Here’s another installment in my series of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly.  As you may remember, in order to make it on this list, the web tool has to:

* be easily accessible to English Language Learners and/or non-tech savvy computer users.

* allow people to create engaging content within minutes.

* host the user’s creation on the site itself indefinitely, and allow a direct link to be able to be posted on a student or teacher’s website/blog to it (or let it be embedded).

* provide some language-learning opportunity.

* does require any registration.

You can find previous installments of this series with the rest of my “The Best…” lists at Websites Of The Year.

Here are my latest picks:

SEND AN E-CARD FROM THE GUGGENHEIM: I’ve posted about a lot of places where people can send attractive and innovative E-Cards, and then post a link to them on a student/teacher website.  However, at the Guggenheim Museum E-Card page, not only can you pick from some extraordinary art work, but it’s the only E-Card site I’ve ever seen that also has a spell-check. That feature really makes it helpful to English Language Learners.

MAKE A QUILT ONLINE: The International Quilt Study Center & Museum lets users create their own quilt. They can then email the link to a friend and/or post the link on a teacher or student website or blog.

SEND A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC E-CARD: National Geographic lets you send a strange, but engaging, E-Card of what appears to be its mascot, Zipper.  Students can “drag-and-drop” various objects into the picture, including speech bubbles where they can write text. They can then send it as an email, and post the link on a teacher or student blog/website.

WRITE AN AZTEC E-CARD: At The Field Museum site, you can write E-Cards that can be emailed and have examples of Aztec sculpture. A link to the image and what the student writes can then be posted on a teacher website or blog.

BECOME A TALKING POTATO: With Spud Yourself! you can turn your image into a talking potato (or use one of the site’s pictures). By using the text-to-speech feature, English Language Learners can develop their language skills in a fun way through writing and listening. You can post the link to your talking potato on a teacher or student blog/website.

SEND A SALVADOR DALI E-Card: Here’s another resource from an art museum, and this time you can send artwork or a quote from Salvador Dali. If you’re interested, you can also find a lot of other E-Card sites on my website under Student E-Cards.

MAKE A STORY WITH BAND-AIDS: A manufacturer of band-aids in the United Kingdom (I guess they call them “plasters” over there) lets you create an animated story, with text, on their site.  All the characters in the story are made of band-aids.  It’s a bit strange, but cute. The only negative is that you don’t get an immediate url address of your creation — they review it first and then send you an email before it’s posted.  I don’t know how long it takes.

You might also want to check out The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2008.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.