50 Web 2.0 Sites for Schools

Web 2.0 sites are built for interactivity and collaboration—two features essential to education. Web 2.0 sites are also ideal for teaching almost any subject, as a wide array of tools are available to create and manage learning materials. Students can actively and enthusiastically approach any subject, from creative writing to STEM explorations, on these sites. Moreover, Web 2.0 sites support robust teaching and learning—even when students and teachers are at home instead of the classroom. 

In alphabetical order, the following list includes established, tried-and-true sites, as well as the latest cutting-edge Web 2.0 sites for education.

50 Web 2.0 Sites for Schools

1. ACMI Generator (opens in new tab) - From Australia’s national museum of film, TV, video games, digital culture and art, this terrific free site lets students explore digital storytelling, video game building, the art of filmmaking, animation, and much more.
2. Anchor (opens in new tab) - An all-in-one platform that allows users to create and distribute their own podcasts easily. Great possibilities here for creative classroom assignments.   
3. Animaker (opens in new tab)- A versatile site that allows teachers and students to create presentations, posters, animations, and infographics. Offers free account for up to two teachers and 25 students as well as affordable premium accounts. 
4. Animoto (opens in new tab) - Create impressive-looking slideshows that include video, images, music, and more. Free accounts allow users to create unlimited videos.
5. Baamboozle (opens in new tab) - An easy-to-use site that allows teachers to create learning games with text, images animation, and more—or browse the thousands of existing games to find one that fits. Can be shared and played remotely. 
6. Boom Writer (opens in new tab) - An engaging creative writing website on which students can write original stories, individually or within a group. Integrates with all curriculum and offers real-time chat between teacher and student. 
7. Chart It (opens in new tab) - Free, simple yet elegant site lets users create and save charts and graphs online, and explore graphs made by others. 
8. Citizen DJ (beta) (opens in new tab) -  A free beta site from the Library of Congress that provides opportunities for users to create music from wide-ranging audio and video resources. Explore and remix sounds right in the browser. 
9. Cloud Stop Motion (opens in new tab) - This stylish stop-motion animation site offers free school account with unlimited student users. Make movies with soundtracks on any desktop, smartphone, tablet, or Chromebook. 
10. Creatability (opens in new tab) - Features a series of experiments exploring how to make creative tech tools more accessible. Free to browse and try. Encourage your students to build their own! 
11. Diigo (opens in new tab)- This social bookmarking site offers free teacher and student accounts. Users can save, tag, annotate, organize, and share online resources. 
12. Diagrams.net (opens in new tab) - Completely free online software to create mind-maps, flow charts, network diagrams, and more. Drag and drop pre-existing shapes, arrows, tables, and symbols, or draw each one yourself on the canvas. With no cost, no account needed, and sharing capability, it’s a great tool to use in any classroom.   
13. Edmodo (opens in new tab) - A free communication/collaboration platform with LMS capabilities, Edmodo can be used in person, online, or with hybrid learning. Teachers can create classes and then share assignments and quizzes. 
14. Edublog (opens in new tab) - Designed to make it easy for teachers and students to create and maintain their own websites, Edublog is also a great platform for collaboration. Free and modestly priced pro accounts are available.   
15. Educandy (opens in new tab) - A free and easy-to-use site in which teachers make learning fun by creating “flavours” of activities: words, pairs, and quizzes. No student account required. 
16. Educaplay (opens in new tab) - An excellent free way to gamify learning with interactive multimedia educational activities. Premium accounts also available, offering additional features and removing advertisements. 
17. Flipgrid (opens in new tab) - A fully free and simple-to-use video discussion site. Educators choose a topic and students respond to the challenge creatively by recording and uploading video. Includes a library of more than 25,000 topics to browse.
18. Floop (opens in new tab) - A web app dedicated to helping teachers provide faster and more meaningful feedback to students. Students submit assignments online, where instructors can quickly and efficiently add commentary that guides students to improve their work. 
19. Glogster (opens in new tab) - Kids combine images, colors, text, audio, and more to create collaborative, interactive posters in this safe environment. Multiple affordable pricing options available. 
20. Goosechase (opens in new tab) - A K-12 focused version of a hybrid scavenger hunt. Teachers create their own games, or use one posted by others. Math, vocabulary, and geology are just a few of the many possible subjects of these engaging hunts. 
21. G Suite for Education (opens in new tab) - A comprehensive set of free education tools, including for communication, collaboration, organization, classroom management, and data security. Free and enterprise accounts available. 
22. Gnowledge (opens in new tab) - A free platform to create collaborative online quizzes, share resources, view others’ quizzes, and more. Excellent tech support and tutorial videos as well.
23. Infogram (opens in new tab)- A site that allows users to create charts, maps, and infographics. Free basic account includes a nice variety of professional templates, up to 10 projects, object animations and more.  
24. Little Bird Tales (opens in new tab) - A wonderful site for digital storytelling that allows kids to upload artwork, then record and narrate a story. Affordable rates for teachers and schools.
25. Live Binders (opens in new tab) - An virtual binder site that allows teachers to create their own classroom textbooks, digital portfolios, and more. Students can use Live Binders to showcase their academic work, while administrators can create online guides for teachers and staff, and make easy updates.
