GOOD http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/ This website is extremely helpful for developing lesson plans and curricula. It has all the standards mandated by the NCDPI by subject. I have consulted it a great deal in only a few months of MAT studies.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html The American Memory Collection from the National Library of Congress has a tremendous selection of images, text, and unique archives from different wars, folk tales, history, and art subjects. It is a great resource for most any school subject, but especially social studies and English.
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ Rubistar is a rubric generating tool that lets you work off a template or create a brand new rubric from scratch. This site makes it extremely easy to construct a rubric and it has a variety of templates which can be used for different subjects/lessons.
http://scholar.google.com/ Google Scholar is a search engine that helps filter out all the junk from regular search engines. It is great for research papers, essays, etc. that have to be written at a university level. This is the first place I went for English papers when I was an undergrad at Carolina. Almost all of the information you find here is trustworthy and professional.
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ Flickr creative commons is an image database with shareable images under an agreement. In most cases simple attribution is required for noncommercial usage of these images. This is a great resource for slide shows and other image based tech projects.
BAD http://www.sparknotes.com/ Sparknotes is controversial but I disapprove of the site. Anybody could be writing these reviews and there are better, more trustworthy sources of information than what appears on the site. Also, if you are going to read the entire full-length Sparknotes you might as well read the book, you'll get more out of that in about the same time.
http://www.homeworkhelp.com/schoollibrary.htm One of a plethora of sites that charges big dollars to help students do what they can do by themselves with a little time, effort, and assistance for free.
http://www.wikipedia.org Although this site has quick info and easy navigation, links, etc., it is full of pitfalls and potholes. At least twice I can remember college classmates getting in trouble because they quoted wikipedia pages and not source material. This was not a serious school offense but it was detrimental to their grade on that paper. Simply put this site is not trustworthy enough to be a solid source.
http://www.powerpoint-presentations.com/index.htm This site offers little information or clue as to how create a powerpoint or how they help you create one. There are very few interesting images or other pages, and the overall design is bland. I went here looking for powerpoint help and I was pretty dissatisfied.
http://www.encyclopedia.com I went here to search for some of the keywords this week and the amount of commercial links and search results was an immediate turnoff. The pages are cluttered and confusing and it is a pay content site.
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/
This website is extremely helpful for developing lesson plans and curricula. It has all the standards mandated by the NCDPI by subject. I have consulted it a great deal in only a few months of MAT studies.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
The American Memory Collection from the National Library of Congress has a tremendous selection of images, text, and unique archives from different wars, folk tales, history, and art subjects. It is a great resource for most any school subject, but especially social studies and English.
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/
Rubistar is a rubric generating tool that lets you work off a template or create a brand new rubric from scratch. This site makes it extremely easy to construct a rubric and it has a variety of templates which can be used for different subjects/lessons.
http://scholar.google.com/
Google Scholar is a search engine that helps filter out all the junk from regular search engines. It is great for research papers, essays, etc. that have to be written at a university level. This is the first place I went for English papers when I was an undergrad at Carolina. Almost all of the information you find here is trustworthy and professional.
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
Flickr creative commons is an image database with shareable images under an agreement. In most cases simple attribution is required for noncommercial usage of these images. This is a great resource for slide shows and other image based tech projects.
BAD
http://www.sparknotes.com/
Sparknotes is controversial but I disapprove of the site. Anybody could be writing these reviews and there are better, more trustworthy sources of information than what appears on the site. Also, if you are going to read the entire full-length Sparknotes you might as well read the book, you'll get more out of that in about the same time.
http://www.homeworkhelp.com/schoollibrary.htm
One of a plethora of sites that charges big dollars to help students do what they can do by themselves with a little time, effort, and assistance for free.
http://www.wikipedia.org
Although this site has quick info and easy navigation, links, etc., it is full of pitfalls and potholes. At least twice I can remember college classmates getting in trouble because they quoted wikipedia pages and not source material. This was not a serious school offense but it was detrimental to their grade on that paper. Simply put this site is not trustworthy enough to be a solid source.
http://www.powerpoint-presentations.com/index.htm
This site offers little information or clue as to how create a powerpoint or how they help you create one. There are very few interesting images or other pages, and the overall design is bland. I went here looking for powerpoint help and I was pretty dissatisfied.
http://www.encyclopedia.com
I went here to search for some of the keywords this week and the amount of commercial links and search results was an immediate turnoff. The pages are cluttered and confusing and it is a pay content site.