MySandbox.net: David LeBlanc's site has some good resources. David is a Burnaby, BC teacher who's completing his PhD at SFU on the topic of Instructional Design for Collaborative Learning in Distributed Environments, using Activity Theory. If you're curious about what that means, check out a 10 minute presentation, in which he uses video and slides to introduce the theoretical framework. David is also involved with a collaborative Moodle server community, Learning Together Apart, which offers some free-enrollment professional development courses for teachers. 06/12/08
Geo Education site: "...helpful information on using Google Earth, Maps, Sky, and SketchUp in your K-12 classroom. For years, this suite of products has been identified as a powerful learning toolkit that can help your students conceptualize, visualize, share, and communicate information about the world around them. The Google for Educators team hopes these tools will empower you to bring the world's geographic information to your students in a compelling, fresh, and fun way." 06/04/08
FREE Printable Paper: A variety of printed patterns on paper, ready for you to print and use. For example, you can print out just about any kind of graph paper you can imagine. Lined papers, music notation paper, accounting paper, decorative stationery, Business Cards, Fax Cover Sheets, Certificates, Gift Tags, Recipe Cards, Coloring Pages, and more. 04/30/08
K - 6 Worksheet Library: "Worksheet Library was developed and is maintained by veteran elementary teachers who have over 50 years of classroom experience. ...We develop each worksheet of our site with the goal of making it clear and simple. We want to help you reduce your planning time and spend more quality time with your students. ... our worksheets are preformatted and ready to use in your classroom. Once you find the exact worksheet you need, it is ready to print. We also provide a simple answer key for any worksheet that needs one." 03/04/08
See also their section of Teaching Tip Articles (again, it's for K-6). "We share teaching tips, ideas, and experiences...also feature a number of Education Resources."
Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C): Their purpose: "...to help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs, according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines. Sloan-C maintains a catalog of degree and certificate programs offered by a wide range of regionally accredited member institutions, consortia, and industry partners; provides speakers and consultants to help institutions learn about online methodologies; hosts conferences and workshops to help implement and improve online programs; publishes the Sloan-C View, the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), and annual volumes of applied research studies; and conducts research, annual surveys on online learning and forums to inform academic, government and private sector audiences. Sloan-C also offers an awards program and an effective practices database and wiki for members to share the lessons they have learned." 1/28/08
K12 Hot Links: "The web's best educational tools - all in one place." 01/20/08
Teachnology Tutorials: Examining Technology from an Educator's Perspective: "Tips for making the most of technology in your classroom, school, and district. We show you constructive and practical applications of technology." 11/12/07
Scholastic.com's Integrating Technology: Sections on the site include integrating technology, best practices, and links to additional technology resources. Topics are for K-12 and include Arts, Early Learning, Foreign Language & ESL, Health & Safety, Math, Professional Development, Reading & Language Arts, Research Skills, Science, Social Studies. 11/12/07
Canadian History: McCord Museum: "The McCord Museum conserves and presents over 1,375,000 objects, images and manuscripts, all irreplaceable reflections of the social history and material culture of Montreal, Quebec and Canada. These myriad items – glass negatives, hoop crinolines, pieces of fine china, hand-forged tools, beaded headdresses, historical letters and documents – represent the lives and dreams of the men, women and children that came before us. They are words and actions brought to life, witnesses of our collective memory." Explore the museum using categories like Collections, Artists, Objects, Time Periods, Geocultural Areas, Geocultural Map, Thematic Tours, etc. 10/26/07
CBC Archives: "On this Website you'll find a selection of radio and television clips from the Archives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Some of these files have rested quietly at the bottom of our vaults for more than 60 years and are, for the first time, now accessible to the general public." A section for Teachers, with grade level lesson plans to complement topics on the website. Podcasts. Archives timeline. Index of topics, index of clips, index of interviews. Topic-based sections of the site (e.g. people; war; arts & entertainment; politics & economy; etc.). "All educational materials are free to use within the framework of educational, non-commercial use. Copyright restrictions dictate that clips cannot be downloaded." 10/05/07
Educational Uses for Google Earth: Quoting directly from my Google Earth email newsletter. NOTE: THE FIRST 2 LINKS BELOW WILL OPEN YOUR GOOGLE EARTH; they're not weblinks!
"Teachers and students should be aware that Google Earth is a great tool for education. And, it's not just about geography. Google Earth has been used by educators in many subjects including: science, literature, history, cartography, GIS, and more. Check out some examples like: Places quoted by Shakespeare or the Lewis and Clark Expedition. For Google-created resources, teachers should visit our Google Earth for Educators site, or check out some Sky lesson ideas. For some ideas from our users, see the JuicyGeography blog by Noel Jenkins in the UK, or a summary by Frank Taylor at the Google Earth Blog." 10/02/07
File extensions and file types resource: Find file extension details here including easy-to-understand descriptions and associated applications. Search by extension, view common and most visited extensions, and click to extension categories including audio and music files, game files, system files and text files.
