Top 10 ESL Websites Worth Trying in 2018
Welcome, English Language Teachers!
ELTs like us spend an incredible amount of time surfing the Web. We educate, question, advise, inspire, and collaborate online. We learn. We create. We post. It seems as though we are on a constant quest for educational websites, tools, and information so that we are continually growing and developing in our profession.
Here at iSLCollective.com, sharing resources among educators is our passion. We have decided to take this concept one step further and share ten of our all-time favorite free or freemium websites with you. We hope it saves you time surfing the Web, and more importantly, we hope you enjoy utilizing the resources below as much as we do.
And now iSLCollective proudly presents our top ten favorite ESL websites worth trying in 2018.
Film-English is a place where teachers can find ESL lesson plans created around short films. Each ready-made is plan is broken down into simple steps that build upon one another. The site is incredibly user-friendly and well thought out. All materials are created by Kieran Donaghy, a university teacher, trainer, and materials writer.
“Thanks so much for these detailed lesson plans. I really like that your site uses film. There’s something about moving images on a screen that keeps the attention of students much better than I can on my own! Great resource for English teachers, thank you so much.” Jon Sumner
“Thank you for such a brilliant website. It is the best website that I have found for teaching English – I just love the clear, coherent way that you organise it all, but mostly it’s the content of the lesson ideas that is great. Each one makes you think. Through your website I find that, primarily, I learn things whilst planning my lessons, as each lesson plan makes you want to explore other things. And indeed, learning English can be seen as not just learning a language but learning other things IN English at the same time.” Ruth Lessells
Nik’s Daily English Activities
Nik Peachey’s blog is designed to help English Language Teachers use digital tools for English literacy.
Mr. Peachey is an award winning course designer & a teacher trainer, materials writer, blogger and international conference speaker. He is an author of a number of books related to Educational Technology and Co-Founder of Peachey Publications. He is also Co-Editor of Creativity in the English language classroom.
Teachers can enjoy browsing through blog posts that best suits their interests. They can also gain access to Nik’s lesson plans, presentations, and books.
Quizizz is an interactive quiz game for classrooms. It can be played in class, or assigned as homework, and let’s students practice questions together in a fun game format. Teachers get detailed reports that can be easily synced to LMSs like Google Classroom and Edmodo.
Quizizz has tons of great features for teachers and students, including:
The ability to conduct student-paced quizzes in class with live stats, or assign as homework.
Avatars, leaderboards, and fun memes help keep students super-engaged! (You can toggle all the game options to your liking)
Works on all devices, laptops, tablets, mobile devices etc.
Easily create your own questions, or create quizzes by combing questions from other teachers (over 20 million of them!)
Easily push grades to Google Classroom and Edmodo.
View detailed reports to identify where students are struggling.
News in Levels publishes articles for students of English covering latest world news. Each article is written in 3 levels of difficulty and includes a corresponding audio recording. This allows students to keep using one source of interesting articles for a long time, gradually increasing the difficulty. They can even first read an article in Level 1 and then try to read the same article in Level 2 and so on.
Articles in text books are great for students because they usually match their level of English and contain just about right amount of new words to learn. However, they are quickly outdated and do not cover latest world events. On the other hand, latest news in media always cover topics that are currently being discussed in public and therefore provide more motivation for students to read. However, it is very hard to know in advance if a randomly picked article is going to be too easy or too difficult for students. News in Levels allows teachers to use just one source of up-to-date articles and audio recordings even for different groups of students.
Flipgrid is the leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and their families around the world. Flipgrid promotes fun and social learning by giving every student an equal and amplified voice in discussing prompts organized by the educator.
Backed by an incredible community, getting started on Flipgrid is not only free but extremely easy: create an account and browse the Discovery Library for launch-ready discussion topics created by educators around the world. With a free account you can create an unlimited number of discussion prompts and collect an unlimited number of student videos!
