http://puzzlemaker.com/

This is one of several such sites which can greatly assist classroom teachers in producing fairly interesting assignments for in-class use in a quick and easy manner. If a teacher feels that there is educational value to having students work on puzzles to memorize or learn vocabulary, then this site can be very useful. I was able to customize a provided list of vocabulary words (delete some words I thought were not appropriate for my class) and create a puzzle within a few minutes that I could print out and distribute to my class (assuming I had the computer, Internet connection, and printer in the room) a few short minutes after thinking it might be nice to have just such an exercise to pass out. It's a good example of how technologically aware teachers can enhance their lessons with a minimal amount of work. Let's say that you're teaching a lesson on the days of the month in a beginning level class and you realize that you might have an extra 10 minutes of classtime near the end of the day when some students are starting to get fidgety. While the students are working on some other assignment, you can visit this site, create a custom puzzle using the vocabulary words that you want your students to know from that day's lesson, print it out and have it be ready for that that last 10 minute period, giving students the opportunity to make complete use of every minute of the time period for productive learning. If the 10 minutes never materializes because a student has asked a question and your answer or explanation has made use of that ten minutes, you have a homework assignment or a warm-up/review worksheet for the next class session already prepared.