Bibliomania's Reference Section: Reader's handbooks, dictionaries, quotations, thesauri, a phrase & fable section, and more. 07/02/07
Dave's Computer Tips: "This site contains tips, tweaks, and general advice related to computer hardware, computer software, computer peripherals, and other technology devices." Dave also offers a free biweekly newsletter that "...contains important computer news, computer security tips, software reviews, computer hardware, and software tips articles, as well as discussion about programs I find useful. ...Whether you are a geek, a computer owner, a computer user, or someone who thinks Windows are only for looking out of you will find something useful in my newsletter!" 05/29/07
Macleans.ca - NEW Education Site: A CNW Group (Canadian Newswire) article calls this new section at Macleans.ca "Canada's most comprehensive online destination site for current and potential post-secondary students has finally arrived. Announcing the launch of macleans.ca/university, the first website in Canada to offer continuously updated higher education news... up-to-the-minute analysis, interactivity and points-of-view ... It's an essential resource for students and recent graduates looking to make educational decisions." Extensive education/university content, including a personalized version of the famous Maclean's University Ranking Tool: Use Maclean's data to create your own ranking of Canadian schools. 05/25/07
Scratch: Developed at the MIT media lab, "...a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design. Scratch is available free of charge from the Download page. To find more about the educational ideas underlying Scratch, visit our Educators page." 05/19/07
Computer Science Directory: "This directory is developed as a project to list computer science links and articles with high quality. Here you'll only find the best of the best." 05/14/07
Just Free Stuff! Freebies For Teachers: Check out the extensive collection of resources in their teacher section. 05/06/07
101 Fun and Relevant Ways to Use Spreadsheets in K - 12 Classrooms: Dr. Alice Christie's Using Spreadsheets in the Classroom Page. All fun activities to get students involved in using the spreadsheet tools. 03/13/07
Phrase Finder: The meanings of idioms phrases, sayings. As well as an alphabetized index and a search engine, they're categorized under headings like Shakespeare's sayings, biblical, nautical, proverbs, euphemisms, the body, nonsense/fallacies, etc. There's also a discussion forum, a Phrases Thesaurus (kewl idea!), phrase quizzes, most-popular phrase links, 'a phrase a week'. If you're into words and phrases, this is a fun site! 3/9/07
YouTube for Educators: Says Dean Shareski in his blog, Ideas & Thoughts From an EdTech, "I’ve started a group called K12 in Youtube. I wondered if those posting videos might want to add them to this category. I know many students and teachers are creating good stuff but it’s hard to find it. I think Jeff has done some stuff but I couldn’t find it. Perhaps this will help. Spread the word around so we begin to collect a repository of educational content." 03/02/07
Google for Educators: "...a teacher’s guide to Google Tools for Your Classroom...a number of additional tools...examples of innovative ways that other educators are using these tools in the classroom" 03/02/07
Alcwin.org: "Whether it is chemistry, geology, mathematics or a whole range of topics, our resources offer practical advice and information for every day life. Build your own volcano; learn about earthquake or source a new Recipe's in our extensive library. Find out about OWW (World Occupational Wages) or visit our American aircraft section (United states / U.S.). Wherever your thirst for knowledge takes you today - find the answer at Alcwin.org." 03/02/07
Think.com - An Online Community for Learning: A password-protected learning community, Think.com "turns students into multimedia authors for a global community and allows peers to think and learn together. ...Experience a new level of collaboration with Think.com Projects. Identify a topic of interest, assign your students, and allow others locally or across the globe to join. ...Free service without any advertising for accredited primary and secondary schools. Think.com provides interactive learning tools to thousands of schools around the world in 8 languages." 01/31/07
The OWL at Perdue: A fantastic resource site: "Free writing help and teaching resources, open 24/7" Here are some of their categories: The Writing Process; Professional, Technical, and Scientific Writing; Job Search Writing; General Academic Writing; Research & Citation; ESL; Literary Analysis & Criticism; Writing in the Social Sciences; Writing in Engineering; Creative Writing; Teaching Writing. -- and each one has many sub-menu items. I can't describe it; you'll just have to check it out for yourself! 01/10/07
Teacher Created Rubrics: From the Online Professional Development for K-12 Teachers - University of Wisconsin: Rubrics for various subjects at various levels: Cooperative Learning Rubrics; Research Report Rubrics; Writing Rubrics; Math, Art, Science Rubrics; Oral Presentation Rubrics; Rubrics for Primary Grades; Web Page and ePortfolio Rubrics; Video and Multimedia Project Rubrics; ...plus a section on Creating Your Rubrics. 12/29/06
knowschools: "This is the place for teachers who work online or are new to online to work and share together." From their newsletter: "is devoted to resources and skills needed to use technology in the classroom as well as building skills with these technologies and facilitation when working with students in a virtual environment." 11/07/06
Women of Web 2.0: "...for all who are using the tools of the internet whether it be in a classroom setting, leading seminars, authoring books, maintaining blogs or wikis, or just enjoying the tools of the internet in an educational and exciting way." 10/25/06
AskAway ~ VIRTUAL REFERENCE SERVICE: The province of British Columbia and BC's public and post-secondary libraries have launched a new reference service that uses a live, chat-based format to offer immediate, interactive and knowledgeable help online. The AskAway website uses special software to connect BC residents with librarians from 46 public libraries across the province. It also connects with 100 librarians from 20 BC colleges and universities to provide specialist resources for post-secondary students, including access to academic research databases. 10/19/06
Answers.com Teacher Toolkit: This is a grrrreat site with LOTS of stuff! Lesson plan tools, free downloads, how-to's, and so much more. "Give your students instant access to the reference material they need for papers and research. Add Answers.com to your classroom, media center and home computers to give you and your students free, instant access to reliable facts, definitions and information on over three million topics." 07/30/06
Also, check out Answer.com's webpage tools. For example, you can get your own Answer box to put in your course, on your website, etc. Here's an example of one of the possible formats (I have another on my homepage). Go ahead, try this out!
