Free Useful Teaching Resources

Image by © C. Pang; for more, look under Images

Here you will find a collection of links to some free useful resources; they're listed in alphabetical order. The links open on a new tab or window. If you find this page useful, PLEASE tell other people about it - you can tweet, send it to Facebook, etc at the end of the page.

Most of these resources have been used by me at one time or another, and the links will be constantly updated, so be sure to keep coming back! Feedback, as usual, will be much appreciated.

Apps

Any.Do Task Manager
Camera Scan
Dictionary.com
Dropbox
Macmillan Sounds App
Musixmatch (The best audio player I've tried. Searches & displays lyrics)
Oxford Dictionary (The OD Quick Search is free)

Audio Editing and Podcasting

Audacity
AudioBoo
Podomatic
Sound Cloud (record and share)
Vocaroo
Voki

Blog List (What other teachers are writing...)


Crème de la crème of ELT blogs


Bookmarkers

Delicious
Diigo
Evernote
Livebinders
Pearl Trees
Pocket (formerly Read it Later)
Scoop.it
Stich.It
Symbaloo

Browsers

Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox

Business English

BBC Business News (there's always something of interest here)
British Council Teaching English for Business
Claire Hart's Business English Blog
English360
Evan Frendo
IATEFL BESIG World Blog
International House Barcelona
Nathan Hall's Titan Pad of Business English Resources
Paul Emmerson
The Office Life (ridiculous business jargon dictionary)


Copyrights

Referencing Generator (how to cite your sources)
The Plagiarism Checker
Wikipedia explains Creative Commons

Creating Comic Strips

Bit Strips
Animated Cartoons (Dvolver)
ToonDoo

Creating Games & Other Activities

Classtools
Content Generator
Hot Potatoes
Lyrics Gaps (Ready-made gaps or create your own)
My Studiyo
ProProfs
Purpose Games
Super Teacher Tools (I haven't tried it out)
Textivate (create multiple exercises on any text)
The Ultimate Word Search Maker (online & embeddable)
Tools for Educators (THINK before you print, please! Save the Earth!)
Tools for English (Creating worksheets for gap-fill, multiple choice, etc, but plea as above!
Video & Lyrics (embeddable)
Zondle

Dictionaries

Chat Slang (lists acronyms and emoticons, even translates! See Transl8 It below too)
Colloborative Multilingual
Corpus of Global Web-based English (worth taking time to learn how to use it)
DivII Video Dictionary (shows word used in context on video with subtitles)
ESOL Help (Picture dictionary [US]. Includes other resources too; useful for young learners)
Glossary of English Grammar Terms
Google Translate
Macmillan
Memidex (searches several dictionaries for your query!)
Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary
Multilingual Dictionary
Netspeak (useful for finding collocations, comparisons, etc.)
Oxford (multilingual)
Phrasal Verbs (150 most common from The PHaVE List: A pedagogical list of phrasal verbs and their most frequent meaning senses (2014) by Mélodie Garnier & Norbert Schmitt.)
Power Thesaurus

Shahi Visual Dictionary (uses photos, not drawings, but beware! ;-))
The Free Dictionary
Transl8 It! (Fun translator - SMS-English-SMS)
Urban Dictionary
Visual Dictionary
Word Hippo (all-in-one: synonyms, antonyms, rhymes, example sentences, etc.)
Word Sift (Visual dictionary)

File Hosting

Google Sites
Zymic

Grammar

Curso de Inglés (Grammar explanations and exercises for Spanish speakers)

English Corner

English Grammar Secrets (Simple explanations with accompanying interactive exercises)
English Language and Usage

Grammar Girl

Grammar Monster
Road to Grammar (exercises, explanations, downloads, etc.)
Scoop.It on Grammar Exercises
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

Ideas & Materials for Teachers

Acronyms (Interesting list of ELT acronyms)
BBC Learning English
Breaking News
British Council (Kids)
British Council (Learn English)
British Council (Teach English)
British Council Word Family Framework (shows how words within the same family are placed at different levels) For instruction, click here.
Busy Teachers
Cambridge Resources for teachers (especially for their exams)
ELT Bites (Ideas with minimal resources from teachers from around the globe)
English Profile (The vocabulary profile allows use of their corpus - free at the moment!)
ESL Galaxy
ESL Jokes (Funny material!)
Exam English (includes grammar, listening, etc.)
Hancock McDonald (all kinds of classroom materials)
Hot English Magazine
Jamie Keddie's Lesson Stream
Kieran Donaghy's Film English (ideas on using films in the classroom)
Lantern Fish (Boggles World ESL)
Linguist List (International Linguistics Community Online)
Oxford 3000 Profiler (Paste a text and it'll check the difficulty of the text)
Russell Stannard's Teacher Training videos
Teflpedia - some ideas & resources for teaching English
Scoop.It on International Exams
VAULTT (Video Assistance for Understanding Language Teaching Techniques)
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED (if you have some time to spare...)

Images

Finding good high-resolution images which you can use/edit freely can sometimes be very time-consuming. Here's some help. Always read the licence first, and respect it.

