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MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching - is an online community where you can find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials, share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues, and be recognized for your contributions to quality education. These videos provide instruction on the MERLOT environment, highlight some of our award-winning materials, and offer keynote addresses from our annual international conference.

"The Smithsonian's History Explorer is packed with lesson plans, interactive media, and reference pages for teachers and students. Using the search tools teachers can find lesson plans for every K-12 grade aligned to national standards for U.S. History. Teachers can search for lesson plans and other materials by grade level, resource type, historical era, and cross-curricular connections. " This material is useful for any online teacher around the world as a history source.

"The handy infographic below takes a look at the BELS process - Brain Essential Learning Steps. In other words, how does the brain process information in the learning process? The graphic breaks it down in terms of how to teach the material, making this a super useful reminder for teachers planning their lessons. Keep reading to learn more." The 4 Steps: Introducing material, collaborative brainstorming, students develop a learning plan, and then "take action," through writing, music, visuals, etc., and share.

"By Alvina Lopez It doesn't matter if you're a veteran teacher or a newbie just now taking college courses - finding new ways to get students engaged in the classroom is always a great thing. One way many teachers are reaching out is with the multitude of material found on the web, allowing them to turn everyday lessons into a multimedia experience. You can find a great amount of helpful material on these sites, including videos to augment your lessons, lectures to inspire students, documentaries to show them how things work, and loads of additional videos to help you become a better, smarter teacher."

The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. This is the LearningSpace, where you'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others. Links to tools and discussion forums in many content areas.

Teacher training website with links to video content from a US Department of State funded project with the University of Oregon. All content is freely available.

"Shaping the Way We Teach English is a video-based training product for English language educators. It has 14 modules (topics). The videos showcase classroom scenes from around the world and have an accompanying training manual plus additional readings. "The University of Oregon developed and produced the materials through funding from the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Office of English Language Programs ©2007. All materials are free of charge and copyable for non-commercial educational use."

This site is filled with stories of interest to Adult ESL learners at many levels. Each story has a pre-reading, timed reading and audio component.

This project was designed to create leveled reading selections that are appropriate for and valued by adult learners. These materials, combined with the research-proven strategies of repeated reading and guided oral reading, aid in building learners' fluency and comprehension skills. The materials correspond to Casas 200 - 235. This project helps adults become better readers and more informed consumers, parents, employees, citizens and community members. The focus of these reading selections will be on topics such us: Civics, Employment, Housing, Health, School, Money, and Government. This project is funded in part through an EL/Civics Grant from the MN Dept. of Ed - ABE Division and mini-grant from the Minnesota Literacy Council.

"This is a listing of 82 sites that legally offer free textbooks and written course material. "There is a separate page with links to free audio and video courses Free Audio & Video Courses Online "To the best of my knowledge all of the websites listed here offer only content that they are legally entitled to transfer to you. If you find a site listed here that you know illegally offers copyrighted material, please contact me through the site with a link to the infringing content. Mr6n8 "To the best of my knowledge every website listed here, and its downloads, are safe. By the rules of this site, no website that has a red or an orange rating at Web of Trust (WOT) is allowed in the listings. I also use LinkExtend, a browser addon that offers the ratings from six other website rating products, to verify the sites here are clean. I have never encountered any issue while visiting these sites. Additionally, I have downloaded something from every site that offers a download and have never encountered an issue. If you should ever encounter malware on any of these sites, please contact me through the site and provide the link to the offending content. Mr6n8" The lists will take some time to go through: 783 sites are included, with minimal descriptions. Variety of subjects. T/H to psmiley in Group diigo in Education This list is not comprehensive and if you know of any other sites please post in the comments below or at our forums. A comprehensive alphabetical listing of free books for reading or listening can be found on these pages:"

Not only excellent video lectures, but extraordinary support, with transcripts, subtitles, quizzes with answer keys,lecture notes, labs, downloadable materials, and the opportunity to join a study group, etc., depending on the course. Over 2700 courses in science, humanities, engineering, architecture, etc. Also good for teachers preparing to teach ESP.

