products and characteristic implementation.
  7. eFront: Easy to apply, visually attractive, SCORM uniform, open source eastward-learning and man capital development platform.
  8. LAMS: LAMS (Learning Activity Management System) provides teachers with a highly intuitive visual authoring surroundings for creating sequences of learning activities. These activities can include a range of individual tasks, small group work, and whole course activities based on both content and collaboration.
  9. Merlot: A free and open up resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected hither along with the ability to connect with peers.
  10. Prezi: Teachers tin use this presentation tool to organize and share ideas with other educators.
  11. RCampus: RCampus is a system that allows teachers, students and administrators to manage courses, build virtual portfolios, create websites, bring together virtual communities, and assess school work with rubrics.
  12. Sakai: Sakai is a community of bookish institutions, commercial organizations and individuals who work together to develop a common Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE).
  13. Schooltool: SchoolTool is a project to develop a common global school assistants infrastructure that is freely available under an Open Source license. SchoolTool encompasses three sub-projects including a agenda and resource management tools, a pupil information system, and the ability to track which skills students are acquiring in their classes and at what level of competency.
  14. Sloodle: Sloodle is an open source projection that aims to develop and share useful, usable, desirable tools for supporting education in virtual worlds, making didactics easier. If you accept enough technical support or nous, and your own server, yous can download the Sloodle source code and install it on your own Moodle installation. Otherwise, you can attempt out a few elements on the Web site.
  15. StudySync: With resources such as peer reviews, weekly writing practices, and an all-encompassing digital library, StudySync is an essential tool for teachers preparing students for bookish success.

East-learning

The following list includes tools that teachers will discover helpful with educational applied science or electronically supported learning.

  1. Annenberg Learner: This tool is a haven for educators because they tin detect a plethora of costless videos to enhance their teaching.
  2. Course Architect: This tool allows teachers to construct their own courses from scratch. With admission to Course Builder's software and instructions on presenting form fabric, educators will have the means to create courses for as few or as many students they like.
  3. Curriki: As a costless resource, teachers tin create and share their best curriculum and teaching practices, and mix and match lesson plans, videos, animations, and photos to create custom instruction tools.
  4. eStudy: eStudy is an open source e-learning and collaboration platform for colleges and universities. In add-on to usual form direction facilities, eStudy provides special support for role-play simulations in computer science.
  5. Open Study: In its mission to make the earth one large written report group, this social site encourages students to work with other students who are studying the same fabric as them.
  6. PBS Learning Media: Using PBS Learning Media, teachers take access to videos, games, audio clips, photos, lesson plans, all of which they can salvage and share. Best of all, it's gratuitous.

Gamification

By utilizing gaming methods and mechanics, these tools will help teachers bring a footling interactive fun and excitement into their classrooms.

  1. BadgeStack: Used by organizations such as the New York Metropolis Department of Didactics and the American Association for State and Local History, BadgeStack is fix to deliver digital badges to students once they master a skill.
  2. CourseHero: Using this web learning platform, students in loftier school and college can admission course materials such as flashcards, tutors, and courses.
  3. FunBrain: Geared toward younger students, FunBrain provides users with interactive games in subjects such equally math, reading, and literacy.
  4. MangaHigh: Teachers can employ this game-based tool to teach math concepts to their students. The best part: it'south admittedly free!

Part Suites

The tools listed below behave just like any other commercial office suite applications. The just difference is that they're gratis to utilize.

  1. Google Docs: Google has managed to replicate Excel, Word, and PowerPoint with Google Spreadsheets, Docs, and Presentations, respectively. Y'all can upload, create, and store all these files online, and and so download them to other part applications and relieve them on your hard drive or share your work with others online. Google surrounds these tools with their famous search awarding, access to online books, and a scholars' search for online documents. The tools for teaching are virtually endless.
  2. Apache Open Office: Download this free role suite to replace Microsoft Office tools. It is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project that includes primal desktop applications such every bit a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and cartoon program with a user interface and feature gear up similar to other role suites. OpenOffice.org likewise works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office, and the vendor-neutral OpenDocument standard from Haven. Yous can also salvage files in PDF format.
  3. ThinkFree: This beta arrangement offers Word, Excel, and PowerPoint clones that run in whatsoever browser for free. These are java applications, then they take a moment to รข€˜warm up' before you run them, but once you have the program running the process runs smoothly and rapidly. ThinkFree opens and saves to standard Microsoft Function formats such as .doc, .xls, and .ppt on your hard drive. They can as well save documents to PDF, something you tin can't do with Microsoft. If you want to salvage files on ThinkFree's servers, y'all accept 30 megabytes of storage space to use for free. This is a truly intuitive tool, especially if you're already familiar with Microsoft Part.
  4. ZOHO: Zoho is an part productivity suite that works much like Google Docs in that you accept admission to spreadsheet, word, and an online presentation tool. You can upload, salve online, download, and share. You also take access to other tools such every bit post, projection direction software, and more that make this suite perfect for classroom projects.

Office Tools

Oh certain, you have a stapler, a copier, and admission to other tools. But, what if you could gain access to file converters, presentation tools, and other management resources from almost any computer? Or if you lot could download some tools and use them from your computer at whatsoever location? These tools could make your life a picayune easier or at least help you out of a jam.