26. Musicshake (opens in new tab) - Legal, copyright, free music for every student in your school - created by students, right from a browser. Students mix and match genres, instruments, and tempo and the software does the rest. No musical talent required!
27. Parlay (opens in new tab) - An innovative tool for class discussion, Parlay offers a library of discussion prompts, blended learning, and live online discussions. Teachers start with a discussion prompt, then students review learning resources and respond with their own ideas.
28. Pixton (opens in new tab) - This engaging comic creator will motivate students to dream up their own digital stories. For K-12 and secondary education. 
29. Playmeo (opens in new tab) - Hundreds of fun interactive games for groups, with a library of core activities for math, science, health, and language arts. Searchable by theme, exertion level, duration, or group size.   
30. Playposit (opens in new tab) - Interactive video instruction site that engages kids in self-paced learning, and allows teachers to track their progress.  
31. PresentationTube (opens in new tab) - Create, upload, and share video tutorials using PowerPoint and the website’s free software. An affordable premium version is available. Browse uploaded videos to get ideas for your own.    
32. Prezi (opens in new tab) - Prezi allows users to create slideshows and presentations, and works with multiple popular apps such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and YouTube. Free basic plans, plus very affordable paid options for educators.
33. SchoolTube (opens in new tab) -  Free K-12 video hosting site is COPPA and ADA compliant. Features include unlimited videos, personalized channels, playlists video apps, analytics, single sign on, and more. 
34. SpellingCity (opens in new tab) - A user-friendly and engaging site for teaching and learning spelling and vocabulary. Extensive teaching resources include word lists, lessons, standards- and grade-based vocabulary lists for literature titles, and STEM vocabulary lists. 
35. Stop Motion Studio (opens in new tab) - Students can use images, artwork, or virtually any prop to create stop-motion movies to illustrate what they’ve learned—or what they want to teach others. Enables direct export to YouTube.
36. Storillo (opens in new tab) - Helps students learn how to collaborate on projects and practice critical  executive functioning skills. Teachers can easily monitor progress of group members—and see who does what. 
37. Storybird (opens in new tab) - A site that inspires students to read and write through the use of digital visual storytelling, from poetry to longform writing to flash fiction and comics. Education plans available. 
38. StoryJumper (opens in new tab) - A free site for digital storytelling in which students can incorporate their own art, publish online, share with others, or order a print copy of their own work. Integrates with Google Classroom and offers many examples to browse. 
39. SymbalooEDU (opens in new tab) - Lets teachers and students save, organize, and share links to websites, videos, web documents, and other learning resources. Free and pro accounts available. 
40. Thinglink (opens in new tab) - Imaginative site for combining images, video, 360° images, and 360° videos to create interactive visual presentations, learning materials, or student projects.  Available as a mobile app also. 
41. Toonclip (opens in new tab) -  Lets users create animations with simple English language text and drag-and-drop images. Free account allows 20 animations per month. 
42. Triptico (opens in new tab) - A great free tool for teachers to create, share, and edit interactive lessons. Engaging features include word magnets, drag-and-drop templates, and gamified activities.
43. VoiceThread (opens in new tab) - Ed.VoiceThread is a safe and secure platform to help students develop critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity skills via multimedia presentations. Ongoing training workshops include advanced skills and integration with Moodle, Blackboard, and other learning management systems. 
44. Weebly (opens in new tab) - Offers a drag-and-drop website editor to create a free class website with multimedia capability and expanded blogging features. Bonus-free accounts do not include advertising!
45. Whiteboard.f (opens in new tab)i - Awesome free online whiteboard tool offers instant access without registration. Create and name a class online, share the URL with students, and start annotating your whiteboard. 
46. WordCloud Generator (opens in new tab) by MonkeyLearn - A clever site that is very simple to use--just paste or upload your text and the AI generates a word cloud showing the most frequently used words. Great free tool for exploring and analyzing literature, advertising, and more. 
47. Wolfram Alpha (opens in new tab) - An educational portal for Wolfram's computational search engine. Students and teachers can explore topics from step-by-step solutions for calculus problems to comparing the Flintstones versus the Simpsons. 
48. Yacapaca (opens in new tab) - This all-in-one solution for creating quizzes, surveys, and assessments offers free introductory access to browse subjects, syllabuses, quizzes, and more. Resources are rated for popularity and quality, and may be individually reviewed as well. 
49. Yo Teach! (opens in new tab) - A free-to-use backchannel/chatroom with drawing and annotating functionality. Considered by many a replacement for the well-liked and defunct TodaysMeet, Yo Teach includes functions such as Raising Hands, Simple Polling, Mute Students, Participation Stats, and Transcript Download. 
50. Zoho Wiki (opens in new tab) - Educators can create virtual classrooms for interactive content or online instruction, manage assignments, monitor student progress, and more.

David Kapuler is an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment. For more information about his work, contact him at dkapuler@gmail.com and read his blog at cyber-kap.blogspot.com (opens in new tab).

Diana Restifo is a techlearning.com editor.