I’ve recently completed revised and updated The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience.”

Additional suggestions are always welcome.

I’m going to have my combined Intermediate/Beginning English Language Learner class write research essays on the planets in our solar system (see The Best Sites For Learning About Planets & Space). So, today, before our Super Bowl party begins, I decided to bring together a few online reinforcing activities.

Of course, previous “The Best…” lists, The Best Resources For Learning Research & Citation Skills and The Best Online Resources To Teach About Plagiarism can also be useful.

I hope readers will contribute more!

Here are my choices for The Best Resources To Help Students Write Research Essays:

Having model essays is critical. Here are three interactive essays from HRW, in order of increasing sophistication:

Controlling Lava

Sixty Years Of Men’s Haircuts

Forgotten Heroes

Here are a series of interactive exercises from CUNY.

Great Source has a research writing tutorial.

You can see the other “Best of…” lists here, and you can also find links to these, and 8,000 other categorized sites, on my webpages.

You can also subscribe to this blog for free here.

Check This is an easy way to create a web page without having to register, and it lets you copy and paste images, too.

It’s an excellent tool to use for students to publish their work. It’s also very, very similar to many other sites listed in A Few Simple Ways To Introduce Reluctant Colleagues To Technology (and I’m adding Check This to that list). Because of how common these tools are, I’m a bit perplexed about why TechCrunch would write such a breathless review of the site this morning….

You Are Your Words is a web tool from the American Heritage Dictionary that lets you upload your picture, upload something you’ve written, and then combines the two to use the words to create a new picture of you.

No registration is required, and you can share and/or download the result.

The late columnist William Safire composed a list of 36 hilarious, and useful, grammar guidelines, which he called the “Fumblerules of Grammar.

You can see them all here, and it’s definitely worth a look. Here’s a sample:

Remember to never split an infinitive.

A preposition is something never to end a sentence with.

The passive voice should never be used.

Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.

Don’t use no double negatives.

Loose Leaves is the newest web app that lets you write or paste images and automatically creates a webpage. You’re given two url addresses — one where you can edit it again and a second where others can view it. No registration is necessary.

I’m adding it to A Few Simple Ways To Introduce Reluctant Colleagues To Technology, where you’ll find several other similar web tools.

Pandamian is a super-simple — and free — tool to create an ebook. Sign-up takes a few seconds, and you’re given your own url address for all your future books. Click on “create a new book” and you’re off! You can easily copy and paste images, and readers can leave moderated comments. They can also subscribe to an RSS feed if they want to be updated on newer chapters. The only negative I see is that the books don’t appear to be embeddable, but perhaps I’m missing it (and I am — see a comment from the creator of Pandamian describing how to embed your creation).

I’m adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write Online.

I published two posts related to punctuation yesterday — This Is The Best Lesson Plan On Punctuation I’ve Ever Read and Fun Punctuation Video.

They inspired me to make some changes in my lesson plans for this week with my Beginner ELL students, and I wanted to find some sites they could use for reinforcement when we go to the computer lab.

You might also be interested in The Best Sites For Grammar Practice.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites For ELL’s To Learn About Punctuation (it’s divided into a Beginner and Intermediate sections):

BEGINNER:

Woodlands School has a nice list of punctuation activities.

BBC Dragon Game

Dewi The Dragon Part One

Dewi The Dragon Part Two

Dewi The Dragon Part Three

Dewi The Dragon Part Four

Bitesize Punctuation

Apostrophes Part One

Apostrophes Part Two

Apostrophes Part Three

Apostrophes Part Four

Apostrophes Part Five

Match The Contraction

Brainpop Jr. Commas (paid subscription needed)

Brainpop Jr. Contractions (paid subscription needed)

INTERMEDIATE:

Bitesize 2 Punctuation

Punctuation and Basic Mechanics

Save The Comma

BBC Skillwise Punctuation Activities

Brainpop Punctuation (paid subscription needed)

Feedback and additional suggestions are welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the 800 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

Empedia is a new site that lets you access Wikipedia in a different interface and “add” new content through specific sections like lists, personal experiences and polls. Most important of all, it’s about a million times easier to add this info to Empedia than it is to Wikipedia itself (of course, it’s not seen by as many people, either).

It still does provide a great place for students to add information, so I’m adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience.”

Page O Rama lets you quickly and easily create a website without having to register. I especially like it because you can copy and paste images directly onto the page. Even though there are quite a few “instant” page-building apps, most don’t have that copy-and-paste image option.

I’m adding it to A Few Simple Ways To Introduce Reluctant Colleagues To Technology and to The Best Places Where Students Can Write Online.