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Utilizing the Internet for learning:

 

  • 4Teachers: in English and Spanish, an online site for teachers integrating technology into their classroom
  • 21st Century Skills: This important group of educational, business, and civic leaders is exploring what the future holds for today's students. Their report: Results That Matter, is a must-read and an action plan that we cannot ignore.
  • ABCTeach: activity sheets and thematic project helpers
  • Afterschool Training Toolkit: free enrichment activities, organized by subject area, funded by US Department of Education
  • American History: American Memory by the The Library of Congress: an invaluable collection of historical documents for research and social studies; Entire text of: A People's History of the United States online
  • A.nnotate allows you to highlight and mark up web pages, sharing the links with others. Free or paid version
  • Annenberg Media: free videos to stream on demand in many content areas, K-12
  • Anti-Phishing Phil: This site is a must! It teaches students (and teachers too) how to recognize phony websites in a game format
  • Asia Society's K-12 International Education initiative: resources page:
  • Best web2.0 app list: Larry Ferlazzo is mentioned elsewhere on this site, but his best-of list for students generating online content is well worth mentioning
  • Blue Web’n Learning Site Library: across the curricular areas- tutorials, activities, projects, lessons, hotlists, resources, references/tools http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/bluewebn/
  • Brain Boosters: FREE mathematical brainteasers categorized by thinking skill http://school.discovereducation.com/brainboosters and games: http://www.brainconnection.com/teasers/
  • Citation Machine: use this resource to make links to cite references on blogs, webpages, etc:
  • College/future planning: sponsored by Minnesota institutions of higher learning, imakeithappen.org is an excellent, interactive, multi-media site available to anyone. Also see: getreadyforcollege.org , http://www.college.gov/,and http://www.connectedu.net/,CollegeclickTV for interviews with students and parents, FinAid: guide to financial aide, CareerForward: future planning tool. Career Aisle provides free video interviews with professionals in many fields, organized by career area. Salary.com and select "Salary wizard" to find out salaries for various professions, Mindopia
  • Concept to Classroom: free online professional development for educators on important topics in education such as constructivism, inquiry-based teaching, assessment, afterschool programs & the home/school connection, the Web as an instructional tool, etc.
  • Core Knowledge: Pre- K-8 lesson plans
  • Create Debate: a political social network site that allows users to post topics and advocate for an opinion, which others can refute and/or vote for or against.
  • Current events: KnowtheNews is a world news source that allows students to compare news coverage of stories from around the globe and has many interactive features-teacher's companion site: GlobalPulse. Fantastic!, CNN student news, Time for Kids, Dogonews, and Larry Ferlazzo's list, Newsmap virtual map displays parts of the globe, zoom in & out as desired and click for current news stories from the region, Newstin organized by national flag, Slate
  • Curriki: worldwide educational wikis share curriculum throughout the world:
  • Del.icio.us: online social bookmarking has a multitude of uses
  • Discovery Schoolhouse: a wealth of information for teachers
  • Drop.io allows you to upload files, send the URL to someone, and collaborate in real time
  • Earthshapes: free site in which students create Place Capsules (montages detailing the physical world, natural and built, in which they live) and then share them and ultimately collaboratively merge them to create new environments.
  • Education Podcast Network- free podcasts produced by students - elementary through secondary: EPN
  • Ed.VoiceThread allows students to post work and talk about it, and allows others to comment on that work. You can keep it private or put it out there on the web: http://ed.voicethread.com/#home
  • EducationWorld.com
  • Edutopia- innovation in education - what teachers are doing
  • Eduwikis - free, how to use wikis in education including real-life examples:
  • Engrade is a free online grade system that allows parents and students to check grades and homework online. Student names are coded and it will calculate grades.
  • Federal resources for educational excellence: thousands of free resources, lesson plans, and great parent tools as well.
  • Flash-card generator: Ediscio
  • Free-ed.net: free courses on many advanced study topics. Credit is not granted, but they are free online tutorials
  • Free Technology for Teachers: scroll farther down the blog and it hyperlinks free sites for the content areas along both sides of the page
  • The Futures Channel: Why do we have to learn this? Free mini-documentaries linking content area subjects to real careers. This site fills a very important niche! The Futures Channel: Why do we have to learn this? Free mini-documentaries linking content area subjects to real careers. This site fills a very important niche!
  • Future trends and tech: FastCompany , Wired,
  • Gaggle.net- free email, blogs, discussion boards, digital lockers designed for schools

