Free Educational Technology--Who doesn't like free stuff?

As a future teacher, I strive to learn about all the educational technology out there. I believe that if I continue to learn and grow, I can better teach my students and therefore, help them learn and grow. The current technology out there for teachers is unbelievable. There are thousands of websites dedicated to educational technology alone. With one simple Google search, one can find educational research, reviews, sales, and even freebies. The free resources on the internet for teachers is what I would like to talk about today. I want to list a couple of awesome free resources for educators (especially English teachers) that are easy to use and beneficial in many lessons.

1) Wordle-- Wordle is a tool that counts and groups words from a selected text into a fun word cloud. This tool is made to make the most frequent words larger, and less frequent words smaller. This could be a great tool for young writers to see the words they use the most. For example, if a student uses the word "like" a lot, they might benefit from seeing it before the eyes in a contained space. This tool is also nice to use to locate themes within a text. Below is an example Wordle that I made for Edgar Allen Poe's poem "Annabel Lee". Students can see for themselves that Poe's themes in this particular poem were the sea, beauty and love. Besides, Wordle is really fun! Students are able to chose the font, color theme, and style of their word cloud.
http://www.wordle.net/

2) 60 Second Recap-- 60 Second Recap is my favorite new resources for English teachers! This website includes videos for literature classics of plot overviews, themes, character summaries, etc. in you guessed it...60 seconds! With a spunky host and fun graphics, these videos are entertaining and enlightening. Of course, these videos should never be a substitute for face-to-face teaching but they could be a fantastic aide. Below is an example of 60 Second Recap, in this video Catcher and the Rye gets a good overview.

http://www.60secondrecap.com/

3) LitTunes-- Heard of iTunes? Well, this is LitTunes. This website was created by an English/Literacy Education Professor from the University of Arkansas. LitTunes allows readers to find a playlist to accompany the book they're reading. Playlists include songs that embody themes from the book. This is a really great tool to use with high schoolers because music is such a big part of their everyday lives. I love the thought of using something relevant to my students to connect them to the material we're studying. A cool thing about LitTunes is it includes lesson plans and useful links as well. I look forward to using every aspect of LitTunes in my future classroom.

http://www.littunes.com/