AbiWord: Recommended by a friend, this FREE and Open Source word processor looks good! Recommend it to your students when they don't want to buy a word processor for doing course work. "AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks....AbiWord is unique among word processors in its drive to become a fully cross-platform word processor. Our source code is carefully written so that AbiWord will run on virtually any operating system with a minimum of time spent on porting. This combined with our support for internationalization (the ability to run AbiWord in many languages) gives AbiWord a massive potential user-base." 06/07/06
text-talk lingo: OnlineSlang.com: Couldn't resist leading you to this site. In a recent discussion in a course I've been taking online, there was disagreement about how much/little students should be allowed to use messenger-style typing in the in-course discussion forums. Well, if you're an instructor who wishes you knew what they're saying, this is the site for you. Complete with translator so you don't have to dig through the page after page after page of lingo. Go for it, esp. if you're a text-talker 1ab. ....afgo frm yt! 06/05/06
Best On The Web For Teachers: "The Web Portal For Teachers" from the TeAch-nology site. "As we are sure that you are aware, there are tons of wonderful web sites available to teachers. In fact, we created our site to help teachers find those sites. We have reviewed many wonderful sites..." and they have a ranking system now. Their categories include: Teachers, Administrators, Higher Education, Current Trends, Literature in Education, Professional Development. 06/04/06
Barbican Online ~ Can I Have A Word: "Giving teachers new ideas and resources to inspire creative writing in the classroom." 06/04/06
TeAch-nology.com: Worksheets, Teaching Tips, Teacher Resources, and Rubrics. "We provide free and easy to use resources for teachers dedicated to improving the education of today's generation of students." 05/10/06 FREE access to:
- 27,000 lesson plans
- Teaching tips
- 6,500 FREE printable worksheets
- Games and Downloads
- Preformatted rubrics
- 256,000 reviewed sites
- Printable generators
- Webquests
Best of History Websites: "Best of History Web Sites is an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1000 history web sites as well links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more." 05/93/06
Sites for Teachers: "Sitesforteachers.com contains only links to sites that contain teacher's resource and educational material and the sites are ranked by popularity. No more surfing countless pages to find the occasional "good" site. Also, sitesforteachers.com doesn't just allow any site on the list. Sitesforteachers.com has strict rules for the listed webmasters." 04/26/06
Timesavers for Teachers: Here's what they say: "World's largest and most complete collection of printable, interactive, often-used teacher forms, report card comments, checklists, worksheets, award certificates, passes, masters, units, and other downloadable timesaving ideas for busy teachers." 04/26/06
Educational Freeware:(K-12) "This site is dedicated to listings, descriptions and reviews of the best free educational software for Windows, both web based and downloadable. " 04/09/06
SyncToy for WinXP: A FREE "PowerToy" from Microsoft. "...easy to use, highly customizable application helps you copy, move, synchronize, rename, and delete files between folders and computers.... digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without added complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder." 04/09/06
Sharing Photographs and Other Still Imagery: From wwwTools For Education (one of my subscription newsletters), here's a full page of information and links on this one topic. LOTS of useful leads here, so I'll leave you with this page link rather than pointing out individual items. Headings include Why Share Pictures?, Pedagogical considerations, Sharing Pictures in Educational Practice, Hardware, Software, Software for Sharing, Albums, Mixing the Media, Tools & Toys, Resources, Books. 04/09/06
The Librarians' Internet: Frances Long at Knowplace.ca says, "The invisible internet is the name given to specialty areas that are available but not generally well-known. When I want a trusted, reviewed site for research etc. the first place I stop is The Librarians Internet." Check the details in their extensive "about us" section/pages and you will see that they do have strict guidelines and review processes before including sites in their database. I especially like using their Reference section. 04/06/05
Canadian Information By Subject: "The objective of the National Library of Canada's Canadian Information By Subject service is to provide links to information about Canada, arranged by subject, from Internet resources around the world. ... Canadian Information By Subject includes pointers to many different information sources. ... Please note that this service is updated regularly and is constantly developing and expanding. Be sure to check back often to see the latest additions. 03/22/06
Kids Educational Software For Preschoolers: Smart Neurons provides educational software for preschoolers and kids to help enhance their pre-reading skills, story building logic and imagination. ALSO check out their Resources list of education-based sites. 01/24/06
Answers.com for Teachers: Previously I've told you about GuruNet. I have used their desktop know-everything tool for years. They've now changed their name to Answers.com and made their downloadable products FREE. I just discovered this new service, too -- Answers.com for Teachers. Check it out!
