ESL etc.

I may be late to the party, but I want to highly recommend the Adblock Plus plugin for Firefox. It is free, quick to install, and it blocks virtually all banner and pop-up ads. It’s amazing what a difference it makes. It even blocks ads in things like Hulu. I haven’t noticed any slowdown, and […]

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Dropbox is free software that helps you keep your files synced. I like Google docs, but if you ever want to edit them in something else, the formatting is a mess. Instead, I find myself emailing documents back and forth between home and work, trying to make sure I’m always working on the latest version. […]

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Now, I’m no great fan of Microsoft. I still (reluctantly) use Windows but I’ve long been a supporter of OpenOffice and other open source alternatives. I have also found that Microsoft Word’s grammar check does more harm than good for my students. That said, their new ESL Assistant looks promising. It’s simple to use. Just […]

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I was recently asked to make a couple of charts illustrating various policies here at the ELI. Having never done that, the first thing I did was look for open source tools. Dia is extremely intuitive to use, and a great way to make flowcharts, organizational charts, and other diagrams. It could certainly be useful […]

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In my (relatively) new position as technology coordinator, I am often called upon to do new things. Yesterday, I was asked to create a vector-based version of our logo for a company that will be producing USB drives for us. I had no idea what a vector graphic was, let alone how to make one. […]

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Recently, I was asked to find some sort of gradebook software for our teachers to use. I quickly found Engrade, a free online gradebook that allows for weighting grades in categories. It’s very simple to use, and has all of the features that we need in a gradebook. Plus, it allows students to log in […]

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