Helpful Resources
ASCD Website
http://www.ascd.org/Default.aspx
This website is an online resource for teachers all around the world. It provides a lexicon of terms, online classes, articles and a host of other features to help teachers of any subject to master the art of teaching. They include articles on preventing bullying in schools, how to teach equitably, different methods for teaching a subject and many other important topics.
Google Classroom
An excellent program for organizing classes and providing classroom materials online. Allows for the creation of online quizzes, slideshows, forums, and assignments. Allows the classroom to go paperless.
Twine
A free story/game creation program that can be used in-browser or downloaded. Allows for the creation of a story-map in order to create non-linear choose-your-own-adventure stories and games. This is an incredibly easy and fun tool to use for learning creative writing and basic game creation and would be well suited for an english class or a technology class.
Teaching Tolerance
An excellent resource for teachers looking to make sure their classrooms are inclusive, tolerant and non-biased. Built on the ideals of social justice, this website provides articles, workshops, webinars, lesson plans and a lesson plan builder for teachers to design lessons around important issues such as racism, sexism, homophobia and other topics related to assuring one's classroom is a diverse, respectful and safe space.
Kahoot
A fun way to test student's understanding of any topic. This website allows you to create kahoot quizzes that can be "played" on any electronic device with a web browser, including phones. The question is asked on the classroom screen and students answer by clicking the right icon on their phone/computer screen. It keeps students engaged with the material in a fun, exciting way. Results are shown at the top of the screen after each question so students are motivated to answer quickly and compete with their classmates.
Discipline Help
DisicplineHelp can help teachers find negative behaviour patterns in students and find their causes and suggest ways to help correct the behaviour. It is also a great resource for teachers to recognize the immense variability in problem behaviours, and to recognize that these behaviours cannot all be dealt with in a uniform way (such as sending the student to detention), rather, it helps teachers cater their efforts at discipline to individual students exhibiting particular behaviours.
Learn Quebec
This website, concerned with teachers and students in the province of Quebec, is an educational resource where teachers and students can find programs, resources, lessons and information on the Quebec school system. As an aspiring English teacher, I found a great section on language arts teaching with various lesson ideas, including tips on media production and other innovative ways to have the classrooms utilize educational technology. There's even a section on podcasts! Additionally, this site has all the information on the Quebec learning competencies and how to prepare students for ministry exams.
Ted Ed
https://ed.ted.com/educator?user_by_click=educator
I found this website after I saw a teacher using it in his class during my stage. Unlike regular Ted talks, Ted Ed is education-specific and organized by subject. The videos are catered to subjects students will be learning in school and is delivered in a lesson or crash-course format. Each lesson is beautifully animated, and there are a range of animation styles. Teachers can also use the site to create lessons, and it allows them to add questions to any of the existing lessons to personalize them in anyway. It also offers information on making your own Ted talks, if that's something you as a teacher would want to do or as an activity for your students.
Crash Course
https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse
I also found this resource after seeing a teacher use it with his students during my first stage. Crash Course is an educational YouTube channel created by Hank and John Green. Each episode is a lesson in a particular subject. The one I saw the teacher use was an overview of the fall of Ancient Rome in a history class. The lessons are animated, and the material is presented in a fast-paced way that utilizes humour to keep students interested. I would honestly watch these videos on my own time.
Canva
We used Canva in one of the labs to create posters and learn the fundamentals of graphic design (see lab 6). This is a great resource to use with students to create posters for projects, brochures or flyers, and/or invitations for school events. It is free, easy to use and comes with tons of free templates students can use to design whatever they want.
Book Creator
We used book creator in one of my Education Technology labs to create comics about social justice. This program is actually designed with teachers and educators in mind and has a teacher login and functions to collaborate with students or peers. It also gives lesson ideas and showcases lessons that teachers have designed using book creator. With this platform, students can create comics, short stories or full-on graphic novels with their own images and text.
CNN 10
I also came across this website after a teacher used it with his Contemporary World students during my stage. Every class, the teacher would play these daily 10-minute videos summing up some of the most notable news of the day in a quick, accessible format. He did this to keep his students up to date with the latest news events, and after playing the video held a small discussion where he would have the students relate what they just saw to the topics they were learning in class. I thought this was an excellent way to get students interested in the news and current world events and a fun way to start a class (with the added benefit of having students pay attention to a video right at the beginning of the lesson, which is when students can be the rowdiest).
Flipsnack
This site is similar to canva and book creator but is made more for creating e-books, magazines or zines for the web. It is free to use and you can export your work into a pdf or host it on their website if it is less than 15 pages. I used this program to create my digital media project which was an e-zine on student teaching rules and tips. This project can be found under the about tab. A great resource for using with students in creative classes.
Factile
A website that allows anyone to create jeopardy-style games for personal and educational uses FOR FREE! I have used this site countless times to create the Jeopardy style games I use in my review lessons. Students love it. You can play the Jeopardy music on youtube to add to the atmosphere.
Quizlet
This is a website I have been using to help me study since CEGEP. It is a free platform that lets you create quizzes, flashcards and short games using your own class material to help you study for tests and exams. Students can save and upload the quizzes they created for future students to use. This said, many quizzes and flashcards already exist for popular classes like intro to psychology, and students can jump in and study the material other students have made. It's a great tool to use as a study aid for students of all ages.
Common Lit
This is a website that teachers and students can use for free that offers access to many free literary passages and articles and has the functionality to include text-dependent questions, quizzes, discussion questions and an annotation tool for use in the classroom. It is designed to help improve literacy among struggling students and has great lessons designed around literary comprehension.
Sext-Ed
514 - 700 - 4411
A Montreal phone number resource to give to students. Students can anonymously text sexual education or personal questions to this number and receive answers within 48 hours.