"Get your students learning, not searching for reference with Answers.com. Add links to Answers.com to your classroom, media center and home computers to give you and your students free, instant access to reliable facts, definitions and information on over a million topics." 01/08/06
Interactive Resources for Physics Education: From the site wwwtools For Education, click the title above for a page chock full of commented links, all addressing the combined topic of Interactivity & Physics. Software, websites, books, reference materials, and more. 10/16/05
Open Workbench - FREE Project Management Tool: Complete Desktop Project Planning and Scheduling. Apparently targeted at the business world, this could be a fantastic tool to introduce to your students for group project management. "Open Workbench is an open source Windows-based desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality. ...All projects proceed through a series of tasks (or stages) during their lifecycle. By using Open Workbench, these critical tasks or stages become more manageable, making projects more likely to succeed. Open Workbench enables project managers to create work breakdown structures with tasks and milestones, set baselines, schedule project plans with dependencies, assign resources to tasks, schedule work on tasks over a period of time, adjust the schedule as actual work is recorded, link master and subprojects and schedule resources across them, and conduct earned value analysis." 10/04/05
Educational Software Awards 2004-2005: "Criteria for evaluating educational software may vary considerably - items which look impressive from a marketing point of view may prove to be less than stellar in the classroom, if elements of educational design have not been properly implemented. In this edition of WWWTools for Education, we present various rationales for running awards and views on the characteristics of good educational software, and look at some winners from the 2005-2005 awards cycle." 10/01/05
Teacher Tools & Templates: from Education World."Every educator knows how time-consuming even the simplest classroom management tasks can be. Every minute spent on block-printing desktop name tags, composing welcome letters, writing behavior reports, sketching state flag bingo cards, drawing Venn diagrams, or creating any of the other forms, letters, and work sheets teachers use every day is a minute lost to content-based planning and preparation. What teacher can afford to lose such valuable time? Education World editors know that a teacher's time is his or her most precious commodity. We know that busy work is not the most cost-effective use of that time. We also recognize, however, the importance of the hundreds of basic classroom management tools that teachers use each year. So this year, we'll be creating a number of printable, editable templates that teachers can customize and use in their own classrooms. The templates can be downloaded from our site, saved to the teacher's own hard drive, and edited as necessary. We hope you'll find them useful." 08/03/05
Accelerated Learning Techniques: "Cercone Learning Internationa helps to provide tools to open the genius mind in each child or adult. The Cercone Learning Optilearning System utilizes color to promote and improve the learning process in all areas of life." 07/06/05
Teachers At Work (Internet Tools For Teachers): Mark Teadwell provides a wide variety of materials here, including and Online Professional Development program are available to download free of charge, online educational resources listed by subject area, reviews of and links to websites related to education and/or that provide educational materials, a free newsletter, published online. 06/25/05
Math and Reading Help: The URL indicates it's for kids, but the site hosts a wide range of articles helpful to high school teachers and students, as well as for parents. 06/13/05
Canadian
Atlas Online: "The Royal Canadian Geographical Society
proudly presents a groundbreaking Internet achievement, The Canadian Atlas Online,
which brings cartography to life with exciting graphics and animation. This state-of-the-art
interactive atlas allows you to explore Canada in a way you’ve never experienced
before, and helps the Society to fulfill our mission 'to make Canada better known'.” ALSO
NOTE THIS: "The Canadian Atlas Online offers valuable assistance to teachers
and educators across Canada. From the Learning Centre,
you can download complete sets of lesson plans and supporting material for use
in classrooms. These materials have been prepared by teacher-members of The
Canadian Council for Geographic Education. The lesson plans are
categorized by province reflecting differences in provincial curricula and by
grade level." 04/03/05
[K-12]
Internet Sites for Students & Teachers: David Brear teaches in Coquitlam,
BC and posts monthly additions to his site of internet resources listed under
a wide variety of headings. 04/03/05
eLearningBC: Learning
management systems, course authoring products, virtual classroom products, off-the-shelf
courseware, consulting & research services. "...an
alliance of over 70 elearning providers working together to match your requirements
with our highly-qualified member companies. From grade school to university curricula,
virtual classrooms to virtual studios, content development tools to learning
management systems... a wide and proven range of products and services. Our
alliance structure allows us to combine solutions and provide you with a unique,
tailored approach..." 03/27/05
World of Education: "...a free site dedicated to providing quality educational resources to the general public in an easy to use format." Category headings: Jobs in Education, Library (extensive), World Facts (teaching resources and more), Web Directory, Forums (specifically directed at the education sector), Book Store (education sector). 03/22/05
