Tools for Writers

These are some free online tools we use to help us start writing, keep writing, or think about writing in different directions.

750 words is an online word processor that counts your words and keeps track of how many words you write each day. We have successfully used it to motivate us to write more and more often.

Animoto is a tool for making videos set to music with images you select. We have used it to create multimodal projects and to create a specific mood for images.

Wordle creates a word cluster based on the text that you paste into its system. We have used this tool to figure out the most important ideas, words, and concepts present in a draft. Plus it makes really cool graphic art!

Bubbl is an online brainstorming machine. You can map your ideas in a bubble map that you can save, print, export, and more. This really helps us pull together our ideas and see how they are linked (or how they could be)!

Picnik is an easy to use online photo editor.  We have used this to add photos to our work and to create some multimodal pieces.

Google Docs is, at its core, an online word processor, much like Word. But it allows you to share your work, in real time, with other writers in order to ask questions, develop, and revise your work.  We use Google Docs for our online tutoring. We have also used it for collaborative writing and peer response work.

Blogger allows you to create a blog for free. You can personalize the look to match your tastes. We have used blogger to stay in the practice of writing and to share our ideas (about writing or otherwise).

Weebly is a place to create and post websites online. You can use its templates to create a neat looking website very easily, no HTML knowledge needed. We have used this to create websites for all kinds of writing project.