5 best websites to get free ebooks

The increasing popularity of Kindle, Nook and iPad has turned many book lovers into electronic readers. It has also increased the demand for books available online, especially free e-books. So whether you own an e-reader or prefer to read a book online or on your PC, here are five best websites where you can download free e-books. These websites are a great resource to find a vast selection of free downloadable online books on a wide variety of subjects.

1. Project Gutenberg

One of the pioneers in setting up a digital library, Project Gutenberg has the oldest collection of free ebooks online. The website contains over 100,000 free e-books produced by volunteers and through its partners and affiliates. It was founded by Michael Hart, who invented ebooks in 1971.


2. Free Book Spot

Free Book Spot boasts of links to free ebooks in more than 90 categories including archaeology, environmental engineering and statistics. You can also add free ebooks to the list.

3. ManyBooks.net

As the name suggest, ManyBooks.net carries more than 28,000 free ebooks. Ebooks are sorted through authors, genre languages and titles. It also has a “Books of the Week.” Personally, I think this is the easiest free ebook website to navigate. It also has a simple and clean look. The website is maintained by Matthew McClintock. Donations are accepted to help keep the website updated.

4. Free-eBooks.net

Free-ebooks.net allows you to browse the books by author or by categories. It features the latest addition to their list of free ebooks and offers free magazines. Registration is required to access the library and download a book.


5. Bookyards.com

Bookyards.com’s goals is simple – to be the “library to the world.” And they are doing this by simply searching the web continuously for free ebooks. Aside from the free ebooks, Bookyards is also a portal to educational materials, news and blogs, videos and other web links.

Related link: Visit e-Reader Accessories for other resources on e-readers!

Free Printable Graph & Line Paper

Need graph paper for a calculus project fast? Ran out of music sheet template? No worries, you can easily get some from Printable Paper, a website that offers hundreds of free lined paper to download and print.

Printable Paper is an awesome tool, especially for students who use a lot of graph and other lined papers for school projects and assignments. Its got polar, octagon and hexagon graph paper and isometric paper, while their selection of grid paper come in a variety of square dimensions and line thickness.

If you are a musically-inclined person, or someone who composes arrangements, this website offers free printable music paper that comes with various number of staves. They also have chord and tablature paper.

The website also offers free printable penmanship paper, which is useful if your child is just learning. These penmanship papers are best for handwriting practices.

All free printable paper styles are available in PDF format and come in letter, legal and A4 sizes. Also, if you see a type of graph or line paper you need, but it's not available on the website, you can always let the developers know about it, and maybe soon, they will have it on the site.

Free Classroom Management Tools for Teachers

Whatever subject you're teaching, whether it is chemistry, algebra or grammar, you know that classroom management is no easy task. There are assignments to check, attendance to record and scores to compute. Instead of spending more time to prepare for the next day's lesson, the "administrative" part of being a teacher takes up a lot of your time. Surely, you deserve a reliable tool that would make managing classes more efficient. A good friend has inspired me to look for a free Internet tool that would help her, along with everyone who are into the "noblest profession of all" that is, teaching.

Engrade is a website dedicated to helping teachers with classroom management online. Its features include free online posting of the grades and attendance of your students, the assignments, and upcoming projects for your class. It is easy to use so teachers who are technically-challenged will be able to set up their own account and use the website's features with ease. As mentioned in its video demo, the website can be used by any teacher from any country and language.

To start with the class creation page, enter your class information such as the class name, school year and grading period. Set up the grading scale you want. The site has a pre-grading option which allows Engrade to automatically calculate the grades. Or, you can customize it depending on your needs.

Next, you can create assignment categories like tests, quizzes and homeworks. You may choose to include if the assignments weigh in the total grades of your students. For quizzes, for example, you can choose to say that they constitute 30% of the total grade. After that, you may start typing in the name of your students where you assign a unique number for them, which they will use as code to log in and view their grades on the website. You may use their student ID number as their code. You can always edit your classroom settings even after you've created the class page.

As mentioned, aside from the gradebook, Engrade also features an online calendar where you can display upcoming activities, projects and deadlines. You can also upload files for up to 50 MB. Now, your students do not have anymore excuse for not knowing when an assignment is due since the online calendar is accessible 24/7.

One of the great things about the website is it aids in improving communication between you and the parents of your students. Oftentimes, parents are busy with their work and do not have time to drop by the school to talk to you. With the website, you can allow parents to send you messages and let them view the grades of their children, see their progress and be up-to-date with what's going on.

Since we know that students always refer to the Internet for their research, it helps to let them know that their teacher also reaches to them online and gives them access to view their grades. If you haven't done so, it's time to bring your classroom on cyberspace through Engrade.

Free Educational Games for Kids

Welcome Tutpup, a new website for children that offers free educational online games. It's a good venue for your child to improve on his/her math and spelling skills, as the website features four types of games: Math, Spelling, Math-Mix, and Times Tables. Each game, which lasts for a minute, has several levels of difficulty ranging from "Easy Peasy" to "Smarty Pants."

Tutpup works by letting your child compete with children from other countries. Each is represented by an animal and a color of their choice. Your child can be a pink cat, a golden koala or a blue crab. This definitely can spark some imagination and creativity!

Although Tuptup allows quick games, it is still best to sign up for a free account so your child may build his/her own "Win-Wall", where the games won are displayed. The site also has a graduation feature which lets you track your child's progress on the different levels of the games.

Since Tutpup is an educational games website for kids, it is proper and very protective of its users. Your child will need to get your approval before he/she can play these educational games on the website. Once your child signs up, you will receive an e-mail from Tutpup asking for your confirmation on letting your child play their online games on their site. Also, the website does not allow its users to communicate with the other players. For example, there is no area for players to chat or send messages. I think this is good since you can never really tell if your child is up against another child or an adult.

Overall, Tutpup is a welcome addition to the few good learning online educational sites dedicated to children as it offers purely free educational games without any disturbing ads and pop ups.

Free Lecture Notes

With vast resources readily available online, the Internet has truly become a virtual classroom for all of us. One such site that proves this is Varsity Notes, a website where professors can share their lecture notes to the world. As written in its homepage, it claims to have the "world's largest directory of free lecture notes."

Read a lecture on Corporate Finance from a professor of New York University; learn more about Geophysics from a professor of Cornell University. Enhance your knowledge about Organic Chemistry from a professor of University of Toronto, and get more techniques in Probability and Statistics from professors of Imperial College of London.

Varsity Notes contains lectures ranging from Accounting to Sociology (Biology has the most number of entries). They are available either in pdf format, MS Powerpoint or HTML. College professors and students might find this site useful, although I've noticed that most of the lectures came from professors from universities in North America.

Whatever field you want to study, Varsity Notes shows us that learning knows no boundaries. So go ahead, make your learning "world-class" and maybe a gaining a little knowledge might not be dangerous at all.