Or How to Save Time on Preparing for Classes
Teaching requires a lot of effort and resources. If you’re an advanced PC user and Web surfer, it’s not a problem to get prepared for any challenging topic. Another thing is when you’re an experienced teacher, but a novice in digital technology. Where to get the trustworthy information? Obviously all the teachers who begin to use the Internet and PC tools for their work face these questions. And our task is to help them not to get lost in the world of digital aids for teachers.Have a look at our collection of useful resources and tools for educators and you’ll find:
- where to get free teaching worksheets
- how to easily teach language online
- how to prepare visual aids
- where to download free ebooks
- where to pass online courses
- how to use YouTube in classroom
- what free tools to use on regular basis
- how to use smartphones in teaching
- where to find free educational podcasts.
20+ Sites with Free Teaching Worksheets
No need to spend tons of money on various teacher books and toolkits anymore. Everything you need is already available on the Internet. Your task is just to find it. Here are some tricks to get a worksheet on the needed topic:
- Go to Google search and enter [topic]+worksheet, or [topic]+pdf, or [topic]+ download worksheet. Start with checking out Google images found on this query, usually they contain the most popular worksheets on topic. Then check out the results from the first page. If you need to specify your search (e.g. language, region, date), use advanced Google search options.
- English language teachers may visit BusyTeacher.org and use their search bar to find the required worksheet. The site contains millions of ready worksheets on vocabulary, gammmar, reading, etc., which are made by other teachers. Activities are grouped by categories, topics and levels for you to easily navigate on the website. All the files are downloadable, even without any account. Another good website to borrow tasks for English classes is Britishcouncil.org.
- Softschools.com supplies teachers with worksheets for such subjects as Math, Languages, Social Studies, Literature, Chemistry and some other. You can filter activities by grade or topic. There’s also a good collection of free online games.
- Math, Linguistics and Sceince teachers may find it useful to visit SuperTeacherWorksheets.com. Here you’ll find tons of worksheets on subject-relatted topics.
- Ask on teacher forums and communities where you can get a specific worksheet if you found nothing on previous steps. Visit sites: Edweek, AtoZteacherstuff, ProTeacher, etc.
20+ Sites to Easily Teach Language & Check Spelling
Learning a foreign language is all about practice. School classes are too time-limited to get it enough. Fortunately, there are lots of online resources which can enhance language skills. Find here the best sites dedicated to teaching and studying foreign languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, etc.
Teachers can use these sites to get ready lessons, diversify classroom tasks, suggest as homework or additional training for curious students, grab different visual aids and tests, etc.
For writing tasks recommend your students to use these spelling checking websites:
- Spellchecker.net is ideal for quick spelling check. It has no limitations and may check your grammar and text on 25 languages.
- Jspell.com is another great free spellchecker. There’s no grammar check, only text spelling in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian languages.
- Spellcheckplus.com free version has 2000 characters (about 250 words) limit. Popup hints explain mistakes and suggest better options. The Pro version ($15) is ad-free and offers interactive grammar exercises on the topic where you do multiple mistakes.
30+ Sites & Tools to Prepare Visual Aids
Visualization is a huge help in any action, be it a school lesson or a public speech. The most popular forms of information visualization are images, videos, slideshows, presentations, and animations. Look below where you can get or do them:
- for images: check out Google Images, WikiMedia, and these stock image and photo sites;
- for videos: go to YouTube and other video sharing sites (and save any videos with Freemake Video Downloader);
- for slideshows: try these free & simple slideshow makers;
- for animations: look at these great tools to make animated videos.
If you fear at first to use unknown tools to create your own slideshows and presentations, you may go to Slideshare and grab ready worksheets on any topic.
20+ Sites to Download Free Ebooks
Teachers read a lot of books and don’t ask why. Special teaching books are pricey and not easy to find. Another thing is with digital books. They have become so widely spread and so habitual, that no one finds obstacles to switch to them in the educational process. We collected the best websites where you can get ebooks on different topics. Visit Free-ebooks.net, Ebooks.com and other sites from the list to get ebooks for your classes. The stock is rich not only in belles-lettres, but also in various teaching books.
20+ Sites to Take Online Courses
E-learning is a new notion brought up by the digital era. It’s very trendy to get some education online, especially if the courses come from world famous university and is very useful for your specialization. Check out Coursera, Khan Academy and other great online schools to get more ideas for teaching your discipline and provide your students with extra information. For example, you may pass the general course of Computer Literacy or New Teaching Methods. There is a great variety of free and low-cost courses available on the Internet.
