Heads in the Cloud

Audio, video, images, text, and links to information about world religions, ethics, and current issues. Excellent quality.

Library of Congress resources for teachers. The incredible amount of data available via the internet includes uploaded historical documents and images. As we teach students to express themselves through multiple modes, we can also explore with them how to use images and text from the past to help us understand other contexts. Exploration of primary texts with students is even more vital now than in previous times, and it is much easier, too, due to sites like this.

Students need access to plenty of content that is available for them to use if they are creating - useful for everything from Animoto to websites.

Always looking for a good way to engage students, this blogger makes math appear dynamic and interesting. Most of the math content in the projects he proposes is HS level. However, his manner of thinking through HOW to present the lessons in meaningful, real-life situations is relevant to any teacher. This is one of those blogs that makes me wistful about being in the classroom full-time.

Watch the video to see how you might be able to use this tool!

Intended for middle school classes, these units work well with the interdicsciplinary theme of "Environments," allowing students to view events and ideas with the perspective of place. Teachers can search for lessons in a variety of ways, including location, time period, or type of student work. A number of different skills can be utilized through the lessons, and primary sources are a focus for many units. Some teachers will be able to take advantage of the resources in their communities and explore these real-life historic places more thoroughly. If your area has no featured lessons, students could always be encouraged to find a local "historic site" to research and visit.

Online games and simulations to explore topics like refugees, world hunger, and natural disasters. Great example of content in games being great because of its link to a high-level institution.

Write what you like - personal or professional, short or long. Add pictures, or links, or not. It can be private or public. Subscribe to others' blogs using a Reader (Google has one). When you read others' blogs, comment or write a new post about it on your own blog and link back to theirs. Students could use a blog as a journal for writing, post their reflections and evaluations on their work, or use it as a Design Folder to keep track of all their work on one project. Blogs can be made to be project specific and only function for a month or two. However, many schools are experimenting with using them as digital portfolios. You might like to have more than one blog, to address different things. http://wordpress.org is another popular blogging site.

Excellent source for videos and free publications about online safety. Useful for support when talking to kids or parents. The games on the site are generally multiple choice quizzes with some animation, but might be a nice review for a presentation.