Studying English

Describing itself as "A Place to Study English", this web site is designed for people studying English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL). It offers a range of fun activities including quizzes, word games, proverbs, slang expressions, anagrams, and more. If you are an English speaker, you may also find it a fun site to explore.

Free Photographs

Today's site Cepolina photo offers over 5,000 free photographs for private or comercial use. There are some terms and conditions which include crediting the website, not using the photos to clone the site and not linking directly to photos on the site. The supports image searching in 17 different languages.

Classroom Polls

One way to interact with students in a class is to ask then to vote on an issue or something you have been discussing in the lesson. Polls Everywhere is a website which enables you to get immeduate feedback in the form of charts as people respond by texting or on the internet. This can be displayed in the lesson and so form the basis of the continuing discussion. Alternatively, the poll can be added to a website or downloaded in a PowerPoint or Spreadsheet file. As long as you want a maximum of 30 responses, the service is free but you can pay varying amounts for additional features and votes.

Photography School

Whether you use a camera to produce images for fun, teaching resources or as a subject in it's own right, the Digital Photography School is a website worth visiting. It offers simple tips to help digital camera owners get the most out of their cameras.

The site is owned by a photography enthusiast Darren Rowse who describes it as "a learning environment where I think out loud about what I know and where in our Forum we share what we’re learning by showing our photos and ask and answer each other questions."

Hospitality Resources

The Barkeeper website offers a wide range of hospitality information, resources and reference tools. For members, this includes more than 200 Checklists, Spreadsheets, Forms and Templates to establish standard operating procedures in your bar, restaurant and kitchen, expert 'how-to' articles, human resource advice, food & beverage, health & safety help, marketing advice, job descriptions, training manuals, and guidelines on UK hospitality law and Irish law.

Geography at the Movies

Geography at the Movies is a non-profit making free site for geography teachers to share their films. Topics covered include agriculture, climate change, coasts, development, environment, industry, places, population, resources, rivers, rocks, settlement, tectonics, tourism and weather

Originally set up as a blog intended to collate movies made by geographers, its popularity has seen it developed into this website.

Primary Source Information

AwesomeStories is a fascinating website which provides access to a wealth of primary-source information. Designed and launched in 1999, it aims to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, and government web sites.

If you are interested in history, literature, movies, biographies, law, archaeology, audio stories, or just have a few minutes to pass it is worth having a look!

I you want to view more than the first few chapters on any subject you need to register but this is easy and free. You can also sign up your educational institution and receive a password that can be used by a group of students for free.

Office Software

In addition to using specialist education software, most students and teaching staff use a range of standard office software. While Microsoft Office is probably the most common, it can be expensive. However, there is currently an offer for students and teaching staff to purchase it at a much reduced price. Microsoft is offering Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for £38.95! Follow the link for more details and conditions.

For people who are not in a position to purchase Microsoft Office, there is a free version of office software called Open Office which offers similar functionality.

Flickr for photo sharing

I joined Flickr to enable me to upload and share photographs. In order to sign up I needed a Yahoo account (Yahoo have owned this site since 2005) and then followed the Flickr link from the yahoo page which enabled me to sign up for my Flickr account.

The sight offers clear instructions about how to upload and share photographs and videos and has a range of privacy (or otherwise) options to facilitate sharing and organising of photographs.

Psychology

Started in 1992 by a graduate student called Chris Heffner (now Dr Chris Heffner), the AllPsych website has dramatically expanded into a large and comprehensive psychology website.

The site offers links to setions covering psychology texts, references, psychiatric disorders, a journal, online tests, psychology forums, research information and fun and games.

Wanderlust

Rather than just look at geography or history sites, why not try a new perspective - travel the world with the explorers. Wanderlust website enables you to go on some of the most famous historical journeys - whether you want to travel the Old Silk Road, Around the World in 80 Days or another of history's greatest journeys. Select your journey and follow the route around the world with pictures and information on route. Happy travels.

Excel is Fun

Excel is Fun Channel on YouTube is a website worth looking at if you want to learn more about using Microsoft Excel software. You will find over 400 hundred videos offering advice, tips and tricks for using Excel. Whether you are a complete beginner or regular user, you should find something of interest. The site also provides a link to downloadable workbooks which support the videos.

How Stuff Works

A great site for inquisitive minds is "How Stuff Works". You can use this website to learn how pretty much anything works with straightforward explanations and videos to help you understand. If you cannot understand or need a clear way to explain something to others it is worth looking it up on this site.

Visual Geography

Created by Boris Kester (a photographer, webmaster and writer) and Nana Bjørnlund (a photographer, editor and writer), Visual Geography is a website dedicated to to those studying and teaching about the world. The site places more emphasis on visual than textual information and lets you explore the world through images, flags, money, language, maps and other information. The site also offers a "Did you know" announcement which is updated each time the site is accessed, quizes aimed at different levels of knowledge and the opportunity to share your own photographs.

Talking Avatar

There may be times you want to pass on information in a different way. For example to liven up a web page or blog. You could try creating your own avatar. With Voki, you can customise what you look and sound like or even record your own message.

Get a Voki now!

Teaching Techniques

A fun video with some serious points about teaching techniques that I came across some time ago. The video "The Educational Adventures of Brent and Joel" is based around The Sound of Music.

Dictionary.com

Today's post was prompted by a discussion with some of my students about academic writing and the difficulties they have with this.

The Dictionary.com website is a very useful tool for those wishing to check the meanings of words or search foar alternative vocabulary. However is has much more to offer than this including

a translation tool and multilingual dictionary

language and grammar guides and podcasts

puzzles

and much more.

Cartoon Creator

Sometimes it is helpful to present teaching materials in pircure or cartoon format. Makebeliefscomix.com is a very easy to use site which takes you through the stages of creating a short comic book cartoon. Once created you can email the cartoon to yourself (or others). Easy to use, I have made use of this in my online modules to emphasise key points I am making.

National Geographic

The National Geographic Society is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. It provides wide ranging information about geography, archaeology, natural science, environmental and historical conservation, and world culture and history.

The National Geographic website has something to offer all age groups.

Of particular note are the geography quizes which are updated daily and record scores to enable competition.

There are also daily news updates, photographs and videos and many articles and quizes covering a wide range of topics including animals, science, health, astronomy, geography, history, environment, people, culture and much more.

Historical Timeline (of art)

Happy New Year!

Reflecting on the start of a new year and as the old year passes into history, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, seemed like a topical website to explore in my first post of the year.

This website explores the history of art based on chronology, geography or themes. In addition to a useful history of art, this site provides more general historical timeline which can supplement other non-art-based teaching resources.