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Originally shared by Julia Hollins on 15 Jul 13. The original post was removed and this one shared instead, due to technical issue with the original post. Webtools and resources for online educators. Digital images and video were the first two forms of this communication and have played an integral part of human interaction. The ease of creating and capturing digital imagery has enabled proliferation, making our interactions with online learning sources largely visual. With that being said, the content to express ideas through music, visuals or other forms of art has contributed to the proliferation of online repositories (Chang, Smith, Beigi, & Benitez, 1997). Visual imagery and information is assessed and evaluated according to multiple forms (e.g., still images, video, sequences, computer graphics, animations and stereoscopic images), which extend to multi-view devices and 3D videos. This was one of the reasons why the following websites were selected for this discussion and evaluation (Chang, Smith, Beigi, & Benitez, 1997).

MERLOT which stands for "Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching" is repository site that contains images, video, as well as audio. The site contains information suitable for all grade levels k-12, however the resources being looked at or 9-12 Science resources. MERLOT is an established community of resources that offers a variety of resources to its members. User can browse for material across many different subject matters. They can also create a collection of resources to use with learning exercises to practice or teach concepts. MERLOT also provides its user with the opportunity to meet and collaborate with expert's virtually form all over.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Digital Library provides a collection of images, historical artifacts, audio clips, publications, and videos. Unless marked for private use, most of the collection is in the public domain. Instead of providing artifacts entirely based on the variety of fish and wildlife in the U.S., the website mainly focuses on artifacts on the services provided by the department. The artifacts that are based on the fish and wildlife would make excellent items to include in science classes of all ages. The artifacts based on the services provided would be better suited for high school social studies classes or any type of community involvement subject. The collection is huge, with a lot of information that is too "specialized" (documents outlining conservation plans of specific complexes), users of the site should use the search function over the browse function.