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This site is more for generative learning because it allows you to be able to give concrete examples of how iLife applications can be used in various content areas. I fould it better because there are lots of concrete examples given by a community of educators across grade levels and subject areas.

What it does: There are 36 different graphic organizers that teachers and students can print and use. Why this one: This site has 36 different graphic organizers for which permission is granted for educators to reproduce and utilize. The variety of organizers covers a large realm of different possibilities for different project. Learning benefits: Teachers can use these for themselves as well as students and could generate a great deal of ideas on how to incorporate into a multimedia method. The conversion from paper to electronic would serve two purposes - generative learning of creating an electronic version and the graphic organization of the lesson.

Eduplace provides free graphic organizers that users can modify to fit their needs. These graphic organizers promote essential learning because it aids in the organization of content. I chose this site because of its wide variety of graphic organizer types and because it was part of a reputable organization, Houghton Mifflin publishers.

Education Place provides a repository of printable graphic organizers.

This video provides an introduction to student response systems for teachers who are unfamiliar with clickers and how they can assist a teacher in the classroom. The video explains various aspects of clickers and provides demonstrations on the different aspects that teachers can use in conjunction with the clickers. Many teachers are not familiar with technology; therefore, they need extra support and help when incorporating new technology into the classroom. The video explains various aspects of using student response devises. The video is more technology centered than learner centered. The emphasis is placed on using technology to modify or enhance a lesson. Mayer, (2009) explains the technology centered approaches are not always the most effective. The learner needs to be the focus of the lesson not the technology. This instructional video focuses on the technology and not the learner. The video explains various aspects but many viewers might feel overwhelmed when listening because they do not understand the terminology.

Prior to beginning training it may be necessary to activate one's background knowledge or make connections to more complex material. TeacherTube is a great resource for educators to use to collaborate and reflect on activities from teachers around the world. In this example, participants from a PD course for teaching with ESOL strategies will watch and reflect upon how interactive activities (such as Reader's Theater) help the ELL make meaningful connections to text. Later on in the training, participants will name the specific examples from the course and how they were applied in the video.

OneNote is an excellent, easy to use tool for students, writers, people looking for a way to organize notes, or anyone who needs more flexibility beyond Word provides in the creation of documents.\nWhy this one: Teachers have the program already loaded onto their school issued laptops. The program allows teachers to create a digital notebook. The digital notebook allows users to collaborate their notes, audio, and visual information in one location. \n

This site provides a PowerPoint presentation on how create the most appropriate question format for clickers. The website explains when in the lesson each type of question is most appropriate. The website provides various links that give the learner more information on each topic that pertains to incorporating student response devises in the classroom. The clickers allow for various types of question format. The instructor can choose to use true/false, multiple choice, numerical, and other various types of assessment check point tools to assess the understanding of the content. Furthermore, the website includes suggestions on using the clickers to prompt student conversation and engagement. The learner can develop a greater understanding from the instructions and information provided on this website. The PowerPoint presentation fits into Mayer's essential learning. Essential learning relates to a lack of understanding due to no previous knowledge on the given content. Several participants in the workshop may not understand which types of questions are appropriate for clickers; this PowerPoint will clarify and help pre-teach the material; thus, meeting Mayer's essential learning.

This is one of two sites that I will be using in my Graphic Organizer and Presentation. This site is a compilation of various astronomy resources, games, and presentations for kids. I love it because it has very bright graphics and is easy to navigate. This will be the introduction to the Solar System which will give the students information to use in their authentic assessment. They can view this via my laptop with the LCD Projector and a large screen. Although it will be a visual or graphic, it will also be part of the presentation. The graphic organizer will be the actual tabs that will show pictures of the different planets and then we will click on each planet to view more information which will be needed in the authentic assessment. Cynthia

This is an overview of APA. The use of this site is a basic overview. It will give the participants a chance to look at the basics prior to the presentation. It will also show the participants the basic of research style. This can help them with the basic concepts of what are needed for a research paper. This site also has links to even more basic tutorials and help sheets on APA style. There are no interactive quizzes. This is a good site for pre-training as well as retraining.

FreeMind is an excellent resource for building graphic organizers of all types. Easy to use and free, FreeMind allows the user to create free-form maps, concept maps, flowcharts, and the functionality to do much more. The software also allows the user to save in a .jpg file format for easy retrieval from Mac and Windows machines.