10+ Ideas to Use YouTube in Classroom
YouTube is of a great help while teaching students. It offers a great variety of educational programs to borrow wit from. Choose the best ones and use them in the perfect collaboration with your own teaching technique. Here are some ideas how you can use YouTube in the classroom:
- Borrow educational videos from the most popular YouTube EDU channels to show in classroom.
- Allow your students to dig deeper into a subject by watching additional videos on topic.
- Take advantage of YouTube for Schools section to get videos for your regular classes.
- Use short clips from documentaries to provide context to a topic.
- Create playlists to help with future lesson planning and share amongst your department.
- Spark lively discussions by watching news reports from different broadcasters and pushing students to join a certain pint of view.
- Set an assignment that requires students to research and make their own videos to be later played in class.
- Upload your own videos and presentations to YouTube to share with your students and colleagues.
- Demonstrate large scale experiments someone on YouTube has done before.
- Enhance listening skills on language classes by watching videos with native speakers.
If you want to find the very media website for getting more teaching knowledge and skills, Teachertube.com is for you. Here you’ll find a lot of images, audios and blogs with useful data on teaching. Go for it to get additional materials for your lessons.
40+ Useful Free Software for Teachers
Teachers who actively use PC for their work can’t do without useful software. There’s no need to spend money on expensive teacher kits and professional tools since there exist numerous free alternatively to satisfy any teaching need.
We already talked about good tools prepare visual aids. Here are some more free programs to check out:
- Freemake Video Converter – a free video converter to prepare files for any gadget or device (e.g. projector, student tablets, mobiles, etc.) create slideshows and audio visualizations, edit video quickly, upload to YouTube, etc. It functions also as DVD Ripper that burns DVDs and Blu-rays, rips DVDs on Windows.
- Skype is a famous instant messenger to chat with your students and colleagues, exchange files, and make video calls.
- screenshot taking tools will help you save PC screen images to share in classroom and use in different presentations.
- all-in-one free video players will play your offline videos and DVDs.
- IrfanView Image Editor is a cool way to edit photos and images in a simple way. It provides a lot of options: add shapes, text, adjust colours, rotate, resize, etc.
- PhotoScape is another great photo editor to add frames, effects, and filters to your photos.
- free audio players to play music files, audio recordings on a PC.
- easy-to-use video editors will help you do basic video editing tasks: cut unwanted video parts, rotate, zoom videos, add text or audio, etc.
- handy ZIP compressors to unite and compress data in a weightless archive to send to your students.
- useful PDF converters to convert Word and image files to PDF format and vice versa.
- audio CD burning software is indispensable for music teachers to prepare musical files for the lessons.
- free MP3 download tools to get free audio files for lessons, presentations, and slideshows.
- sound recording software to save voice messages to your students, make podcasts, listening assignments, etc.
- time-tested video conference software to arrange webinars, online lessons, public discussions at school.
50+ Ways to Use Smartphones in Teaching
When your students don’t leave their phones and tablets out of hands and spend all the time looking at touchscreens, you have nothing to do as to follow their trends and turn these toys into tools. Install to your phone and recommend your students to get the following apps to improve their learning experience:
- 2048, Math Puzzle, King of Math to improve maths skills and make students’ brains work;
- Evernote to write down tasks, observations, to-do lists and always have them at fingertips;
- World Geography to borrow tasks for geography lessons and broaden general outlook;
- Skype and other chat and instant messaging apps to talk to students instead of emailing them.
5+ Educational Podcasts and Channels
SEE ALSO: How to Make a Mind-Blowing Podcast (Complete Guide)
Podcasts have recently become incredibly popular. You can find a podcast on any topic and expand your mind with new knowledge, thoughts, and ideas while doing something else. There are many sites and apps with podcasts that you may choose from:
- The Memory Palace will be an interesting source for history teachers and their students. The podcasts transform historical events into small episodes.
- Openculture contains a lot of information on various subjects such as Languages, Astronomy, Economics, Math, Literature, etc. Choose a necessary topic and discover a great number of videos, podcasts, as well as free textbooks, ebooks, online courses and audio books.
- Teachercast will be useful for new teachers who don’t want to stay behind their more experienced colleagues. You’ll learn how to communicate with students’ parents, how to use technology for more productive work and many other things that will turn you into a great teacher.
- TEDTalks Education is a podcast where you can enjoy stories told by greatest researchers, scientists, educators and community leaders.
- TheStateofTech provides latest technology news and innovative ideas that you may use in the classroom.
A modern teacher has to adjust to new methods brought up by the fast-paced technology and its trends. We hope that this list will help you to approach the next generation schooling standards and make a great breakthrough in your teaching career.
Please share this post in social media and leave comments about tools and resources you use, so we could improve and enlarge the list.
