All my students have to have an English to English dictionary and a good grammar book and, if possible, a thesaurus. I insist on it! These are the basic tools of a serious student along with a notebook and er, of course, a pen (you’d be surprised!). I’m often asked which are the best and I feel that, like cars, food and mobile phones there is an element of personal preference here and you should see which ones you are most comfortable using.
Wikis are a great tool to help a school enrich instruction, and increase communication and collaboration among staff. They are also free (for educators using wikispaces) and provide unlimited storage for digital materials including video, screencasts, presentations, pdfs, etc.
According to the New York Times Bits blog, a recent study funded by the US Department of Education (PDF) found that on the whole, online learning environments actually led to higher tested performance than face-to-face learning environments. “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction,” concluded the report’s authors in their key findings.
To the best of our ability to discern, we have included only links to electronic journals that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full text and accessible without cost. We have excluded professional magazines that are largely not refereed, and commercial journals that may only allow access to a very limited number of articles as an enticement to buy.
Tech lovers used to be dubbed geeks and nerds. According to a new report, we're all geeks and nerds now.