No need to sharpen that pencil!
There are many online tools designed to help people record and produce ideas.
Mind Mapping
Graphic organizers, charts, wireframes, storyboards etc. Use for individual organization or collaborative pre-writing. Most can be shared and some charge after three creations.
Mind Meister / Mindomo / Lucid Chart / bubbl.us / ExploraTree / Popplet
Word Clouds
Paste your text (essay) into one of the following programs. It will create visual representation of the text used. The most prominent words, those used most often, will be larger than those used less frequently.
"Fake" Social Networking & Texting
Students are desperate to use Facebook at school so here is there chance. Higher level processing in a simple program that students are used to. Example.
Historical Tweets | Tweet Builder
What would they have tweeted if they were alive? Example of what your students could do with 140 characters.
ifaketext.com | iPhoneTextGenerator.com
Students text more than they use any other tool. What better way than to get them to condense ideas into a text conversation.
Collaborative Writing
Meeting Words - Simple, collaborative text editor
6 Powerful Google Docs Features to Support the Collaborative Writing Process
Extra
Google Books Ngram Viewer (info) | Google Books Ngram Viewer Search (try it)
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