GoogleTutor.com: Even people who use Google every day have no idea of the extent of their features, or how to make the best use of them. This site is devoted to helping us learn the tricks to expand our Google experience. Mark Fleming just started this site this month, and it's already got some good goodies :). Like, check out his entry on how to use GMail as an extra 1 Gb drive on your own Windows machine. Groovy. Mark: "When I’ve told others of the vast features and formidable power of Google tools, they are quite frankly astonished. ....This is why I decided to create Googletutor.com. Not only will I be able to help readers to understand more about Google, but in the process I’ll learn more about it myself. Is that my only motive? Yes. I honestly just love Google! ... Within months, we’ll have a nice database of information from which you can draw. Keep reading, submit any tips you might have, and feel free to comment on each blog entry through the comments form." 03/20/05
Center for Environmental Education Online (CEE): "You'll find K-12 environmental education curriula related to all subject areas on topics ranging from agriculture and climate change to social action and solar energy. Each curriculum in our library has been reviewed by an environmental studies graduate student according to the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) guidelines for excellence. You can search for curriulum by categories including grade level, subject, region of the country, and topic." 03/18/05
Rubistar for Creating Rubrics: "RubiStar is a free tool to help a teacher...who wants to use rubrics but does not have the time to develop them from scratch. Read more ... Go to the tutorial (it includes information on changing categories, their headings and content)." 03/12/05
wwwtools For Education: "...designed to keep you informed and to save valuable time in tracking down information and resources on the World Wide Web. Each article is on a particular topic or issue related to Web-based teaching and learning. The articles take a skilled researcher between 10 and 20 hours to research and prepare. Whenever a new article is added to the database you will be informed by email. You can opt-out of the email list at any time. Articles remain on this data base - however only paid or sponsored subscribers can view archived articles older than 3 months." 03/07/05
Create-A-Graph: The site offers an online tool for creating graphs to illustrate data, using 5 different data presentation formats. Pass the link on to your students too! From the National Center for Education Statistics. 03/05/05
Association of Online K-12 Schools: Their mission "is to develop interest, participation and cooperation in an environment of share with its online K-12 school membership community. To also provide a virtual association that will utilize the latest advances in technology and services to assist its members in teaching and developing online." 02/04/05
Techlearning.com ~ The Resource for Education Technology Teachers: I've linked to articles on Techlearning.com many times before, but have never linked to their home page! There's so much on this site that it's beyond description; you just have to take a look. One small example: just visiting their Sites For Teachers review section will take you to many categorized lists in the way my own site here does. 01/18/05
Sites for Teachers: "Hundreds of educational websites rated by popularity." Focus is for the K-12 teacher. 11/16/04
The Educators' Reference Desk: "...brings you the resources you have come to depend on. 2,000+ lesson plans, 3,000+ links to online education information, and 200+ question archive responses." 11/16/04
Musiclopedia:" A research portal ...for music and its fields." 11/03/04
Pedagonet: "The focus of our database is to offer a wide variety of learning resources to suit your needs. Our site contains brain teasers, supplies, books, tests, posters, videos, lessons, shareware, free email, minigifs, chat line, messages, jobs, freebies and other valuable resources. Add your favorite learning resources to the database." You can also post your own request for a learning resource. 11/03/04
Furl: A save-n-share desktop application that helps you store almost anything for quick reference later. Internet bookmarks, articles and resources, notes to self, you name it. Furl makes it easy to share your saved items with others "through email, RSS or your own site". Just one example of how it's used: "Educators tell us they use Furl to share resources with their students. Reference librarians are also using it to share new resources on specialty subjects with their patrons." 10/28/04
Scirus ~ for Scientific Searches: This topic-specific search engine " focuses only on Web pages containing scientific content. ...is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 167 million science-specific Web pages... Scirus has proved so successful at locating science-specific results on the Web that the Search Engine Watch Awards voted Scirus 'Best Specialty Search Engine' in 2001 and 2002." 10/12/04
FCKEditor: Provide for students as a tool within your course's webpages. "This HTML text editor brings to the web many of the powerful functionalities of known desktop editors like Word. It's really lightweight and doesn't require any kind of installation in the client computer. As it is Open Source, you are allowed to use it for free wherever you want." 06/24/04
HowToons: "Howtoons are one-page cartoons showing 5-to-15 year-old kids "How To" build things. Each illustrated episode is a stand-alone fun adventure accessible to all, including the pre-literate. Our Howtoons are designed to encourage children to be active participants in discovering the world through Play-that-Matters -- fun, creative, and inventive -- and to rely a lot less on mass-consumable entertainment." 04/16/04
Instructional Resources: Another site like this site. Many useful categories, and lots of great information and links in each. 04/12/04
Digital
Saskatchewan: A huge database of "images, movies, and sounds from
Saskatchewan and around the world. Goals...to provide a service to the educational
community by making thousands of images, movies and sounds easily accessible
worldwide for educational use." Emphasis is on images of Saskatchewan, but
lots more there, and all free-shareware. 04/11/04
E-Learning
Center: You'll
have to visit to find out the richness of this resource site. "The e-Learning
Centre's e-Learning Resource Collection contains
links to thousands of selected and reviewed e-learning articles, white papers,
research reports; examples of e-learning solutions; vendors of e-learning content,
technology and services; as well as e-learning conferences, seminars, workshops
