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One very quick way to look up words on Google is simply to type define:anyword in the Google search field. However, their actual dictionary is far and away my favourite of all the dictionaries I've reviewed, mainly because of its clean, ad-free format. When you click on a sound icon to hear a word pronounced, it doesn't open in another annoying window. The definitions are not too complicated for use by school kids and there are examples used in context and links to other definitions found on the web. At any time, at the top of the page, you can also access web-links, images, videos, etc. that are part of a regular Google search. The site also works with NaturalReader.

Looking for an exciting and imaginative way to plan lessons that fit with the ways kids already think? Our school district is involved in Kieran Egan's Learning in Depth program which is a great fit with the udl principle Multiple Means of Engagement. Examples of lessons and downloadable lesson planning frameworks for imaginative education at this site.

Excellent site for kids to do research about dinosaurs even if they did spell Paleozoic and Mesozoic wrong.

Interesting site has 4 different brainstorming tools for kids to bounce ideas around.

This film was created as the Keynote for Net Generation Education Project: http://netgened.wikispaces.comWhen kids at the Suffern Middle School were asked t...

Very kid friendly tutorial on paragraph writing using an apple.

This is a toy for generating word clouds from text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, colours, and layouts. Take a screen shot to save your creation as there isn't a way to export as a jpeg. Wordles would make great title pages or slides and could be a fun class brainstorming activity or a way for kids to practice writing their spelling words.

Excellent online timeliner recommended by iLearn website. See her July 22 2008 review for comments about using Capzles in the classroom to keep a log of your students' reading progress through the year! This timeliner has an extremely attractive interface and is easy to use. You have to upload photos, videos, and audio files that you want to use. You can add short captions and descriptions easily to those files. The descriptions box looks small but expands as you add more text. Once you're out of edit mode a person clicking on the picture sees the whole block of text. If you want to create a longer text entry, you can blog directly on the timeline. It's unfortunate that you can't create a blog entry and have a picture, too, as the text graphic is kind of plain. Very slick feature grabs the date from your uploaded photos and adds them to the correct place on the timeline. Ideal for classroom use if kids don't spend too much time fiddling with the themes options. The only problem for classroom use is that you can't embed live links which is necessary for linking to sources used or other important sites. Or maybe I just didn't figure it out.

Incredible collection of flash to teach middle and high school math. The flash is interactive, allowing you to change a variable such as the value of an exponent and then see how that changes the value in an equation. For example, kids can experiment by altering the value of exponents to learn why we keep the base and add exponents when we're multiplying two powers with the same base. Jim teaches in Alberta.

Student Learning-Strengths Inventory. This page includes some kid-friendly assessment tools.

Big Universe(R) is an award winning web community devoted to beautiful children's picture books. READ hundreds of offerings from today's best children's book publishers, CREATE e-books with the help of an easy-to-use Author Tool, and CONNECT with other Big Universe members to share your creations and to learn what books they have read, created, or recommend. Parents, teachers, kids, authors, and others can share and learn while they enjoy this educational and entertaining website.

The folks at eThemes have already searched 1000 themes for kid-friendly sites. They have also rated the sites with a star system. A phenomenal resource that will save you lots of time searching.

This is a great free site for kids to create and share stories in comic form. I tried it and found it to be a very simple interface. You select a page layout and can add your own pictures or pictures from the web. You add your choice of talk balloons and double click to add the text. You can also add text for titles. There are some good examples of student work on the site, e.g. on the French Revolution.

Amazing site presented by the Coquitlam team at the UDL conference. Into the Book focuses on eight reading comprehension strategies for grades 1-4. Kids area has interactive activities for each strategy, teacher area features teacher guides, lesson plans, posters, video and audio clips, downloads, and more.

Jason Ohler, keynote speaker, keynote, k-12, kids, education, educational technology, planning, consulting, digital, humorist, futurist, leader, leadership, storytelling, storyteller, digital storytelling, art education

Why not have Robert Munsch himself read books to your kids?

This site was a "favourite" smartboard site listed on another one. Check it out.

A collection of subject-specific smartboard lessons.

Thanks for this post, Jim. This looks like a great assortment of instant video tutorials. I watched the fossil lesson and found it quite entertaining. It was set up as a quest where you had to learn about fossils in the hall of knowledge before earning the right to visit different geological regions.

On Jamendo, artists allow anyone to share and download music. This is probably not a good place for kids to browse but handy for finding copyright free soundtracks for your projects.

Lots of virtual activities, eg: virtual crash scene - kids have to inspect the crash scene, learn about forces, interview witnesses, summarise and decide what happened.

Wordle-type application designed specifically for elementary kids. Also includes excellent games at every level...very nice graphics, especially strong early alphabet and counting, seasonal. Activities such as 100 snowballs or make a face would be excellent for mouse practice.