Famhoo: family-subject search engine

Feedster: anything with an RSS feed: www.feedster.com/
Google: www.google.com
Google News Archive: http://news.google.com/archivesearch
Grokker: Do you like graphic web formats? www.grokker.com/
Hoax websites: Are students savvy enough to recognize a hoax when they see one? www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoaxsites.html
Informine: scholarly Internet resource collections: http://infomine.ucr.edu/
Internet archive: has the Wayback Machine, as well as other Internet archives and free downloadables: http://www.archive.org/index.php
Ivy's search engine for kids: http://www.ivyjoy.com/rayne/kidssearch.html
Kathy Schrock's guide to help kids critically evaluate web pages: http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/eval.html
Librarian's Internet Index (websites you can trust): http://lii.org/
Noodletools: help students to design their search: www.noodletools.com/noodlequest/
Podcast Alley- find podcasts: www.podcastalley.com/
Podzinger - search for audio and video on the web: www.everyzing.com/
Primary sources - Historical American newspapers: or Letters & Diaries OnlineTechnorati - for blogs

Viewzi - a multi-format search engine in which you can search for photos, videos, sound files, text, and more - all displayed in a visual format

Weblistyallows you to search the most common sites on a topic by country

Zoeybot: free safe search engine for kids

  • Second Life: Free to join - there are islands and groups dedicated to teaching and learning English. I can't list them, because there will be new ones every day. If your district blocks it, which is probable, at least more mature students can access it at home once alerted
  • Sesame Street: early literacy, games, videos - a very comprehensive site
  • SuperKids: Free educational resources, such as math worksheets, vocabulary, logic games. Also has links to their educational software reviews
  • Survey-maker for students, free: fo.reca.st
  • Superthinkers: problem-solving brainteasers in a solve-the-mystery format. Free
  • Thinkfinity: formerly Marco Polo, this site is a gold mine for teachers. funded in part by Verizon, but with many prestigious partners. Edutopia recently awarded it the best free site for lesson plans:
  • Thinkquest's library of student-authored webpages:
  • Top 100 tools for learning: browse for the best of the best for your purposes.
  • Tutoring online: Fee-based services that charge a flat monthly fee, such as TutorVista , or minutes-used fee-based sites such as Tutor.com, Growing Stars, and SmarThinking
  • UC Berkeley's Teaching Library Internet free workshops - the time spent here is wellspent. Educators need to understand the basics of internet use if we are to help our students:
  • Web 2.0 for the classroom: a list of great sites for learning how to use tech in the classroom
  • WebQuest: once you discover webquests, you'll use them often! Webquest has a searchable database of FREE fully-developed lesson plans that utilize the web: http://www.webquest.org/
  • Welcome to the web: teaches newcomers to the web about the Internet and how to use it
  • Wikipedia: FREE online encyclopedia in many languages - it is a wiki and therefore there some doubt validity because viewers may edit, but increasingly reviews are required. Also SimpleEnglishWikpedia and WikiJunior (a wiki with FREE books on various topics geared for students 8-11 years old; not only is this a source of text for our students to read, it's also a good forum for meaningful editing opportunities)
  • Woopid: how-to videos on all things tech. Free
  • World History for us all: what matters most and how shall we frame and teach it?
  • Writing: WritingFix, Writing Matters (ezine), Writing Fun Great Source, or EssayPunch to be guided through the writing process. TheWritingTeacherhas a great blog. Scholastic's Create a Tale is a fun and simple early writing tool for younger children. Bitesize English writing for heavily scaffolded younger student writing activities and information. Also see RaW storytelling activities , Model student essays: Holt, Scholastic, Houghton Mifflin
  • YouthLearn: Free- Lessons plans and projects integrating technology.

Also visit Catherine at her weblog for more resources and information on cutting edge uses for technology in instruction. Select 'Links' in the top right bar. View the blogroll and other feeds on the right for conversations with leading tech educators: http://nlcommunities.com/communities/acceleratingminds/default.aspx