Links are arranged in the categories of: 

  • Blogs 
  • Collaborative Writing Sites (Wikis) 
  • Online Collaboration and Communication Sites 
  • Online Word Processing and Presentation Applications  
  • Miscellaneous 
  • Scheduling Tools  

  Blogs

EduBlogs
Learn how you can set up a free blog (or several) and use them with students or with other educators.

Blogger
A super simple and free site for developing your own blog.

Educational Blogging

This site provides not only links to many educational blogs on many subjects, but also an online guide to using blogs in education.

Blogs in Education

Provides links and suggestions for using blogs to increase the impact of instruction.

Collaborative Writing Sites (Wikis)

For Teachers New to Wikis

This site provides the rationale for using wikis in all levels of education.  There is a great introduction for those who have not used wikis, as well as information about free wiki resources on the web.

Curriki

Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them.  Currently over 6,000 educator-developed resources are available.  The site also provides a way to communicate with teachers all over the world.

Wikidot.com

Wikidot.com is a farm of Wiki Sites. Their mission is to provide free and professional wiki publishing, collaboration and communication solutions to anyone who needs it and wants it. They are providing free hosted wikis with lots of features.

Google Docs

Create and share your work online. Now, also collaborate on presentations and share them in real time. Create, edit and upload quickly, import your existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, or create new ones from scratch, access and edit from anywhere. All you need is a web browser - your documents are stored securely online. Share changes in real time - invite people to your documents and make changes together, at the same time. It's free - you don't pay a nickle! 

WriteBoard

This is a free, online collaborative writing software.  Write a business letter, copy for your website, a marketing brochure, or a product description, or a weblog post, or a song, or a poem, or an idea, or an essay, or a book chapter, or whatever you might normally write in your email program, text editor, or word processor.  Unlike a Word document that's stored at your office on one computer, you can get to your writeboards from any computer in the world with an internet connection and a modern web browser.

PBWiki

Increase student engagement using a safe, free, online wiki.  Choose whether to mark your wiki public or private with one click. (Either way, a password is always required to edit, so outsiders can't change your wiki without permission.) And since educational PBwikis are ad-free, your students won't click through to other sites unless you explicitly add links.  Stop waiting for the Tech God to make an easy-to-update web space, and create a no-hassle way to showcase students' work online.

Wikispaces.com

Wikispaces lets you create simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together.  Wikis work great for classrooms, work groups, families, sports teams, book and fan clubs, and more.  Public wikis are free; private and ad-free wikis options range from $5 to $20 per month.

 

Online Collaboration and Community Sites

Hot Chalk

This is a free online communication and professional development site for teachers, this site includes a Swap Shop, Teachers’ Lounge, and free online courses for which teachers can get continuing education confirmation.

EduForge

This site supports online collaborative projects on many topics in education, a wiki for collaborative development of documents or tools among several people online, forums, and links to some cool online tools, most of which are free to use.

Tapped In 

A free online workplace, learning environment, and professional community for educators, members can plan and conduct learning projects with colleagues and students, participate in or lead topical discussions and groups, manage or attend online courses offered by Tapped In members, mentor or be mentored by other educators, and try out new ideas in a safe, supportive environment.  Resources, experts, and mentors are available to all.

NineHub 

Use this site for free access to Moodle, a great tool for creating and running an online course or collaborating with others.

Free Phone Conferences

A totally free phone conference service mediated through the internet. They have recently added the ability to record these conferences.

 

Online Word Processing and Presentation Applications

Zoho
An extensive online application that provides word processing, data bases, presentation tools, web conferencing, wikis, chats, polls, and even more, free.

Open Office
A free, downloadable office suite fully compatible with all the Office applications.      If you don't have Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, or Powerpoint on your computer at home, this is the way to avoid spending big bucks to have the same functionality.

ajaxWrite free online word processor
ajaxWrite is a web-based word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word and other standard document formats. Anytime you need to open, read or write a word processor file


Miscellaneous

Hot Potatoes

The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available on the web. Other users must pay for a license.

TrackStar website link display tool

TrackStar is your starting point for online lessons and activities. Simply collect Web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for your students, and you have an interactive, online lesson called a Track. Create your own Track or use one of the hundreds of thousands already made by other educators. Search the database by subject, grade, or theme and standard for a quick and easy activity. There is a fun Track already made for each day of the year, too!

Webposter Wizard for Teachers

Use this free online tool to create new lessons, worksheets, class pages, et cetera, and publish them online for students to access.  Users can set up a website for their classes to keep everything organized.

The Alphabetizer
This site will alphabetize just about any list, and will do things like ignoring the first word on your direction, or ignoring indefinite articles.  It is a little more technically sophisticated than some sites, and may be challenging to some.

Free Translation
This site will provide a free translation of short phrases in 10 languages.

ProFiler Pro

ProfilerPRO allows for the evaluation of knowledge, attitude, and skill based on simple surveys implemented via the World Wide Web. Group members can share knowledge and promote collaboration based on responses to skills-based survey items. Use ProfilerPRO to strengthen your school's, district's, or other educational group's ability to share expertise and grow as an organization.


Scheduling Tools

Calendar Hub
This site provides a free online calendar that you can print out, share online with others, use to schedule with groups, organize your family's activities, or whatever.

MeetingWizard 

A free tool for notifying people about a meeting by email, or coming to agreement on the date for a conference between any number of people.