My favorite websites as a teacher

A lot of these sites are awesome for any teacher, some are better for EFL (ESL, EFL, ELT, Language Arts, English etc), but most are great sites for any teacher to rock in their classes.
 
Tools for teachers/students to use for presentations:

• www.pinterest.com I use this to keep track of all those random awesome teaching sites/ideas I find before I create a presentation 
• http://prezi.com/ is a great alternative to powerpoint. A great way to make lessons interactive.
• http://edu.glogster.com/ A good way for students to organize fast visuals of what they learned
• http://www.wordle.net/ An easy way to have students visualize a text 
• http://www.online-stopwatch.com An easy site with stop watch or count down timers
• http://www.ted.com/ Find inspirational talks with their texts! 
• http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/PPT-games/ Games to help review topics 

 Sites for teachers to plan lessons/track grades:

• https://www.engrade.com/ I have a big crush on this online gradebook site. I LOVE it.
• http://www.busyteacher.org/ is a great way to check what other teachers are doing and snag some free worksheets/ideas
• http://www.teacherspayteachers.com another great site to join to snag ideas from other teachers. Some things are free though others are at cost (if you have not signed up yet you can do so for free here).
• http://eslcarissa.blogspot.mx/2012/05/reading.html A whole buncha reading sites (to find e-books etc)
• http://saradavila.com/  A bunch of helpful materials
• http://www.watchknowlearn.org/Tons of useful videos regardless of the topic you teach
• http://www.snagfilms.com/ Lots of free films!
• http://openclipart.org/ Royalty free clip art for worksheets or websites
• http://byrdseed.com/respondo/ Easily make involved higher level thinking questions
• http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/  Find lessons based on current news events
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/wordsinthenews/ Similar to breaking news, but with a big emphasis on vocabulary 
• http://tweentribune.com/teen A good place to find news articles for teenagers
  
• http://www.idiomizer.com/idioms/ A must for anyone using idioms

Sites to get a class to work together:  

• http://wallwisher.com/ An visually pleasing way for an online class to share ideas 
• http://primarypad.com/ An easy way for students to collaborate without signing up anywhere
• http://www.dropbox.com An fast way to have students turn in assignments and pass out assignments without killing any trees! YAY!
  

A site to do things with sentence structure/words:

• http://www.manythings.org/rs/ A fun website to randomly generate sentences per the sentence structure you select
• http://www.wordspy.com/ This is a site which spots new words in the English dictionary and keeps you updated.
• http://www.wordsmyth.net A quick way to make a vocab quiz
• http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/ You can make free word puzzles here
• http://www.easydefine.com/ Define multiple words at one time here
• http://www.visualthesaurus.com/vocabgrabber/ Pick out vocab words from a text
• http://www.siclist.blogspot.mx Bad examples. Find real examples of grammar gone bad and have students fix it.
• http://lnytimes.com/word-of-the-day/ There are TONS of word of the day sites, but this is one of my favorites
• http://www.wordreference.com/ More accurate than googletranslate for words or word chunks. The forum discussions are especially useful.
• http://www.urbandictionary.com/ I use a lot of songs and clips in my classes so this is good for students who ask me things like, "Teacher, what does it mean to do something like a Boss?"

(Youtube video not necessarily appropriate for work, just keep in mind it is what your students are probably watching in their spare time and what they will be asking you questions about)