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Edmodo is an interactive social website for teachers to setup their virtual classroom! Provides teachers and students a safe and secure place to connect and exchange information, share content and educational applications, access homework, and view grades, class discussions, and notifications. In late 2008, Nic Borg and Jeff O'Hara, believing to evolve the school environment needed to reflect the connected world, set out to create a tool that closes the gap between accessing the internet and availability of how they learn in school. It is Edmodo's goal to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner. Edmodo functionally makes the virtual classroom anytime, anyplace learning. Teachers have the full ability to post messages, discuss classroom topics, assign and grade classwork, share content and materials, and network and exchange ideas with their peers! This website shares new ideas that are developing through the growth of this social learning community, giving it the potential to eclipse other teacher resource site!

Web 2.0 Education resource Make your classroom a social learning network!

Classroom Resources have a pretty wide collection of lessons and web resources for teachers, students, and parents. Materials are easily access by subject area and then you can use them to create lesson plans or at-home activities. There are many multimedia (video) presentation of contents as well.

Visual learning strategies such as graphic organizers, concept mapping, mind mapping, diagrams, outlines and more are being used in classrooms. These strategies help students or all ages better manage learning objectives and achieve academic success. As students are required to evaluate and interpret information from a variety of sources, incorporate new knowledge with what they already have learned, and improve writing skills and think critically, visual learning tools help students meet those demands. Together with the brain's capacity for images, visual learning strategies help students better understand and retain information. This Website offers a variety of resources for better understanding the use of visual learning methodologies and tools to incorporate into your classroom.

This March 29, 2011 Blog by Paul Bogan, provide an interesting prospective on why Teacher-based learning is creating behavioral management problems in middle and high school classrooms! The privately funded George Lucas Educational Foundation strives to make Edutopia a source of communication and leadership for improvement of instructional methods through-out the K- 12 educational community! Edutopia is "dedicated to transforming the learning process by helping educators implement the improved strategies." Edutopia's strategies are Comprehensive Assessments, Integrated Studies, Project-based Learning, Social and Emotional Learning, Teacher Development, and Technology Integration. This website focuses less on video production and more on Teacher's blogs that communicate how teachers are implementing the Edutopia's list of improved strategies! On this site more can be gained by researching instructional methods and finding inspirational examples of successful schools than gathering classroom ready lesson materials.

ReadWriteThink features K-12 classroom resources, professional development, and parent resources. There are lesson plans aligned with NCTE and IRA standards and student interactives.

This appeals to me because it is a fun video website that make video technology the central topic for the improvement of classroom education. The Infinite Thinking Machine (ITM) is a high-energy Internet TV show, first launched in 2006, directly targeted at K-12 educators, parents and students with the simple goal is to inspire creativity and innovation in education. Currently in its second season in the current format, it provides an upbeat and engaging commentary that appeals to older student and educator, alike. New episodes are released every two weeks during the school year. Each show features a classroom teacher as its host, many engaging educators as "Field Trip" correspondents and amazing innovators as guests. Innovative approaches to education are showcased, and the teachers, administrators and students behind them are celebrated. Special segments address deeper topics head-on, often challenging conventional educational thinking. Currently in its second season, the ITM depends on a mix of funding from its producing organization, education partners and corporate sponsors. Produced by Computer-Using Educators (CUE), a nonprofit educational association focused on advancing student achievement through technology. I found the several segments that I watched informative and interesting professional produced programing!

"Explore the science of music with us, through these online exhibits, movies, and questions. Along the way, you can compose, mix, dance, drum, experiment, and above all…listen." This site allows students to learn about the science behind music and experiment with different sounds and instruments. Artists from around the world contribute to the videos and sound files giving historical background to musical instruments and styles of music.

This site is very informative and would be a great resource for any general classroom teacher in making connections between music and science.

This site offers tutorials and games for science and math from kindergarten to high school levels. Teachers and students can use these tutorials to increase content knowledge and then the games and quizzes to increase motivation and assessment. It can be used as a supplement in the classroom or students can work on it at home. 

This site combines the old fashioned practice of writing names on the chalkboard as a form of disciplinary tracking with modern technology. Positive reinforcement is even easier to monitor and post. Internal record-keeping within the software is a snap!