My very own Flickr sets
Comp Fight (an image search engine centred on Flickr)
Creative Commons on Flickr
ELTPics on Flickr (if you wish to see my contribution, they're here)
FlickrCC (an image search engine centred on Flickr)
Wunder Stock (a search engine on Creative Commons images)
Free Flash Cards
Free Flash Cards 2
Free Images Collection
GIMP (Free powerful image editing software)
Gratisography
Image Codr (Searches Flickr and gives you images + CC licence + html code!)
Morgue File
Mosaic Maker (Create a mosaic online, which you can save)
NASA Multimedia
Pic Monkey (Online image editing)
Picture2Life (Image editing, including making mosaics)
Pixa Bay (High quality, public domain images)
Public Domain Clip Art
Shape Collage (a freeware to create collages in different shapes)
Unsplash (free high resolution images)
Wikimedia Commons

Jobs (especially for teachers looking for jobs. Note: I don't vouch for any of them. Use common sense when using any of these. If any site asks you for payment first, strike them off your list and please let me know)

Ajarn (for Thailand)
British Council Language Assistants Project
Cambridge English Teacher (you need to be registered with them (free))
Dave's ESL Café
Don Profesor (free ads for private classes in Spain)
English First
ESL101 (jobs, resources, information)
ESL Base
ESL Employment
Fast Track 
International House
Just Landed (more for general advice but also has jobs, not necessarily EFL) 
Just TEFL
Mil anuncios (general ads for Spain)
Profe particular (free ads for private classes in Spain)
Spainwise
Tablon de anuncios (all kinds of things for Spain)
Teacher Hit
Teachers for Asia
Teach in Vietnam
Teach to Travel (specialising in the Far East; also Turkey) 
TEFL.com
TEFL.net
TEFL UK
Tus clases particulares (free ads for private classes in Spain)
You can teach English
World of TEFL
World Teachers (specialising in the Middle East) 

Listening (see also Ideas & Material for teachers)

BBC Podcasts
Convert Text to Speech! (choice of accents)
Convert Text to Speech! (US accent)
Elllo
ESL Lab
ESL Video (has quizzes, and also allows you to create your own although I haven't tried it yet. Embedding is also possible.)
Forvo (listen to words and phrases or collaborate)
International Dialects of English Archive (Accents, dialects)
Listen a Minute
Luke's English Podcast
Phrasal Verbs
Ted Talks

Mind Mappers

Bubbl.us (see: review) (Free version only allows 3 saved sheets)
Mindomo
Slate Box
Spider Scribe
Text to Mind Map (no sign up nor download required)

Online Surveys

Free Online Surveys
Google Docs
Kwik Surveys
Poll Daddy
Survey Monkey

Online Task Management

Hi Task
LinoIt

Phrasal Verbs

Memrise course on 150 most common phrasal verbs
More exercises on ESL EXOS
PHaVE dictionary - meanings and rank of 150 most common PVs
PHaVE trainer - test you on the 150 PVs
Phrasal verb demon - all kinds of stuff
Phrasal verb stories - with gapped exercises by Michelle Worgan

Pronunciation

Abelard

Adrian Underhill
AT&T Text-to-speech (Demo)
Cambridge Phonetic Focus
Online Phonemic Chart Keyboard
Phonetics Flash Animation (showing animated articulatory diagram)
Phonetizer - Transcribe texts online of offline
PhoTransEdit - powerful tool, available online and offline.
Pronunciation Central (teaching pronunciation)
Rachel's English (US) - includes videos, mouth positions, etc.
Stuff.co
Teaching English

Screen Capture

Greenshot
Instant Shot
Jing

Shortening URLs (for Tweeting, e.g.)

Bit.ly
Goo.gl
TinyURL

Slide Shows (For displaying students' work, for example)

Photo Peach
Picasa

Synchronising Files/Folders

If you tend to update files in several places, e.g., in your internal and external hard drives, it may be a headache trying to keep track of what you've done. Synchronising your folders ensures that you have the same files in all your storage.

Drop Box (sync to the clouds - 2GB free online storage)
FreeFileSync (Open source folder synchronization)

Sync Toy 

Twitter stuff

Hootsuite (Social media dashboard)
Today's Meet (Backchanneling)
Tweetchat (Backchanneling - great for following #chats)
Tweetdeck (Social media dashboard)
Tweetdoc (Collecting tweets)
Tweet Download (allows you to download your tweets, among other things)
Twitter Fall (Backchanneling)
Twitter Fountain (Backchanneling)
Twitwheel (Visualising tweets - search by username or keyword. Cool.)
Visible tweets (Backchanneling)
Wall of Silver (Backchanneling)

Web Design

Colour Codes Chart

Colour Info from Hex Code

Common HTML Codes

HTML Code Tutorial

HTML Colour Codes & Names

Sound Advice

Word Clouders

ABCya!
Image Chef
Tag Cloud
Tag Crowd
Tagul
Tagxedo
Word it out
Wordle
Word Sift

Writing

OhLife
Story Starters
Twiddla
Type with me

Links to Links

These pages contain links to other resources which I may or may not have tested, so use them at your own judgement.

Make Use Of - Best 107 websites
Online Degree - Best 100 Web 2.0 Tools