Ellen Paige

I used CritiqueIt during its free trial and found it easy enough to use. Grading my students' papers was straight-foward. Some of my students had a hard time with this website, and unfortunately too many of my students have no Internet access back home, so I have not continued to use CritiqueIt.

I just learned about Grovo from edshelf. The tutorial on Evernote was very helpful. I have been meaning to use Evernote for some time now, but have not had the chance.

These tutorials are helpful for someone like me who does not have the time to experiment and play with multiple apps. The quality of the tutorials was good. I would recommend Grovo and plan on using them again.

I just began using Popplet and am really enjoying it. The website is easy to use and looks fun and engaging. My students have taken to it as well.

I use Popplet as an assessment tool. My students construct Popplets to reflect a topic they have chosen, then speak about their Popplet in front of the whole class. Using Popplets to illustrate their learnings takes the edge off their jitters in public speaking a bit. More importantly, they are speaking in English and exercising the vocabulary they've learned.

I would highly recommend Popplet.

I have used this as an extra-credit activity for students who have completed their work early. The gaming nature of it is very engaging, especially for self-directed competitive students. It is easy to use.

My only complaint is that I would like a teacher view to see how my students are doing. It would be great to track their progress.

I love Starfall! I used this site back when I was in primary school. The site was easy to use and my students loved it. The colors are playful and fun, as are the illustrations and videos. Information was well-organized and easy to find.

I would highly recommend this resource to any ESL teacher and have recommended this to my students' parents many times.

My department uses Zite extensively to share resources. I find it a great way to discover new resources and websites.

I have not used this with my students yet, but that is a good idea. I will try that soon.

I use Wikispaces for all of my online exercises and resources, so students can reference them whenever they would like. Not all of my students have Internet access, so this is of limited value. Self-motivated students have told me this is helpful.

I also use Wikispaces for organizing my department's resources. This helps us manage all of the websites we have found useful. Since anyone can edit our wikispace, other teachers have contributed as well.

I use Wordle to illustrate my vocabulary exercises. By running an essay through Wordle, I generate a word cloud of the terms my students will be learning. This gives them an idea of the new vocabulary they will be learning. After the exercise, we revisit the Wordle cloud and go over each of the new terms they learned.