4Teachers.org, a division of ALTEC, has a suite of tools designed specifically to help students with their writing and research projects, from narrowing down a great topic, to collecting online research, to writing a persuasive essay.

Having trouble narrowing down a specific topic? Need to create an outline for a report but unsure where to start? ThinkTank is just the tool you need to get you started! Just type in your subject and ThinkTank’s exclusive random subtopic generator will help you create an outline that you can then export into NoteStar to begin your research.

NoteStar

Online research can be time-consuming, especially if you’re keeping track of sources on a separate piece of paper or typing each one as you go. NoteStar makes online research a breeze. Students can take notes, track source information, and create a bibliography that they can print when they’ve completed their research. Teachers can use NoteStar to track student progress, help students organize their notes, send messages to students, and check source authenticity.

PersuadeStar

PersuadeStar is designed to help students in grades 5-12 write a persuasive essay. Teachers can begin by creating an account and choosing options for students to use such as: analysis of example essays, essay planning tools, essay writing space, student spelling feedback, and source and bibliography information. Each student is assigned a login code and the teacher can then keep track of student essays which can be downloaded to a personal computer or viewed online for one month after the last modification.