507PhoenixTech

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.

Interesting site that offers to those who may not travel to Paris, a feel of the Louvre. There are several online virtual tours that showcase the various exhibition rooms. This virtual field trip introduces one to the different cultures, sights, and events outside his/her own.

Earthducation Adventure Learning Series is a series of 7 expeditions to every continent spread over 4 years by explorers and educators designed for the dynamic connectivity between education and sustainability. As the explorer and educators carried out their expeditions throughout the world,  students can experience the travels with them virtually. 

The Write Source website has writing topics by grade level (K-12) and provides student models with comments by grade level. It helps students create multimedia reports. The materials are created by teachers and writers. It provides information on MLA and APA style, a blog, and a list of publishers for student writing. The site has two very useful student resources: guidelines for how to evaluate interent resources and Research Links: Homework Help and Search Engines. The Write Source could be used by teachers and students.

KidPub has stories, poems, creative writing, videos, and reviews by kids and teens. It has links to Twitter, writing contests, message boards, and events. The site exclusively publishes (for a yearly fee) books and ebooks by kids and teens (who get royalties) as well as professionally edit and format, create cover art with input from the author, and help publicize and sell the books. The site offers a Publishing Guide. KidPub is a good resource to explore the publishing process and show students published works by other kids their age.

Google Books includes: QRC codes, author information and website links, bibliographic information, reviews, summaries, Wikipedia references, and related books, magazines and websites. Users can view, purchase, create an online library, or locate a book in a local library. Options to select a one or two page view can remove the menu and ads and be used to accommodate readers' needs. Older students could locate resources for projects. Users need to have selection skills to navigate the site. Not all book titles or authors searched had useable results.

The Literature Network features access to books, short stories, and poems, an author search, a quote search, quizzes, and a literary periods timeline. Users can also search by literary period or literature history. It has literature forums for reading, book & author discussions, writing, and teaching. Older students could locate resources for projects. Teachers could use the literary periods timeline visual for instruction.

The Busy Librarian has great ideas for educators on the Home page and the Books for Us link. Book reviews, links to resources, and lesson ideas that integrate technology with a primary education focus.

FableVision has many resources for K-12 educators including software, books, games, videos, a blog, a newsletter, and professional development. The resources are aligned with national standards (NETS-S, NCTM, etc.). The Grants link has pages of available grants for educators. It has some free resources and many products available for purchase.

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 website provides the tools to create infographics for student presentations and assessment. Students choose a general theme and drag and drop graphics and information onto the graphic. After creation is complete, students receive a URL to share their Easel.ly.

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.

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. 

The Kahn Academy offers resources on a variety of topics like Math, Science, Computer Science, Finance and Economics, Humanities and Test Prep. Resources include an extensive video library, interactive challenges, and assessments.

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. This site provides information and resources for teachers on the WebQuest Model.

Glogster EDU is an interactive digital platform for users to create online multimedia posters, called glogs. Users can drag and drop text, audio, video, images, graphics, drawings, and data to create glogs. The completed glog can be shared in a variety of educational settings, including blogs, wikis, web pages, or e-mail.

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.

Rubistar is a free tool for educators that helps them to create high-quality rubrics. Users can create rubrics or use the available rubric templates.

This link is to the language arts portion of learner.org, a series of video on demand workshops for teacher professional development. Videos are produced and distributed by Annenberg Foundation.

Quizlet allows users to find or create virtual flashcards for studying practically any subject. There are different study modes like spelling, test, scatter etc that help students learn content independently or in groups.