Heads in the Cloud

Students work through virtual labs on energy budgets and future climate change. There are various tutorials explaining and illustrating scientific processes relating to the labs. Assessment exams can help the teacher see if the student is achieving the objectives of the lesson. Best for HS, but appropriate for some advanced MS classes or individuals.

Lots of fun ways to play with your pictures. Interacts perfectly with Flikr. I love the trading card feature which could be used as a fun icebreaker activity with older students- creating their own trading cards and sharing. The thumbnail links to one I made a few years ago. You could also use it with 4th to 6th for making trading cards for historical persons/places/things as the year progressed - students could use them to study and they still love the idea of - "collect them all." Try some of the tools on your own to make a photomosaic or design your own header for your Wordpress blog.

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

Easy to use and free. You can start a brainstorming map and ask friends to join you in adding to it. Using the tool is easy. If you choose to "publish" your map you can share your map to your blog or website.You can add an image by using its URL or you can do a Google search for images without leaving the map. Attach a note or a to-do list to a node. Just seeing these possibilities makes me wonder how I could use maps in new ways. They even let you link to other maps, allowing you to nest information of all kinds. A bird's eye view is available within the screen so you can see the overall structure or move the mouse on it to show another part of the map in the large window. Lots of functionality!

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.

This site is a perfect example of the benefits of technology. People are no longer allowed to go into the actual caves in Lascaux, because simply exhaling will damage the already delicate paintings. However, this very robust site attempts to give you the experience of really being there. There is a tour of the caves that can be narrated in different languages, including English and Sign Language. Throughout the video tour, there are pop-ups to click if you want to explore one of the panels in greater depth. This page is part of a greater collection of multimedia resources on French archeology sites.

Freerice donates ten grains of rice to the hungry for every correct answer. The site now features quizzes ranging from knowing the multiplication facts to identifying famous paintings. Best known for their vocabulary questions (featured on the home page), Freerice also has this feature available in other languages, including French and Spanish. The section on chemical symbols would be a great way to study for that inevitable Chemistry quiz - and do a little good for others at the same time.