Ning is the social platform for the world's interests and passions online.People every day are coming together across Ning to explore and express their interests, and meet new people around shared pursuits. These can be used in a classroom environment to share ideas, collaborate, post homework, have discussions, and share videos and photos. Great site and you create your own or join others. It is possible to make yours private as well.

This project was created to inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills. Equally important, it serves to motivate district level leaders to provide teachers with the tools and training to do so. Written and produced byy B. Nesbitt

This site allows you to generate interactive mindmaps that help organize thoughts and ideas into great visual representations. It is easy to create, to meanipulate, and to edit. You are able to collaborate on the map with others and you canmake the map public or share with select audiences.

This site is an article that shows educators why technology should be incorporated into the classroom. It is very clear in detailing the following concepts: * Support thinking processes * Stimulate motivation and self esteem * Promote equity * Prepare students for the future * Support changes in school structure * Explore technology capabilities This is a great way to get their minds in the right place to embrace the use of technology and encourage them to explore and create their own.

Classroom 2.0 is a social network for educators who are interested in the use of Web 2.0 or collaborative technologies in the classroom. I will use it for them to review each feature of this website and to consider or brainstorm what things they would like to incorporate into their own. It is a great source of ideas and a great place to collaborate with teachers of all levels.

Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you brainstorm online. Users can create colorful mind maps, share with others, export the mind map to a blog or website, email or print and save it as a jpg. It has a very simple interface and a good help tool in the bar on the right. If Spinscape seems daunting and you don't need all the additional collaborative functions, this is a better choice for the novice.

Google Wave is an interactive communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions happen. Communication and collaboration can be done using richly formatted text, photos, videos, and maps. You can keep a single copy of ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs, rather than using many different tools. Widgets can also be used for weather, maps and more to add to the event. Users can participate or edit the wave at anytime and rewind to see who said what and when. Teachers will find this very useful for editing essays and students will find it very useful for group work. It has a lot of great potential!

iKnowthat.com has interactive, multimedia educational games and activities for kids in preschool through 6th grade in Math, Language Arts, Science, The Arts. and Social Studies. It also has thinking games and social learning. There is a progress tracker, activities are standards-based and it is a safe, social learning environment. The site is open to teacher, parents, and students. It is great visually and easy to navigate. The colors and graphics are bright, but no animated graphics. It is a free basic subscription and one can purchase a classroom subscription for $199 yearly. Parents can get an at home subscription for a monthly or yearly fee. Search can be done by grade level or subject.

This is a categorized list of sites on the Internet which are useful for enhancing curriculum and teacher professional growth

Tools for teachers with specific correlative standards for multimedia use

Prezi is a web-based presentation tool using a map layout and zooming to show contextual relationships.