The link opens a rather short twenty question quiz about HTML topics. As applicable / relevant, students could use the quiz to determine what they know about HTML prior to studying HTML programming. Likewise, they could use the same quiz after studying HTML programming to determine what they learned and what areas need further review. The quiz could be used as a catalyst for spurring essential cognitive processing by introducing topics that will be considered during a relevant learning experience. By using the quiz in a pre-testing fashion, introducing relevant topics prior to formal training may help students organize their mental learning space in preparation of a more comprehensive learning experience.

JayCut is a free online video editor that provides some basic video editing features, but is likely able to meet the needs of most educational technologists and instructional designers. The site is fairly straight forward but can interface with a variety of files and can combine audio, video, and text in an online editor. Files can be uploaded or they can be captured via microphone and/or webcam. The options included in this online application are rather impressive. The site could be used for presentations or pre-training. Students may benefit from the use of JayCut as it can facilitate the organization of materials to support essential and generative cognitive processing. By organizing text, images, and sound in a coherent manner and in a manner that upholds signaling, and spatial and temporal contiguity, students may be more inclined to organize in their own mind relationships between new material and that which is stored in working memory.

This particular multimedia example is a video about the greenhouse effect, and its title is an engaging aspect that attracts learner by referencing a commonly known children's story. Mayer described the technology centered approach as being based in how and what technologies can be incorporated into the learning process (Mayer, 2009, pp. 10-11). It is definitely technology centered first and foremost. Throughout the video, it uses a great deal of overlaying video with static images or content so that the eye is engaged and drawn into the movement happening on screen. In this case, it meets with Mayer's assumption of dual coding in its design, in that it operates both on an auditory and visual channel (p. 64). In this case, in order for the learner to construct knowledge the auditory channel is the most important because the video images themselves really just augment the commentary, rather than presenting identical content visually. The images are stunning; there are amazing 3-D representations of earth, and video of the first atomic explosion. While these images are captivating, they don't serve as a second representation of the content itself. The learning that takes would not be considered active learning by Mayer's criteria, because there it is not structured in such a way that the learner does not have any repetitive elements to select and focus on in order to sequence the content in order to build knowledge (p. 71). Also, there is not an opportunity for the learner to integrate the visual and audio components to build knowledge, because the content is primarily in the audio while the video images are more oriented toward holding the learner's attention instead of presenting content or concept related information (p. 71).

The purpose of this site is to create many different kinds of rubrics. A workshop participant can use a rubric to determine how much they learned during the workshop and self-assess if they have met the workshop's objectives. This site is exemplary because it leads the user step-by-step through the creation of a rubric. The site contains templates for all subject areas. Users can also search for and use rubrics that have already been created.

This site is a must see for all educators who are creating problem based learning or projects. Teachers can create their own template or use the read- made templates. The file can be exported for use or saved for future editing.

* Brief description of Web site: A free tool to help users (i.e. educators) create quality rubrics. Registered users can save and edit rubrics online. They can also access these created rubrics from any location. * Brief explanation of why you found this site to be better than others you found: Besides the fact that this is a free resource, users have the option of using templates provided by the site or creating their rubric from scratch. The site also offers step by step tutorials.

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!

Teachnology- Web Quest Maker http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/web_quest/ Teachnology is a website designed by educators for educators that has endless resources including a Web Quest Maker. This website is absolutely one of the simplest ways to create a web quest that I have found. To use the Web Quest Maker one just need to fill in the appropriate fields with the information they would like to use. Web quests are one way to introduce new topics and information in an exciting and engaging way for students at any grade level. I found Teachnology's Web Quest Maker easier to use and more thorough than any of the other web quest makers that I found. I also especially liked the fact that the creation took place all on one screen and that the host provided pictures and clip art for visitors to use.

* Teachnology- Web Quest Maker http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/web_quest/ Teachnology is a website designed by educators for educators that has endless resources including a Web Quest Maker. This website is absolutely one of the simplest ways to create a web quest that I have found. To use the Web Quest Maker one just need to fill in the appropriate fields with the information they would like to use. Web quests are one way to introduce new topics and information in an exciting and engaging way for students at any grade level. I found Teachnology's Web Quest Maker easier to use and more thorough than any of the other web quest makers that I found. I also especially liked the fact that the creation took place all on one screen and that the host provided pictures and clip art for visitors to use.