International Teacher Development Institute
Since 2012, the International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi.pro) has been building a global reputation for quality professional development courses for pre- and in-service English language teachers. We pride ourselves on an inclusive and caring community based on our core belief that all teachers, regardless of their location or financial resources, deserve ongoing online opportunities to improve themselves as professional teachers. So far, over 1000 teachers have joined our iTDi Global Webinars, Advanced Skills Online Courses, and Teacher Development online lessons. Our latest offering is a 130-hour, online TESOL Certificate Course, unique because it offers a personal mentor as well as world-class online video and written materials by internationally-respected educators such as Scott Thornbury, Adrian Doff, and others. As part of the new TESOL Certificate, The Teachers’ Room is an integral learning community where teachers gather weekly to explore the art of teaching as well as enhance their classroom practice. The Teachers’ Room is free for teachers enrolled in the TESOL course, and available by subscription to all other teachers.
Here are some benefits that teachers tell us they receive from iTDi:
• “I love the quality of the courses – they are always practical and useful.”
• “It’s great to work with teachers who want to improve as much as I do.”
• “I really like the international nature of the sessions.”
• “Even when I can’t attend the live session, having a recording makes me feel like I never miss a thing!”
• “Everyone shares great ideas and feedback, both in the live sessions AND in the Discussion Forum.”
• “I got a lot of confidence from iTDi – they always made me feel equal and valued my opinions.”
• “My boss accepted my iTDi certificate and I used it to get a promotion.”
• “I have found my voice as a teacher – talking with enthusiastic teachers around the world was just what I needed.”
Tinycards, created by the team at Duolingo, was designed to reinvent flashcards and make it into a fun learning experience. Using the same game mechanics and learning techniques that made Duolingo the most downloaded education app worldwide with 200 million users, Tinycards helps students and lifelong learners alike memorize anything while having fun.
Why use Tinycards? With Tinycards, learners unlock new levels, share cards with friends and solidify their knowledge by filling up a strength bar. In the background, science works to help everyone learn efficiently: smart algorithms adapt to each person’s progress and keep them from forgetting newly-learned concepts. Thousands of decks already exist for almost any topic imaginable, and you can always create your own deck for any topic you need.
Screencast-O-Matic is an easy-to-use, powerful video creation and publishing solution including Screen Recorder, Video Editor, Video CMS and more. With our fast, free screen recording app designed for Windows, Mac, and Chromebooks you can record your desktop and/or webcam with the option to add narration and system sound to your recordings. Our powerful video editing tools enable you to deliver compelling videos to your students, insert text and graphics overlays, add animation, mix in other media, automate captioning, and much more.
Screencast-O-Matic also provides a set of Video CMS and Hosting Services for teachers that prefer a dedicated space for managing and serving their screencasts.
Screencast-O-Matic supports many scenarios for k-12, Higher Education, and Professional Development including:
• Flipped or blended learning
• Lecture capture: teach while your lecture is recorded
• Teacher-student screencast mentorship
• Student video assignments
Very intuitive and easy to use set of tools
• Powerful set of drawing and editing tools to make stunning videos
• Free version and extremely affordable Pro Tools
• Passionate community consisting of millions of global users
The aims of EFL Magazine are simple yet ambitious: to be the world’s number one magazine for English language teachers, to improve teachers’ lives by supplying the best content and access to the best people to the reader, and to be an arena for change and innovation in how English is taught in an era of massive change in education.
EFL Magazine was born out of the idea of bringing truly great content from the best people to English language teachers worldwide, to improve the lives of those teachers and their students.
iSLCollective.com’s Video Quiz Maker
Since 2009 iSLCollective.com has amassed over 2.5 million registered teachers. Its core success is founded on the ability to download and upload ESL resources absolutely free.
iSLCollective has recently launched a brand new interactive feature; an easy-to-use interactive video quiz maker. It’s actually so simple that even the least tech-savvy teachers will be able to figure out how it works. It allows a teacher to create a video which intermittently pauses and pops up interactive questions. You can create an interactive quiz with any video from YouTube or Vimeo.
Have a look at the 3 minute video below which explains how this works.
We are excited to share this wonderful free resource with you and encourage you to browse through our library and try making a video quiz lesson of your own!
1.5 years after our launch there’s already a huge library of 2500 ready-made video quizzes created by teachers around the world available to you free of charge. Every video is clearly categorized allowing you to make a precise, narrow search and find a suitable quiz for a specific age, level and interest.
Once you see how much your students enjoy learning through this tool, you’ll be keen to create your own video quizzes. Doing so is as easy as 1, 2, 3!
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