and other e-learning events." You can subscribe to
read news your RSS aggregator. They also offer a Job Center and Consultancy Service. 04/01/04
Information Literacy Instruction in Higher Education ~ Trends and Issues: "Students today face a daily explosion of information resources and the challenge of using these resources effectively and responsibly. Academic libraries worldwide have responded by providing instruction in information literacy, described as the "ability to locate, manage, critically evaluate, and use information for problem solving, research, decision making, and continued professional development. Information literacy instruction (ILI) requires a shift in focus from teaching specific information resources to a set of critical thinking skills involving the use of information. This change is reflected within the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education." 04/01/04
Electronic Portfolios: A site devoted to this topic. Lots of information and resources. 04/01/04
Learning Circuits Try It! "This is the place to sample training software, calculators, cool Web services, and other helpful workplace tools. All demos, trials, and tools are FREE , so check them out and come back often to see what's new. Some of the tools require registration." 03/29/04
Teaching Online Lesson Plans from Incorporated Subversion: A site being developed by James Farmer, Australia. "This is a project in which I'm aiming to design and collate plans for facilitating learning online for use by people teaching online." Each of his lessons includes an introduction, carefully outlined and detaild steps, and often Extras and Tips. If you're thinking of using a Blog with your students, this is a great resource for ideas for your lesson plans. 02/21/04
Google ~Guide: New page. Helps experts too. Example of the type of information on the site: "Why is the title of this tutorial Google ~Guide? Putting a tilde in front of a search term (with no space in between) effectively turns that term into any of its synonyms. The tilde is known as synonym operator. So, if you search for "Google ~Guide," Google will find Google Guide as well as other Google tutorials." 02/09/04
Teacherhosting.com: "The first webhosting service for the wired educator." Prices are reasonable, scaled by features you might want. 01/16/04
Virtual School: "This web site is created by teams of teachers from different countries that together create and collect different kinds of learning resources." 01/10/04
Try It! Tons of goodies here! "This is the place to sample training software, calculators, cool Web services, and other helpful workplace tools. All demos, trials, and tools are free, so check them out and come back often to see what's new. Some of the tools require registration." From ASTD (American Society for Training and Development). 01/10/04
Bullfighter: "A team from Deloitte Consulting designed Bullfighter to combat the common problem of jargon overuse. Downloading the free tool adds a menu bar to your Word and PowerPoint documents and to the composing screen of your Outlook email. Click on the Bullfighter icon and the program scans your writing, catching each use of jargon as Microsoft’s spell-checker catches misspelled words. Like the spell-checker, Bullfighter provides suggestions to replace the word. Unlike the spell-checker, the program also explains why the word should be removed. The Bull Index option calculates a rate of bull as well as a readability index, based on the work of writing authority Dr. Rudolph Flesch." [Review quote is from the Try It! site above] 01/10/04
Golden Retriever: by N-LITER Inc., a toolbar that downloads to Internet Explorer, allows users to search for and collect online information and then add notes to or highlight the desired Web pages. The software then automatically copies the Web page contents to the user's hard drive. When the online researcher wants to retrieve the information, Golden Retriever "fetches" the saved page(s), complete with the personal annotations. Highlighted pages also can be e-mailed, allowing the user to share the results of the research or to forward the information to another computer. 01/06/04
Thunderbird: Mozilla's FREE email application. Helps defeat spam; many more features. Introduction includes instructions for set-up. 12/20/03
Creative Commons: Site devoted to sharing "creative works set free for certain uses." If you are not familiar with it, start with Creative Commons Presents: Flash-based shorts to watch:"Get Creative" which explains the history and launch of Creative Commons; "Reticulum Rex" revisits Creative Commons a year after launch and looks toward the future; "A Spectrum of Rights" describes, in comic-book format, how the licenses work; "How It Works" is the story, also in comic-book format, of a typical collaboration. 12/20/03
Assignment Calculator: This is FULL of hidden resources for students. Just put in any due date and move ahead to the next page -- you'll find a step-by-step guide on how to complete any writing assignment. 11/08/03
Lorum Ipsum generator: If you don't know what Lorum Ipsum is, then you probably don't need this handy tool. When I studied communications design, I learned that to create mockups of page layouts, designers use fake text that looks like Latin (maybe it is Latin?); it always starts with Lorum Ipsum..... This webpage has a text generator so you have fake text to use in your layouts. 07/05/03
Web Tools For Learning: An excellent site! "...a one-stop resource for university instructors interested in the World Wide Web as a teaching tool. Here you'll find: free software tools in support of teaching; a directory of available course-delivery tools & methods; an active forum for technology-in-education issues; a weekly newsletter on tech/ed issues, challenges, tools & resources; a searchable catalog of our favorite online resources; announcements of conferences worldwide related to technology in education." 07/04/03
TEEM (Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia): An educational software evaluation service. "Our teacher-written evaluations highlight effective classroom practice, enabling you to spend your eLearning credits wisely." 06/03/03
