CALL_IS_VSL

Some great ideas for teacher self-monitoring as well as allowing children to explore th potential and share around the world. I think Glass will have in interesting effect on education -- eventually. This blog entry by C. Deamicis also has some interesting sidelights on what teachers can do in their own classes right now, with less razzle-dazzle technology

Truly free and non-commercial, the collections M. Sheehan lists include the Federal Registry (FREE, and non-commercial) with animations, primary docs, maps, etc.; Graphic Organizers from Vermilion Parish; The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, with primary sources and online exhibits to explore history; Chonicling America from the Library of Congress, which contains a database of newspapers from 100 years ago. These sites would be great for authentic materials and content-based tasks for teens/adults.

Teach your kids some code. But it would help to have a project in mind before starting so that it can be used for some practical purpose before they get bored. Different levels/ages of kids can use different code lessons. K-12/adult

A crazy huge collection of free curriculum resources, well sorted by age, theme, subject, et al., and with a search engine. These would be great for lessons in geography, history, social studies, ecology, intercultural understanding, etc. Many of the resources are activities, such as "Be an African Family" where you decide how to make the most of the rural village where you live.

A great set of little programs to generate haiku, mad-libs, visual poetry, etc. Great fun for writers at all levels. Getting students to play with words is a great way to inspire life-long writing.

A video/slideshow with transcript and ideas for individual lessons to develop the script, shoot, edit, and produce a student video. Helpful advice.

The tools are Snapguide, to create video with captions, Meograph, a timeline creator, and Thinglink which creates interactive images. These tools allow for creativity and self-expression, but also encourage students to go deeper into a subject or theme.

This site has many readings, mostly non-fiction, graded by U.S. school grade level (K-6), with accompanying lesson plans and connections to U.S. Common standards. Nice to have pre-made lessons, but the readings are not authentic, of course. Use as supplemental activity, or cheap source of downloadable pdf files with readings and activities.

Detailed lesson plan to get students to use animated RSA style movies to learn and teach each other. Good way to get some critical and creative thinking into your lessons.

Neat way to quickly find a color and its contrast with the appropriate web RGB numbers. A tool for student projects.

These are some interesting ideas to assess students and get a fuller picutre of their interests and what they know, understand, and can demonstrate.

Neat idea, though not free. Post-its saved into Evernote may be a help for some teachers. The process described here is one-on-one.

"Teachers using the Portfoliogen Classroom service can create their own webpage allowing their students to register and create their own portfolio websites. Collaboration between teacher and student is easy with administrative visibility to view students portfolios." This might be a good way to create a safe place on the Web to create and store student portfolios.

A great deal about storyboards, how to use them with students, and important tools and resources.

This blog describes how the teacher uses wikis to help students manage their own learning trajectory, keeping parents informed, and also keeping the teacher on target: "I have room for student and parent resources, homework, What we did Today (for absent students or parents), grade-level skills, favorite links. You can even add student pages, created by students. This is very popular in the older grades. When students are absent, I send them to this wiki to see what we did and what they need help with. When we're getting ready to submit a project, they can check out the grading rubric here, be sure they have all required pieces. This is a great spot to include extensions for those precocious students who finish everything early. I'm going to add a 'sponge' page, for just that reason: a place students can go to try theme-oriented websites that can be completed in 5-10 minutes."

A great resource for content- and project-based learning for your classroom. Many museums have outstanding lesson plans that engage students in all the language skills as they use the world-class art collections.

These sites include RAS Animate with thought-provoking videos about education and other subjects; Problem Attic with a bank of 80,000 quetions from the NY Regents exams, review tests, quizzes, and flash card; Learners TV with thoughsands of video lectures, tests, and animations in various disciplines to support classroom instruction; Sketch Toy which lets you draw and share pictures; Daily Infographic, where you can search topics and subscribe; and Google Tutor, which gives you news, tips, and tutorials about Google. Thanks to M. Sheehan at Learning Never Stops for the info.

This is super cool -- kindergartners use primary resources, such as old movies and photos, from the Library of Congress to explore and analyze how the mail was delivered in the old days and compare it to present work practices and jobs. I really got a kick out of the kids' comments about the mail train and sorting mail. Great example of how content-based, authentic materials can inspire even very young learners.

"QR Code Games - Find and Scan Game Pieces, share it on your Social Network anjoin the Urban Adventure! "QR Wild® scavenger hunt games are perfect for trade shows, conferences and educators! Your audience scans trackable QR Codes placed at physical locations that you'd like them to visit. As the game pieces are scanned the player earns points and unlocks "badges" while spreading the word by sharing progress on their social networks. You can even display a scoreboard online or at an event!" This sounds like a great idea for students to create themselves, or for a teacher to create for them.

R. Byrne has a nice article on how and why to use digital storytelling using Narrable or other tools.