Content Literacy

"BookRix allows writers to create their own projects and display their work to others. The BookRix-Format enables users to design individual books. All one needs is a web browser to easily publish and showcase their work." Book-like interface, where readers can "turn pages". Great way of showcasing student work, getting feedback, producing rather than just consuming material. The interface does provide a more formal presentation of material and makes a more published feel.

Obviously,I'm not a writing expert, but I love how this post describes the writing process this teacher is using at Duke with her students. The peer editing process is tested and this approach uses a screencast (video that can include audio of what is happening on a computer- mouse movements, ability to highlight text while commenting, etc.) I think it's right up our alley and incorporates free technology.

Geared toward developing good instructional strategies for entry level geo-science courses at the post-secondary setting, the suggestions can easily be applied to 6-12 setting and are just good instructional practices. Well organized and includes different perspectives and connected content.

Discovery Educator Network projects.

Directly from Time Magazine: "Like Google Earth for the heavens, WWT aggregates terabytes of astronomical data from the world's biggest telescopes to create a single virtual scope that anyone can look through. WWT is not a model of the known universe, but rather a centralized repository for just about everything known about the universe. The idea is to democratize the science of astronomy with a single tool that can be used by students and scientists. Who knows, when everyone has access to the same data, maybe the next big discovery in astronomy will be made by an amateur? There are hundreds of terabytes of digitized sky - enough data for everyone. "

New type of search engine. Ask your friends/students/peers a question and find out what their online response might be. Not sure of the usability for the classroom, but let me know if you think I'm way off base.

Been a fan of this site for a while and didn't realize I hadn't bookmarked it yet. Instead of arranging photos in a traditional album,Synth finds relationships among pictures and digitally composites them to create a 3-D experience. Awesome!

Great file sharing option for those who like to have access to files on different computers or want to create backups. Also, great for collaborating with others.

Another polling site. This one is the brainchild of Nate Silver. His predictions during the 2008 presidential election were consistently more accurate than the national media outlets. He must be doing something correctly. BTW, he's a baseball statistician by trade.

Aggregation of poll data. Great way of exploring data with lots of social studies/current events connections. Time rates this as one of the fifty best sites this year. Worth a few minutes of exploration.

There are lots of collaborative voting and comment sites out there - Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Metafilter is another one. It costs five dollars to join, but that cost keeps lots of spammers and ads off the site. A great plus.

University lectures available online from all over the world, including MIT, Harvard, etc. Not necessarily great lectures all the time, but great sources of information and sometimes great examples of lecture done well.

...is a deliberately eclectic mix of tech commentary, sci-fiction nerd-outs, fringe culture, gadgets, and serious news items. It is, according to its own description, a "directory of wonderful things."

Great opportunity to collaborate online with scientists researching real questions: "the team is trying to answer the question - how do the skeletal muscles of seals develop to work during deep dives, even when the animal is not breathing for long periods of time. The researchers believe the answers to this question may have tremendous implications for human medicine. By understanding how another mammal has successfully overcome the debilitating effects of working under low oxygen conditions, we may be able to learn new therapeutic approaches to assist humans with heart or lung disease. "

Really interesting way of doing a multimedia search. Not sure it's classroom safe, even with safe search on there were several images that were beyond borderline. When I did compound search "algebra" + "linear" much tighter and deleted virtually all inappropriate material. I just like the way you can explore the information. If you have students gathering information and tagging with specific tags like "wjhsconlit09" then you could pull up all of that material without interference. I think it's a great tool for that kind of exploration.

Really interesting way of doing a multimedia search. Not sure it's classroom safe, even with safe search on there were several images that were beyond borderline. When I did compound search "algebra" + "linear" much tighter and deleted virtually all inappropriate material. I just like the way you can explore the information. If you have students gathering information and tagging with specific tags like "wjhsconlit09" then you could pull up all of that material without interference. I think it's a great tool for that kind of exploration.

Great opportunity to have students showcase their skills, their learning, and for teachers to maximize an engagement opportunity. I would love to collaborate with someone interested in making this a class assignment. Looking for someone to help provide guidance, let me know!

We introduced Diigo to WJHS this summer and I thought I would pass this news along to everyone, but especially that group. I still think Diigo is an incredible tool for collaboration in the classroom for research, group work/accountability, formative assessment, reaching beyond classroom walls both with students and colleagues. Additionally, Sean does some nice simple video production (with totally FREE tools) that I want to share with other teachers. It's easy to do, is a way of getting information to your students easily and in a manner that allows them to access the information as many times as they like/need.

I've been an advocate for Wikipedia for a long time, yet more information saying it is a valid source (as with all sources we need to teach students to find corroborating sources before using the source). Not without error, but does go to show that even more trusted sites have errors, so don't hold Wikipedia to a different standard! Finally, what makes Wikipedia a better source is a shear volume of information on the site as compared to other 'encyclopedias'.

I've been an advocate for Wikipedia for a long time, yet more information saying it is a valid source (as with all sources we need to teach students to find corroborating sources before using the source). Not without error, but does go to show that even more trusted sites have errors, so don't hold Wikipedia to a different standard! Finally, what makes Wikipedia a better source is a shear volume of information on the site as compared to other 'encyclopedias'.