TeachersFirst's Online Tools and Timesavers Editor's Choice
Other TeachersFirst Special Topics Collections

This collection of Editors' Choice FREE, reviewed resources from TeachersFirst is selected to help teachers and students save time using handy online tools that get the job done and make your classroom run smoothly. Find tools for organizing and communicating, managing your classroom, do-it-yourself creating, sharing links, useful utilities, saving paper, and much more.
Think of this as a handpicked list of "friendly favs" from the Thinking Teachers at TeachersFirst. For a more extensive collection, see our full listing of online tools. For more sophisticated tools to create full blown projects and more (conveniently sorted into categories), see the TeachersFirst Edge.
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Talk Typer - 2012 TalkTyper
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): differentiation (52), note taking (36), speech (78), writing (294)
In the Classroom
Talk Typer is a very versatile tool, for students, parents, and teachers alike. Bypass poor typing skills, dysgraphia, dyslexia, and physical disabilities. Use this tool in emails, documents, or anything requiring typed text. Use in your writing class so students can either write or edit their work. Use when you are in a hurry with emails requiring long text. Use for your newsletters or family emails. Share this on your class website and at Back to School Night. Emerging literacy students will enjoy the success they have with their oral language into written word. Improve content and forget about mechanics of writing or typing. Focus in on grammar and mechanics after seeing the recognized mistakes. Include this website on every tool bar and as a favorite on your class web page. ELL students can speak English, play it back, and correct it until it "sounds right" and expresses their ideas correctly.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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PDFescape - Red Software
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use to alter documents that may have been saved as a PDF in the past. Save this site in your professional resources. If you work with students who request college recommendations or need to fill out forms for scholarships or jobs, be sure to share this tool with them!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Duplichecker - Duplichecker
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): plagiarism (30)
In the Classroom
Students can use this plagiarism checker to be sure they are turning in original work. Teachers can use this service to check the work of students (if submitted electronically). Model this site to explain what plagiarism IS and how students can avoid it. Share this site at the beginning of the school year. The hands-on experience will help them understand this challenging concept. You might even want to provide several examples of plagiarized writing as an exercise for student to check and correct before they copy/paste their way to trouble in a research assignment. Another interesting exercise for researchers is to locate an article on a how-to topic, such as "How to Paint a Room," then see how many sites use the exact same text. As a class, discuss whether this proliferation is good or bad (is the web spreading misinformation, too?). Be sure to check out their paraphrasing tool!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Readability Test Tool - David Simpson
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): independent reading (106), readability (5), writing (294)
In the Classroom
Use this tool to offer differentiated resources for the different reading levels in your class. At the beginning of the year, as you learn your students' capabilities, use this tool to find reading at the appropriate level to eliminate frustration. This is perfect for finding the "just right" level for your highly advanced/gifted students and those needing extra remediation. If you do discover that a website you want to use is over your students' independent reading level, you can still use it, just open Lingro, reviewed here, first; then enter the URL you want them to read. Lingro is a study aid and open content dictionary that makes all of the words (on a particular website) clickable for definitions and translation. Of course, if the sentence length or complexity is at a much higher reading level, simple word definitions will not make it "readable" for struggling readers. View readability levels of websites before sharing with students to find appropriate reading levels for differentiation. On an interactive whiteboard or with a projector, test passages of public domain texts from sites like Project Gutenberg, reviewed here, by famous authors to see how their writing ranks when discussing their writing style.Why not have students put in the URL for their blog or wiki (or simply paste in a writing sample) to see the level at which they are writing? This is one way to encourage writing as a craft and challenge students to include more varied vocabulary and sentence structure in their writing.
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View Pure - Veetri
Grades
K to 12tag(s): safety (81)
In the Classroom
How often do you find great clips and video shorts from YouTube and you can't show them or are afraid to show them even if you can get them through the school filter? Try using this to show clips or long videos from to your class via the interactive whiteboard or projector. There are some great, clean "Bill Nye" video portions that can be found and shared using this site for science class.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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