Open source training materials for African development --- accessible anywhere.

From R. Byrne: "On Google's advanced search page there is a tool for refining searches according to reading level. This tool on its own can be very helpful in helping students locate materials that are appropriate for their reading abilities. It can also be helpful to combine use of the reading level refinement tool with a domain level refinement. "

"Students will practice syllabification, reading, storytelling, and vocabulary when playing these games! This product contains directions and material for four different types of games to use during literacy centers: clapping out the syllables, vocabulary battle game, vocabulary flashcards, and storytelling. The games focus on the daily five activities pertaining to word work and writing. Each game would last 30 minutes."

"Students will practice syllabification, reading, storytelling, and vocabulary when playing these games! This product contains directions and material for four different types of games to use during literacy centers: clapping out the syllables, vocabulary battle game, vocabulary flashcards, and storytelling. The games focus on the daily five activities pertaining to word work and writing. Each game would last 30 minutes."

"Technology in the classroom no longer means simply having a computer available for students to use or presenting material through a PowerPoint presentation. Educational tech means utilizing aspects of the digital classroom within the traditional classroom-students use cloud technology to submit and review assignments, teachers facilitate class discussions through online platforms, and students collaborate through online media. These are new and revolutionary elements of learning and education that play an important role in our students' academic experience."

"CK-12.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to education. Their website offers a large collection of resources for students and teachers like Brain Genie which I previously shared. The bulk of their resources are math and science centered where students can learn about chemistry, physics, algebra, and geometry just to name four. They also offer resources for other content areas as well including history, English, and SAT prep. Their website is free to join and offers a wealth of learning resources and activities. Their site offers articles, quizzes, interactive lessons, videos and students can keep track of their learning as they complete lessons and activities and members can upload their own resources to the site as well. " This looks like a good attempt to crowd-source materials for K-12 in the U.S. Could have uses for ESL/EFL, particularly with content- and project-based learning.

"Why do many students have difficulty transitioning from ESL programs to the mainstream curriculum? One reason is that many of them don't understand what is expected in U.S. colleges and universities. To address this problem, I decided to create a video series that gives students the opportunity to practice with authentic examples of the courses they will soon enroll in. Also crucial would be devising accompanying materials that would help students learn from the examples provided. It's one thing to watch a YouTube lecture from Yale or MIT, but quite another to understand a class within the context of academic norms in the United States. " Excellent advice for getting EFL students ready to study online or in the U.S.

Wonderful visual material on the ancient civilizaions of the world, Machu Picchu, Hittite Turkey, the Khmer civilization of Ankgor Wat, the Celts, ancient Egypt, etc. Great for content-based learning and may help students appreciate each other's cultures.

A downloadable, free web accessibilty checklist: "Whether your course includes one web assignment or is a full-blown online journey, you're developing and managing online content for your students, who may have disabilities like "…blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these. "And just like your instructional material, your online content should be understandable-and accessible-by your diverse students. Your online content should include the basic web accessibility features."

The New York Times offers poetry paired with visuals, in this case an animation, and music, as well as two or more related poems. Readers are asked to write what they think, and the comments are very interesting also. Some adult content may be found in the sidebar, so this is for older students, not small children, though the idea is a good one for inspiring writing at any age. You may be able to strip the video and text and use the materials offline (being careful of copyright issues).

"Succeeding with Science is a website built around fun and interactive educational games, activities, and videos to help students learn and love science. The student activities are sorted by age range from 4-7 years up to 16+ and there is also a teachers section. Each activity come with PDF lesson plans and support materials as well. Science teachers at all levels should find this site to be useful way to support their curriculum."

This won't work well with feathery hair or gauzy material. The computer imaging needs sharp outlines. But fun to try it out if you are into images/photography.