This document provides a list of helpful websites organized by subject area that teachers can use for student projects, argument writing, articles of the week, research, interactive lessons, and word study. Some of the websites highlighted include MakeBeliefsComix for comic creation, ProCon for arguments on controversial issues, Google Lit Trips for online novels, Gapminder for statistics videos, Poll Everywhere for real-time polling, Wordle and Tagxedo for word cloud creation, and Twitter for educational networking. The list was curated by Jason Stephenson and aimed to showcase free, simple digital tools for classrooms.

1. Helpful Websites
Hinton Public Schools | July 2012
Jason Stephenson | @teacherman82
Student Products
Make Beliefs Comix
Let students showcase their knowledge by creating a comic strip
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/How-to-Play/Educators/
Fakebook
Students create a fake Facebook account to demonstrate their knowledge of a character from a
novel, a historical figure, etc.
http://www.classtools.net/fb/home/page
Prezi
A zooming online presentation tool that allows multiple users to create a presentation together
www.prezi.com
Argument Writing
ProCon
A massive collection of information on 42 controversial issues
http://www.procon.org/
“Abolishing the Penny Makes Good Sense”
An electronic copy of Alan S. Blinder’s essay
http://portamenti.com/planbook/Brit%20Lit/Sep192011/Abolishing-the-Penny-Makes-Good-
Sense.pdf
“I HATE PENNIES”
John Green’s four-minute YouTube video “I HATE PENNIES!!!! (Also Nickels.)”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77C47XYm_3c
Logical Fallacies
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/home
A collection of 24 logical fallacies, including definitions, examples, and a free poster
Logical Fallacies
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/
A collection of 12 logical fallacies from Purdue’s Online Writing Lab
Designing Infographics
http://www.instantshift.com/2012/05/15/how-to-design-awesome-infographics/
A collection of 5 infographics with 12 tips on how to design them effectively
Oklahoma Writing Project @teacherman82 Jason Stephenson 1

2. Argument Organizer
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/persuasion-30034.html
An interactive graphic organizer for writing an argument
The Week
http://theweek.com/
A magazine covering politics, current events, and entertainment, ripe for Articles of the Week
Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
This site dedicated to a fake animal provides students an opportunity to determine the credibility
of a website.
English
Article of the Week MS
Vale Middle School in Oregon provides age-appropriate articles of the week
http://vms.vale.k12.or.us/articles-week
Article of the Week HS
California high school English teacher and author Kelly Gallagher shares his articles of the week
http://kellygallagher.org/resources/articles.html
Google Lit Trips
Take students on an online field trip to learn more about a novel they’re reading
http://www.googlelittrips.org/
Citelighter
Research and documentation of sources just got easier with this free tool
http://www.citelighter.com/
The Plagiarism Checker
A free tool that can identify plagiarism
http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/
163 Questions to Write or Talk About
A large collection of prompts connected to New York Times articles
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/163-questions-to-write-or-talk-about/
American Life in Poetry
A weekly accessible, entertaining poem selected by Ted Kooser, former U. S. Poet Laureate
http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/
Oklahoma Writing Project @teacherman82 Jason Stephenson 2

3. Social Studies
Teaching History with Technology
A collection of lesson plans, activities, rubrics, multimedia, and more
http://www.thwt.org/
The Week
Political news and cartoons, currents events, and more to spark writing
http://theweek.com/
Shorpy
Vintage photographs to pair with American history units and to inspire writing
http://www.shorpy.com/
270 To Win
An interactive Electoral College map, chronicling presidential elections all the way back to 1792
http://www.270towin.com/
Science & Math
Gapminder
Videos of statistics for students to explore and write about
http://www.gapminder.org/
10 Websites for Science Teachers
A collection of practical websites
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/websites-for-science-teachers-eric-brunsell
Technology
14 Free and Simple Digital Media Tools
Create and edit audio, photo, and movie slideshows
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/08/14-free-and-simple-digital-media-tools/
Interesting Ways
A massive list of ways to use a variety of technology in your classroom
http://edte.ch/blog/interesting-ways/
Free Technology for Teachers
A helpful blog devoted to free resources and lesson plans for teachers
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/
Oklahoma Writing Project @teacherman82 Jason Stephenson 3

4. Interaction
Twitter
Connect with educators, students, authors, and more on this micro-blogging social media site
www.twitter.com
Twitter Help
A collection of helpful websites for learning more about how to use Twitter professionally in
your classroom
http://edudemic.com/2010/06/the-ultimate-twitter-guidebook/
Poll Everywhere
Using cell phones, students respond to an online survey, which displays real-time results
www.polleverywhere.com
TodaysMeet
An interactive space for a class to discuss questions during and after class
todaysmeet.com
Word Study
Wordle
Create word clouds from famous and not-so-famous texts like a historical document, a chapter
from a novel, a Wikipedia entry, etc.
www.wordle.net
Tagxedo
Create word clouds in the shapes of pictures, countries, faces, etc.
http://www.tagxedo.com/
Membean
Word maps for finding synonyms; like a free Visual Thesaurus
http://membean.com/educator/wordmaps
Oklahoma Writing Project @teacherman82 Jason Stephenson 4