Purpose of the Website: This website is a tutorial that students can follow through to learn how to access and navigate the Internet. Each section, or lesson, has worksheets that help students navigate through the information and to assess students understanding of the tutorial. Some topics include The Beginning, Getting Started Online, Staying Safe, Using Your Browser, Searching Online, Trying Top Tricks, and The Welcome to the Web Challenge. Students learn things such as what the Internet is for, what links do, how to use the toolbar, etc.
Grade Level: 4-8
Classroom Connection: This a wonderful resource to use with upper elementary and secondary students at the beginning of the year to help them review information they already know and introduce them to new information about the Internet. This can be completed independently in class or as a homework assignment.
Negatives of this Website: Some parts of the website have a lot of information and is not extremely easy to navigate, therefore might not be used by younger students independently.
6-12
Teachers and students are able to use an online chat room for various reasons, in and outside of school.
Cons: District approval, monitor student activity.
If you haven't looked at this site in a while, it's worth another look. Appropriate for all grade levels. This is a free online grade book. Recently they have added more sophisticated communication tools, class calendars, the ability to upload files and much more. The discussion feature could double as literature groups or Socratic Circle. The one downside to this is if you do not wish for students to have access, as soon as you print them out a progress report, they have their student code and can get online and check their grades at any time. This could be difficult in the instance that students and/or parents are wondering why this person's project is graded and theirs is not.
Check out the new wiki feature.
K-6
This is online book-building tool intended to give a voice to the creative ideas of our young children. The graphics are bright and vivid. This will help to address literacy (including digital and visual literacy). These books can be shared with friends and family if you choose to give students that option. Check out the "how to" video on the home page. Enjoy!
3- 12
Online Presentation Software | PowerPoint Online | Web Presentation for student needs, all web-based, instead of having to save to a computer or flashdrive.
Con: May need to adjust coming from PPT, not as many features.
Grade level- 7-12
CC- Students can create a presentation as to how they would approach teaching a unit on the Ming Dynasty.
Overview- This web-basd form of powepoint has more bells and whistles that takes presenting information to a new level.
Cons- Needs some time to get used too.
Save your space on your flash drive or perhaps share the time that it would have taken to create an awesome presentation. By using Slide Rocket, you can save your presentation to your account and access your presentation anywhere that has an internet connection. This could be used by teachers for instruction and can also be used by students to display their original work. You won't have to hear "I have it saved on my computer at home". K-12
K-12 Secure online class forum for teachers and students to extend learning outside of the traditional classroom.
Con: Probably need your district's permission.
K-12
Online drawing easel. Students can draw anything and everything and then share it! Free, no registration.
Con: No limit to what students can draw.
This is a great alternative to creating, printing and grading your own quizzes. With this site, you can build a quiz online for free and the ite will do the grading for you. This is a must have. One difficulty with this is that if you have students who are SWDs, with test mods that call for tests read aloud or questions clarification. A great addition would be to have the ability to add a coach, such as in cast book builder for SWDs.
K-12
Online poster creator. User can make personal themed posters, using various fonts, images, videos and links.
Classroom Connections:
*Teachers- create a poster of vocabulary words in science social studies, literacy or math-- include images, fonts, words, videos to reinfoce concepts
* Students- create posters to demonstrate what they learned about concepts in any content area- by including text, images, font
* Students- Create posters of research done on various topics- or books reports
3-12
Teachers and students can create an online poster to represent themselves or a project. Teachers can create poster for their class to keep students informed.
Con: there are limits for the Free version.
Grade level- 7-12
CC- Students can create a glogster for a Roman Emperor as to why they would be the best candidate to be Mr. Rome
Overview- A great site to post ideas, important information, and great organizational tool designed with images and color.
Cons- Need some time to get used too.
This is a tool to be used by students or by teachers to create an online poster. One con to this site is that students will first have to be familiarized with copyright law before reusing information. If the poster is intended to communicate research information, there is no built-in way of creating a bibliography.
Check out "Today's Top Glogs" for fresh ideas.
All online newspapers overlaid on a Google Map. Search for content, zoom in and click on a placemark to view the paper. The website also has the ability to translate.
Classroom Connection:
*Foreign Language - read newspaper in the native language
*Social Studies - compare/contrast a particular topic based on the location of the report; how would an incident in Egypt be reported out by American newspapers as opposed to an Italian newspaper?
Grade level- 7-12
CC- Students can analyze different perspectives on a current event by looking at all the different newspapers.
Overview- Using google maps, a user can look newspapers from across the world.
COns- Some newspapers do not correctly translate into English.
Grades K-12
Math lesson plans, interactive online activities and web resources.
Teachers can use this site to prepare math lessons based on many different math skills and concepts.Students can utilize this site in the classroom or at home to pratice math skills.
K-12
This is an online interactive tool for students. This is great for students to be able to observe labs that might be too sophisticated or hazardous to complete in class. It's also great for students to practice newly-acquired Math skills. One con is that teachers sometimes "play dead" because of how well the program grabs student's attention. Too much of this would not be a good thing, because they would be lacking that human contact.
Grade K-3
Provides educational movies, homework help, leveled quizzes, games and activities for kids.
This site offes great visual aides and activiites to go along with many different topics across all subject areas.
Teachers can use this site to introduce concepts to students as well as reinforce ans assess students understanding of concepts.
This could be one option for teachers who are looking for a way to have their students post their videos online. Videos can be shared only with select people. The player could be posted on a classroom website and the video shown on it can be driven by what is submitted by the students. You can set security features so the videos won't be seen by the public.
I would keep this resource limited to students in the high school level.
Grades K-5
A resource for lesson plans and guided reading books, worksheets and comprehension questions for students,
Teachers can print reading books that have worksheets and comprehension questions to along with each book to use in guided reading activities. Students can also practice reading these books online in the classroom or at home with raz-kids.
Con-have to pay to be a member
This a great resource for schools or classrooms that don't contain video editing software. As far as online video editing goes this is as good of an option as you are going to find. Students and teachers can sign up for an account and be up and editing in no time. The site contains many tutorials for how to use the online software.