A site offering educator approved videos in the subject areas of language arts, math, writing, fine arts, science, social studies, and languages. Videos are divided by age level and could be used in the classroom as an introduction to a topic, a review of information or to present a topic in an alternate form.

A non-profit organization, Teaching Channel launched publicly in June 2011. In addition to exemplary website content, this organization produces a weekly one-hour program featuring Tch videos, Teaching Channel Presents, which airs on PBS stations in nearly 75 million homes across the United States. Being veted by PBS for educational content to put on the air gives this site more credibility use in the classroom! This website offers a full library of educational videos that are student-centered and lesson plan ready! There is little information on the organization philosophy when you first enter this site and a balance of teacher's commentary on instructional methods and menu of available video topics! This can be a great resource in lesson planning with the integration of instructional video that have reliable content and provide the student-centered materials that engages student in the lesson.

Create a Graph is a free website that allows users to create bar, line, pie, area, or x-y graphs by inputting specific information. Graphs can be saved or printed. Suitable for lower grade levels. 

This site allows you to create customized maps by one of two methods. Draw your own or layer information onto existing maps provided by Ikimaps. Once completed, maps are given a unique URL to share by link. They can also be embedded onto websites. Ikimaps could be used as part of student presentations or could be created, with the use of an interactive white board, as a interactive, multimedia activity during class.

This site teaches younger students about the mechanics of Cinquain, Haiku, Free Verse and Limericks. Students can choose from several phrases to complete poems of each style. Poetry Engine would be a great introduction to a basic poetry unit and is interactive whiteboard ready.

A writing generator for grades K-6, this resource is very teacher- and student-friendly. An animated guide on the home page for teachers was very simple to understand.

Scholastic Story Starters help students generate ideas, allow creativity, identify story elements, accommodate writing levels and allow students to illustrate their work. It can be used for whole class instruction and individual writing projects.

"Math is about so much more than just numbers-so, IXL is too! We approach each math concept from all angles, offering visual representations, word problems, interactive activities, and more. With an abundance of math problems for every learning style, students can't help but build lasting skills and confidence." This website lists state standards in Math for all 50 states and connects online drills and games to each. Preschool concepts through Algebra are presented. As a member, you can track student progress by class or individuals but students can play as a visitor as well. Pop-up screen lets you know what each game looks like before you click to play. In addition to its applications in the classroom, this looks like a great resource for parents to inform themselves of state standards and to help them check their child's progress.

The state Standards list includes a description of current shift towards Common Core. Teachers need only to pick a grade level and an objective to see a sample questions that addresses that standard at the appropriate level. The sample drill shows that activities are timed. How is that reflected in the stats for a students' session?

If you opt for the subscription rather than the free Shared games, teachers are able to see student scores on activities and compare them to the results of other students. I think this would work best in a lab setting to get good information from all students but kids could have passwords and do drills at home as well. Teachers could still get the information.

A news service that covers major headlines in 15 countries in their native languages. Categories of news selections can be limited to one or more of the following subjects: World, national, business, health, sports, entertainment and technology. Feeds can be updated every 10 minutes or every hour. As you mouse over a particular headline, a short synopsis appears as a preview before clicking will take you to the primary online source article.

A site that allows teacher to offer online quizzes, games and activities in any subject area. Shared Quizzes or games might come directly from a text book or be written by Quia site members and are free for use. With membership, teachers can also create their own quizzes and activities from 16 different activity templates. Student date is collected upon completion and is reported back to the teacher in a variety of forms including charts & graphs.

This home page for this looks great. The site is down for temporary maintenance until Sunday, September 9. I'll look again then.

Article by Jaclyn Norton that is explains the power of visual information with a strong visual element. The link is incorrect, but I can't seem to edit the link itself. Here is the actual link: http://gettingsmart.com/blog/2012/09/infographic-growing-up-with-technology/

This website allows students to choose a subject area and then collect information in a variety of formats. Students can get a dictionary definition, use a thesaurus, look at a map in an atlas, find more information in an encyclopedia or view a timeline related to the topic. I think this would be a great general reference site for student or teachers. Wonderful for the interactive white board.