Virtual Dub http://www.virtualdub.org/ Virtual Dub is a free downloadable online movie editing software for PC users that allows the manipulation and revision of avi files, jpeg and bmp files, and mp3 files. It is a website that allows you to quickly and easily design short videos to present to students or to create personal slideshows set to music. Either way Virtual Dub provides an opportunity to educators to take presentations past PowerPoint and to the next level of engaging video presentations. For the students of today we know and understand the importance of presenting our learners with the fast paced and visually stimulating graphics that they have been raised with. I chose to incorporate Virtual Dub because it is a free resource that is very effective that produces high quality presentations with an easy to use format. Another feature of Virtual Dub that I really appreciate and use frequently is the batch operation feature. This feature allows me to upload many photos or files all at once. Virtual Dub also allows users to edit their photos with advanced filters such as blur reduction, sharpen, emboss and many other features giving the final presentation a more clean cut and professional look.

Xtimeline www.xtimeline.com The second website that I have chosen to share for authentic assessment activities is Xtimeline. Xtimeline is an online timeline creator that allows users to plot dates, events, plot details and other linear occurrences. Xtimeline is a great tool for authentic assessments because the students create the timeline from scratch and build on their timeline as they continue to work on it. Xtimeline also provides access to previously created timelines for research and background purposes. Xtimeline is capable of creating advanced, organized and visually advanced timelines for free. I especially appreciate the fact that Xtimeline lets members (membership is free) upload pictures to add to the timeline making them much more appealing and interesting to look at. I like Xtimeline because it helps me to observe the linear thinking process of my students. I have used Xtimeline for plot diagramming lessons as well as biography mapping. Xtimeline is a resource that I believe social studies teachers would find extremely useful and purposeful in their classrooms. I also like the physical set up of Xtimeline the tabs, categories and search engine make using this site easy for any user no matter their experience.

Glogster EDU www.glogster.com The first authentic assessment activity website that I chose is called Glogster EDU. Glogster EDU is a website like no other resource I have ever seen. Glogster EDU is a creative, dynamic and innovative digital outlet for online creations that keeps learners in engaged in course content, and makes teaching and learning more fun (Glogster EDU, 2009). Glogster EDU is a vibrant, multi-sensory learning experience which integrates learner's knowledge and skills into traditionally text-oriented subjects and motivates learner's desire to explore topics in which they may previously have been less interested (Glogster EDU, 2009). The reason I chose Glogster EDU as one of my authentic assessment activities is because I have used it in my classroom and it works great. Glogster EDU is a powerful resource to use with students of the middle and high school levels because its possibilities are controlled by the students knowledge and creativity. Educators can set up assessments easily and quickly using the resources provided by the site host. Glogster EDU can be used for any type of assessment where students need to illustrate their understanding of course content. Glogster EDU also provides its own video site called Schooltube where students can research, watch, and add video to their personal glog adding the much needed audiovisual aspect to projects that normally would have been text based. I also really like the fact that Glogster EDU is a private site monitored by teachers; it gives me a sense of assurance that my students won't be accessing information that could get them or me in trouble.

Glogster allows users to create digital posters that incorporate video, text, pictures, and sound.

Glogster (www.glogster.com) allows teachers and students to create interactive projects. Teachers can design interactive glogs for their students to complete or assign the students to create their own glog for a class project. Either way this allows for the teacher to really control the learning. Mayer (2009) would consider Glogster knowledge construction because students will have to view the videos, read the articles, and examine the pictures that the teacher embeds in their glog to form an opinion or to create their own glog. When a student creates their own glog no two will be exactly the same.

This website offers sophisticated content and multimedia resources for students, especially at the upper grades. It includes more than resources, offering students opportunities to get their work published. It fosters active learning by calling on students to participate in polls, surveys, respond to questionnaires and submit original work. Using the standards and resources of PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NewsHour Extra provides students and teachers with quality educational resources based on current issues and events. NewsHour Extra's mission is to help high school students understand world events and national issues and answer the question 'why should I care?' about the news.