Modern teachers who are looking for new ways to connect with colleagues, communicate knowledge, create courses, and engage students can find everything they need online. There are many different websites that provide free tools and resources for the 21st century teacher. Here are ten sites to explore in your spare time.

We The Teachers - We The Teachers (WTT) is a social site for teachers who want to network, share lesson plans, and discuss education-related topics online. Site members can try out WTT alone or join groups of like-minded teachers.

LearnCentral - LearnCentral is a social learning network for educators who want to network with colleagues and collaborate on a global level. Teachers who sign up for a free membership are given their own virtual meeting room with two-way VoIP, an interactive whiteboard, and application sharing capacity.

Edutagger - Edutagger is a new social bookmarking site for K-12 teachers. It works a lot like Delicious and other bookmarking sites but focuses exclusively on education-related content.

Engrade - Engrade is the perfect online tool for teachers who want to create a secure, online classroom community. It can be used to track and store assignments, grades, class attendance, and much more.

Edmodo - This free social platform is an excellent resource for teachers who want to be able to share assignments, files, and other content with their students over the web. Edmodo can also be used to create an online group or class.

TeachStreet - This site provides an array of tools to help educators grow their teaching business. Teachers can TeachStreet to network with other teachers, list events, promote classes, and collect online payments from students.

Eduslide - Eduslide makes it easy for teachers to create and deliver their own presentations, slide shows, and courses online. Teachers can make Eduslide content publicly available to anyone who wants to see it or restrict access to a specific group of people.

TeacherTube - TeacherTube is an online community for teachers who want to share instructional videos. Videos can be aimed at students or other educators.

Teacher Lingo - This online community is for blogging teachers who want to share their content and ideas with other educators. The site has a blog feed, message board, and a space to share lesson plans.

Vyew - Vyew is a collaborative tool for teachers who want to host webinars, presentations, and meetings online. The site can also be used to create and upload course content for real-time instruction. The free version of Vyew allows up to ten real-time participants.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online college classes for OnlineClasses.org.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Educational Web Sites, School Software, Teaching, Teaching resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.