CALL_IS_VSL

This resources pages categorizes free video sites by ABC Documentaries, Free Documentaries Online, and Science Network. There is a great deal to explore here, but many live up to the "educational" label. For some there are connected lessons. You may add your favorite sites to the list by signing in.

As always, I feel like these are just good teaching strategies: we are all visual learners to a large extent. That's why the visual cortex is so important in the brain, and relates to reading as well as seeing. But if you are a fan of Gardner, this is a good article for you.

Sharing docs on Google Drive creates an excellent environment for good composition practices, especially in a flipped classroom. Students begin writing by structuring in class on computers, using templates and discussion of the assignment with the teacher. Plagiarism is non-existent as all interactions with the text are transparent.

This article has tons of information. Just pick the way that works best for you. Towards the bottom of the screen is a charge with features and pricing (some are free - there's an app for that).

Fun ideas using visual prompts to help students practice the prepositions of place. This blog also has more general ideas and links to resources for teachers.

"Videos are traditionally linear and directive. In the classroom, videos are designed to either dispense information or teach the viewer a new skill. However, great lessons are rarely passive. Using the annotations feature in YouTube, teachers can create videos that require participation. At its most basic, students are given four choices, and they select the correct answer. If an incorrect choice is made, students watch a new video that reteaches the concept. If the correct choice is made, the initial video links a new video that shows the next step, or the next problem. Going deeper, the first video can link to several choices, and each of those choices can link to several choices. " A nice tool to enhance the use of video -- annotations that link to other videos. It doesn't say if the links could also be to resources or other kinds of sites.

Another nice free spot where you can check out Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning-Fog scores, and so on. Check the readability of a text before assigning it to your students. Have your students check the readability of their own writing to see if they are at college at level.

A wide-ranging set of mini-articles and resources on games and learning. Consider how games can be used to enhance your classroom. Then try out some yourself.

An excellent site with mock-up sites to help students explore search engines, evaluate what they read on the Internet, plagarism, etc.

Ways for younger students to start tinkering with programming language, including "Move the Turtle," from the old LOGO, Symour Papeert, and Apple IIe days. Some are apps for mobile devices.

A well organized space with 6 steps to inquiry learning using projects and information searches to create presentations. Includes a link to a webinar reviewing the Guided Inquiry Framework.

These tools include lesson planners, ways to organize and share lessons, and several that link directly to search tools to find standards related to your lesson plans. Should be a help for training teachers, even if the Common Core is not the standards you are interested in using.

We all know lesson-planning is hard: "Here you will find free printable lesson plan templates, make sure to print off a few different choices and try each one for a week or two and see which one feels the best." So many choices, but they are going to be useful. Most are free. Or check out some of the big sites like PBS or Discovery Channel which have completed examples of lessons that you can capitalize on for your own.

This lesson plan is very detailed and revolves around a blog assignment to discuss students' hobbies. Nice combination of writing and high student interest possibilities.

This looks like a great FREE series of modules to develop your EFL teaching skills. From the Texas Language Technology Center. Select any of the modules, or start at the beginning and go through at your own pace.

"Creating animations can be a fun element to add to a creative writing project. Creating the animation could be the final piece of the project in which students bring their short stories to life. You could also have students create short animations to use as story starters for their written works. Here are five free tools that students can use to create animations."

"Developing questions that align with the ubiquitously misused New Bloom's Taxonomy -- starting a discussion with recall questions and stair-stepping through the rest until higher order prompts are dispatched -- has been sold as a pathway to cognitive vigor. Observe how many classrooms have Bloom's Taxonomy posted on the back wall for the teacher to reference. Over-reliance on question hierarchies can result in conversations that are irrelevant to the content and context of the learning environment, and invite answers that nobody cares about. " Quality whole-class discussion, rather than recitation/quiz type discussion is possible with good teacher training.

"The basic purpose of Huzzaz is to help you create and organize collections of videos. In your account you can make as many thematic collections as you like. To add a video from YouTube or Vimeo to your collections you can search within Huzzaz, use the Huzzaz browser bookmarklet, or copy and paste video URLs into your collections. Once you have some videos in a collection you can organize them by simply dragging and dropping them into a sequence. Your collections can be shared with others. Likewise, you can share individual videos. " Perhaps best of all, you can open a "comments" window while watching a video and it creates a live chat area.

A very short blog entry and video tutorial. Links include one to how to set Google Forms to close at a certain time, so you could make a timed test.

"FormLimiter is a script that you can install in the Google Spreadsheet in which you are collecting responses from a Google Form. The script allows you to limit the number of responses to a form, limit the number of characters in a response, and set a time at which the form will automatically stop accepting responses. " This solves the problem of setting a cut-off time for quizzes. Includes a step-by-step illustrated tutorial.