Excel Tips: This new site has a huge number of resources to do with MS Excel. Tutorials, tips, tricks, information, formulas, macros, etc. Tips can be sorted by Version or topic. Plus, you can subscribe to Search ExcelTip.com directly from MS Excel. 03/20/03
Tutorial Finder: This site lists a huge number of links to tutorials of all sorts. Listed in categories to help you find a tutorial on your desired topic. Good section labelled "Education", which includes a good variety of subject material tutorials. 02/18/03
Calculators by the thousands: This website contains over 16,915 Calculators, organized into an alphabetized list of categories by subject, use, need, etc. You gotta see it to believe it! 02/17/03
Landmarks for Schools: " This web site is dedicated to the idea that Information will be the raw material that drives the 21st century, and that today's students should be learning to BUILD with information...Landmarks has served teachers since 1995 with links to teaching and learning resources on the Net and collaborative online projects." One commentator said on www.edu, it "is by far the best website to provide resources for classroom teachers of all ilks. Nothing, including Kathy Sproke or MarcoPolo, comes close to it." 02/11/03
The Busy Educator's Guide to the WWW: A searchable database of over 120,000 sites; current information, lesson planning, school issues, site reviews, book reviews, special themes, teacher lessons, tech in classroom. 02/06/03
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online: "This weblog focuses on locating, evaluating, discussing, and providing guidelines to instructional resources for faculty in higher education. ...Related topics and news (about commercial resources, K-12 resources, T&D resources, educational technology, digital libraries, distance learning, open source software, metadata standards, cognitive mapping, etc.) will also be discussed, along with ...more distant miscellaneous topics in science, computing, and education." 01/14/03
Bloom's Taxonomy: This page has multiple resources and links to websites re: Bloom's Critical & Creative Thinking Taxonomy. Included is a section on "How are the domains of learning reflected in technology-rich projects?" 01/09/03
The Education Place: "K-8 resources for teachers, students, and parents. Includes Reading/Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Intervention, Professional Development, activities, games, and textbook support." 12/29/02
TOP 100 Web Sites for 2002: "After reviewing thousands of websites, the following sites have been selected as Homeschool.com's Top 100 Web Sites for 2002. These websites contain some of the best educational content on the Internet today. Almost all of these sites are free or have free sections." 12/10/02
Language Teaching Clipart Library: from UVic, "This library consists of about 3000 images which we hope will be useful in the teaching of basic vocabulary in a variety of languages. The characters and objects depicted are as culturally neutral as we could make them. This is not a huge resource of graphics; its purpose is to provide a set of those graphics most basic and useful for low-level language-teaching, and at the same time, to make them as easily searchable as possible. 11/19/02
ThinkQuest Internet Challenge Library: "...contains more than 5,000 unique educational web sites that have been created through ThinkQuest competitions and programs. Built by kids for kids to use and learn. It is also a great place to get ideas for your own project in one of our many programs around the world." 11/11/02
Schoolcandy Online Testing and Education:
100% web-based online assessment Teacher time-saver. Invigilate, mark and review
a test in 1 class! Use the test bank or create your own tests for free. Collaborate
with other teachers in creating tests. Fully secure. Retains a database of test
results. 11/06/02
Macromedia's Resources for Educators: articles, tutorials, demos, events, showcase. 10/27/02
FREE office suites and other software/utilities: Useful list if you want clones for MS Office compatibility, pdf utilties, databases, presentations, accounting software, etc. 10/17/02
Various institutions have begun to post their course materials open source online, including lessons, video lectures, exams, beautiful graphics, lecture notes, etc. A goldmine of resources, as long as they say it's legal to use them. 10/01/02
Ask
ERIC! (Educational Resources Information
Center) is a personalized Internet-based service providing education
information to teachers, librarians, counselors, administrators, parents,
and anyone interested in education. 09/25/02
Homeschool.com's Top 100 Websites: Arranged in categories such as Art & Music, Fun, Geography & Travel, History, Homeschooling, Math, Reading, Science, Writing. Most are excellent teaching resource sites. 06/04/02
Learning Resources Site:
From Stats Canada, resources for students and teachers, including post-secondary,
complete with index, browsing categories. For students, data and information
you need to get your assignments done. For teachers, data, publications
and teaching tools created and selected for school teachers and teacher
librarians. 05/05/02
Evaluation Rubrics for Websites: "Follow these links to find rubrics that either primary, intermediate, or secondary students can use to evaluate websites." 04/11/02
Instant Teaching: An excellent resource site by Pearson Publishing, a respected source of educational materials for use both online and in the classroom. "Instant Teaching provides high-quality resources in different formats to support you with school management, covering the curriculum, planning for teaching and learning, plus much much more. Registration is FREE and entitles you to many benefits, including FREE articles, resources and more. It also helps us to show you the material most relevant to you, so that browsing and searching become quicker and easier." 04/02/02
Washington Post “Kids Post”: The Washington Post “Kids Post” is "News and features especially for kids." They include "news, games, polls and brainfood" in connection with today's news and current issues. 04/02/02
Riverdeep: For teachers, students & parents, "Riverdeep is a premier provider of comprehensive K-12 eLearning solutions offering comprehensive courseware and supplemental curricula over the Internet and CD-ROM, assessment and management tools, and professional development." 04/02/02