  1. bitly: This tool shortens links and can be handy for teachers who transport numerous links to their students. It even allows teachers to encounter how many students clicked on a detail link.
  2. Cute PDF: No adware, spyware, or malware involved. Just download and become to boondocks making PDFs from just nigh any certificate file. This is freeware.
  3. Document Converter eXpress: Neevia Document Converter eXpress makes it possible for anyone to instantly convert their files to PDF or Image without the need of installing special software. There is a 1 MB restriction.
  4. Empressr: Upload video, images, text – you lot proper name it – to create an online presentation. This is the showtime Ajax/Wink-based presentation spider web application, and it's an interesting mode to get your online class projects together for gratuitous.
  5. Gmail: This email plan is free and quite popular. With efficient spam filtering, and Google Talk contacts displayed (so yous can simply conversation with contacts rather than send an email), Gmail is a neat option for students and teachers to apply.
  6. Google Calendar: With this tool, teachers can go on track of lessons, exams, projects, and other assignments. Information technology's complimentary and available to anyone with a Google business relationship.
  7. MultiURL: Imagine the need to send several links in one email – it can exist a little disruptive and what if the links are broken? MultiURL is a tool that allows users to combine multiple links into just one shortlink, which can and then exist shared more easily. And don't worry, the links can be edited at whatsoever time.
  8. Penzu: This tool allows teachers to create their own online journal, which tin exist helpful when taking grade notes. Penzu makes all entries private past default, but users can cull to share individual entries.
  9. yousendit: You lot can use the free trial to send large files (similar that dissertation!). This tool replaces the demand for FTP transfers, overnight couriers and unreliable email attachments.

Productivity

If you need to get something done quickly, in that location's no better method than to organize your mess. Pull notes, dates, to-do lists and more together with the following tools.

  1. xxx Boxes: 30boxes is a agenda tool that has the actress characteristic of assuasive you to track headlines from RSS Spider web feeds. You can add together your calendar to Google's Blogger or to your Facebook folio. Share it with friends, family, or with students who need to know when that project is due.
  2. HiTask: Dragging and dropping goodness makes this task tracker a fun tool to utilise to stay on top of things. Colored tags can be applied so users tin easily place and review of import items. Meetings or reminders can be set past dragging their instance onto a agenda and into a fourth dimension based schedule. Members of teams can as well be assigned certain tasks past dragging the task onto the person'south name. It's a very clean and east to utilise application. It does not let for unlimited data, but there is an selection for a $12/year for a premium business relationship.
  3. Remember the Milk: If you're a list freak, this tool is right upwardly your aisle. Y'all can manage your tasks even when your computer is not connected to the Internet. You can cull to receive reminders via email, SMS, and instant messenger (AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Skype and Yahoo! are all supported).
  4. TiddlyWiki: This is a reusable, nonlinear notebook that you tin can use to go on runway of projects. This tools works with all major desktop browsers on Windows, Macintosh and Linux and many mobile browsers such as the Apple iPhone and the Nokia 770/N800.
  5. Zamzar: This gratis online file conversion tool will help teachers organize their videos, images and documents.

Public Content Management (Blogs, etc.)

Utilize blogs to teach, to build classroom community, to create class projects and more. The sky's the limit on what you tin can do with these tools. What's nice is that these blogs are free to employ, although some may exist free to specific groups of educational professionals or learners. And, these content management systems range from very, very easy to utilise to somewhat sophisticated (that is, you lot might need to know some code for installation or maintenance).

  1. CMS Matrix: It would be impossible to list all content management systems here, so this site does information technology for us. Compare upward to ten different systems and visit their Web sites through links maintained on CMS Matrix. Make an informed decision with their help on systems that range from ACM Ariadne Content Manager to zwook.
  2. EduBlog: Powered by WordPress, these free blogs for teachers, researchers, librarians and other education professionals can help you to communicate to students and to your peers.
  3. Geeklog: Geeklog is a PHP/MySQL based application for managing dynamic web content. "Out of the box," it is a blog engine, or a CMS with support for comments, trackbacks, multiple syndication formats, spam protection, and all the other vital features of such a system. Employ plugins to radically alter its functionality. Available plugins include forums, image galleries, and many more.
  4. LiveJournal: You can utilize LiveJournal in many different ways: as a private journal, a blog, a discussion forum, a social network, and more.
  5. SchoolNotes: Create Notes for homework and course information and post them on the web in seconds using this costless community service. Parents and Students tin view notes from teachers through school zip code.
  6. TeacherTube: Retrieve YouTube for teachers and educators, as this site'southward layout and focus is similar; even so, TeacherTube seeks to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safety venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. Site can be slow to load at times.
  7. TubeChop: This tool allows users to chop a specific section from a YouTube video and share it. This can be extremely helpful for teachers who want to only employ a snippet of a video during lecture because the backlog video footage can hands be removed.
  8. WordPress: This tool is costless, and you can set it up on a personal Web space or use the gratis spaces offered at this site. WordPress is known for its excellent community back up.

Storage

Nothing beats a backup for storage; however, when you need to share files or if you need to gain access to files from another estimator, online storage and transfer is the style to become. However, we don't propose uploading educatee exam papers to grade on vacation in the Bahama islands. That'due south counterproductive.

  1. 4shared: Teachers tin bask 15GB of free storage infinite with 4shared.
  2. Diino: The 2GB free business relationship is express to two users logged in at the same time.
  3. FlipDrive: Utilise your FlipDrive account to securely store your files online and then access it from any web browser; backup and protect your critical and most of import information from computer crashes and viruses. This site is free to use for thirty days, and charges after that time will depend upon amount of storage you demand.
  4. HyperFileShare: Share files with unlimited transfers up to 250MB and unlimited space – all for free. If yous share files privately they proceed them for 30 days from the last download. If yous share files for customs (publicly), they may keep them longer.
  5. LiveBinders: This tool is essentially a iii-ring binder for the web. Teachers can organize and store resources and important documents.
  6. Planboard: Planboard helps teachers simplify their lives by streamlining lesson plans and centralizing everything onto a reckoner.
  7. Scribd: Users get complimentary unlimited storage and access to the world'southward largest online library.