Canva.com - Most of my seniors (specifically my AP Literature and Composition students) knew about this site and made use of it for creative/artistic presentations they needed to do in class or for various creative projects.
Prezi.com - I, personally, hate how slow Prezi is to use when creating a presentation. But it is a really engaging way to present projects or information, and one of my students did a very good job using Prezi to present his social justice book report!
Nearpod.com - This was a site our school librarian (shoutout to Ms. Norman! She is the most fantastic librarian and collaborator I have had the pleasure to work with so far!) used when she helped my students better understand how to format their papers in MLA. Students will need Chromebooks or laptops for this site, as it is an interactive presentation that goes directly onto students' screens with which the teacher can include interactive questions like quizzes, open-ended responses, polls, etc, and after using it with my own students, one student actually said, "Mrs. Lin this is so fun! Can we do this more often?"
Playfactile.com - A free "Jeopardy" game creator. There are the obvious parts you will need to pay for so the site can make money, but the free base game creator is good enough, and my students loved having this for AP test or general test reviews.
NYtimes.com - As an Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC) teacher, this was the site I went to the most when the material presented in the ERWC workbook was dry and (surprisingly) inapplicable. Students need to be exposed to real-world journalism and short non-fiction to learn how to distinguish bias, objectivity, and unbiased facts in second-hand sources. The New York times really has something for all types of readers, and I love pulling articles from this site to help my students see how what we study in class connects to the real world.
Ted.com - One of the teachers in our English department loves TED talks so much that her students come out of her class never wanting to see a TED talk again (they are required to do their own TED talk during their time in her class, too, which is a great idea for a project!). But I love TED talks, too, because they are educational tools in a format that students prefer over hearing their teacher talking and seeing young people do TED talks is inspiring to students (although I personally use TED talks sparingly [maybe no more than one every quarter] so my kids don't end up hating them at the end of the school year), and this one is my favorite: https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en. Mr. Sinek says it about 30 times in the video, but this TED talk is not only applicable for business people, it is applicable to every person in life: "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." Every teacher needs to see this and apply it to their pedagogy and every student needs to see this and apply it to their understanding of why they are in the classroom around 6 hours each day.
WeAreTeachers.com - Need a website that is teacher commiseration, collaboration, and celebration all in one? This is the best teacher conglomeration site I know. It is easy to navigate, has a multitude of fantastic tools for the classroom and personal teacher organization, and ultimately uplifts your day as a teacher no matter which article you choose to read. Come to this site to feel good about your career!
Kahoot! - This is every student's favorite way to engage with a lesson or display their learning. It's competetive, fast, and you, as the teacher, can make each question a challenging or difficlut as you want. You can also use other people's previously created Kahoot! games! Honestly, I never created my own Kahoot! game before, and didn't make enough use of this resource during my first year, but students would actually use Kahoot!s as presentations of projects. I actually learned about this site through one of my ITL professors (shoutout to Professor Casey Cuny! Best ITL professor I ever had) and personally had a lot of fun engaging with the site, myself, when the professor used it as an example for us during an online collaborate session.
CourseHero.com - my husband works for this company, and I utilized one of their study guides to help introduce Orwell's 1984 to my ERWC classes. Good site, though they're working on imrpoving a ton of stuff, but what they have so far is pretty helpful at least for high school English teachers (https://www.coursehero.com/lit/). This site is geared more towards the collegiate population, but it's very usable for high school resources, too.
Google Classroom - I literally said out loud, "Why didn't I put Google Classroom on this list and put Course Hero on before Classroom?" This has been the biggest environmental conserver in my classroom and saver of filing space. I am a hoarder by nature, so paper assignments are very easy for me to keep until I no longer remember they exist in a filing cabinet somewhere 10 years down the line. Google Classroom makes assignments easy to access, file, make comments and edits on, and return to students. You just have to make sure to remind your students to actually check your comments and editing suggestions when you return the assignment. One thing I learned is that you can't actually edit the document itself if you want your students to learn how to make the editing correction you suggest, you must edit as a comment so the student needs to make the actual change on their own. This is how I know whether students actually look at my remarks on their papers, because a final draft that looks the same as the rough drafts tells me the student didn't actually adjust or improve their writing.
Hapara.com - you need to be connected to G Suite to use this site, but it is a laptop-screen management site for teachers. The laptops in the laptop cart or Chromebook cart need to have Hapara installed on them, but this application on the laptop/Chromebook lets the teacher see what every student is doing on their screens while they are using the laptop/Chromebook. The app also lets the teacher communicate with the students through chatboxes or simply close down a site if the teacher sees the student on a site they're not supposed to be on.
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