The New York Times Student Connections: The New York Times Learning Network is a free service for students in grades 3-12, their teachers and parents. The site is updated Monday through Friday throughout the year. 04/02/02
Educational Software Cooperative: a site full of resources, including many freeware software and tools, in many subject categories. 03/18/02
YourDictionary.com: Includes a big list of Language Dictionaries, Grammar Courses in various languages, Translations, and Specialty Dictionaries, including Business, Computing, Cooking, Crafts, Finance, Genealogy, Humor, Law, Medicine, Sports, and 80 more. PLUS: lists of thesauri, grammar guides, a library, a research page, and much more. 01/16/02
TreePad: "TreePad Freeware is a very intuitive and powerful database program, only 380 Kb in size. It allows you to store all your notes, emails, texts, hyperlinks, etc. into a single file. With the look and feel of the familiar Windows explorer, editing, storing, browsing, searching and retrieving your data can not be easier!" 01/16/01
Education World, " the Educator's Best Friend": For K-12 teachers. Reference pages, lesson plans, technology page, specialty subject areas. A search engine for educational Web sites only; articles written by education experts; site reviews; daily features and columns; teacher and principal profiles; employment listings. "Education World's goal is to make it easy for educators to integrate the Internet into the classroom." 01/05/02
Community Zero: "an interactive website that allows a group of people to communicate and exchange information over the Internet in their own private and secure ... online community ... a suite of powerful tools that enable a group to effectively get organized, share knowledge and communicate." Key benefits: fast, easy, customizable, few technology barriers, automated knowledge archive, zero administration." 11/28/01
eBoard.com: "Communication central." Like post-its or corkboards, the visual interface of this is easy to catch on to. "Quickly post homework and class information....Fast, easy, free." 11/28/01
PBL Checklists: A great site for K-12 teachers who used Project Based Learning. This site generates checklists for your customized use. 11/19/01
Rubistar: "A tool to help the teacher who wants to use rubrics but does not have the time to develop them from scratch". There are many rubric templates here; especially useful for project-based learning. Fill in the blanks and you'll get your own customized rubric. 11/19/01
Education Cartoons for Teachers: Need some humor? "Cartoons for textbooks, school newsletters, and other education projects." 11/18/01
Two great FREE clones of MS Office. Might be good tools to recommend to students when you're asking for office-processed assignment submissions, or providing office-type documents for them to use? Both are XML-based. Both have the look and feel of that MS expensive product. Both are compatible with MS documents. Both are quite sophisticated in ability to do all the same tasks as Office. Check out their sites at least! 10/29/01
- Star Office: "...a unified desktop environment makes it easy to share documents with friends and colleagues using Microsoft Office applications." Made by Sun Microsystems, it's getting rave reviews and a rapidly increasing customer base. View their demo movie when you link.
- Open Office: "...the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format."
Gradebook Assistant: "...a tool to help you easily track student grades, and monitor their progress in your course, whether online, or in the traditional classroom." That page includes a link to Tracking Student Progress with Excel, a hands-on workshop/tutorial with step by step instructions in using Microsoft Excel and the Gradebook Assistant together for managing student data. 10/03/01
Distance Learning Resource Network: "Resources for teachers include courses for professional development or about teaching online, and examples that teachers can use as models for developing their own courses. Students will find links to online and correspondence schools. An online library answers frequently asked questions and has links to articles, newsletters and journals on learning from a distance." 07/29/01
ThePaperboy.com: The web's biggest collection of quality searchable links to thousands of online newspapers from around the world. 06/17/01
Canadian Organizations
for Education: A frequently updated list. 06/15/01
Edinformatics Directory: This huge database/directory offers over one million education related resources. All sites are reviewed before posting. Broken into subjects, the directory is a very complete one stop place for busy students and teachers. 06/13/01
Canadian Education
on the Web: An extensive listing of resources related to Canada and
education that are useful to parents, learners of all ages, and teachers
(of all ages)!
Electronic Resources For The Reference Desk
Librarians' Index To The Internet
Quia: "Quia helps educators teach better by giving them the tools to create, customize, and share learning activities. Quia helps students learn more by bringing the resources of hundreds of thousands of educators together in one place." Games, templates, quiz admin tools, flashcards, and other tools for use within the WebCT platform. 01/17/01
WebEx: Similar to Netmeeting in terms of features, WebEx is entirely web-based and requires no special software on the desktop. It's free for up to 4 people at a time collaborating online. 01/17/01
Firetalk: If it's mainly a voice connection you're looking for, without the need to see the other person, try Firetalk. The basic version is free and allows unlimited conferencing over standard Internet connections. 01/17/01
Are you a Netmeeting user? An ActiveX control and scripting interface are new in this version of Microsoft NetMeeting. The control lets authors and developers embed the NetMeeting User Interface in a web page or application. It also provides a set of simple scripting interfaces that can be used to control NetMeeting. Download the NetMeeting Software Development Kit to learn more about these and other new features. 01/17/01
Inclusion: "A free, searchable catalogue of on-line resources that support teaching professionals, parents in meeting individual learning needs" of special education students. 01/03/01