Take a lengthy URL and make it more manageable.

This is a teacher web-resource for all grade levels. Have you ever found that the URLs for your work can be very lengthy? I know we've all had those days in the computer lab where students are intermittently shouting "it's not working!" Save yourself the aggravation and make it shorter and more manageable. The possible con is that your tiny url may not be representative of the page itself-depending on availability. Enter your URL and see for yourself. 5-12

A digital notepad, scissors, tape, pastels, and more for assembling an animated video.

K-6 This can be used for any subject area for young children. There are resources for teachers as well-including lesson plans. The possibilities are endless. This is another site that would be great for original works or even fan-fiction. One con is that if a student is just emerging in computer literacy, they will need a lot of direction in navigating the page initially.

Search for a tutor

K-12 When approached by parents for the name of a tutor, I am sometimes resistant to recommend. I feel that they ask me because they want to be certain that the tutor is the right one for their child. Beanbag is an online search for tutors. TEnd to your students need for digital literacy and have them explore the page themselves or maybe his enables parents to directly contact tutors and do not have to wait to go through the school. The obvious con to this is that the potential for a inept tutor still exists.

Create your own timeline and publish to your blog or website

7-12 With plot diagrams becoming a thing of the past. Students can now use timelines instead to outline the plot of a story. There is rarely one clear climax or one moment of resolution. Now students can explore plot further using timelines. One drawback is that it seems that these timelines are most popular for factual information. For ELA, this can be done as a pre-reading strategy, but the plot outline would be for fictitious stories.

Online book building for young children.

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!

Farmville is an online virtual farm.

K-6 Farmville is not a traditional classroom activity, but there are characteristics from many content areas. Agriculture, Math, ELA, Literacy, economics, social studies, etc... Students can become one another's neighbors and help to build a community in which they care for one another's farms. A downfall to this application is that it is blocked by my district and I would suspect it would be blocked by many. If you choose to request permission from you tech department, please note that this is a web 2.0 tool.

Online games, instructional videos, activities and more.w

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.

Online gradebook and more

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.

Create comics online.

4-12 This site is for students to create original works or would also be great for creating fan-fiction writing pieces. Students have the benefit of choosing their own layout and have many characters and props to choose from. The one con to this site is a biggee. The work cannot be saved, so students must print as they move along. After speaking with the creator, I have learned that he hopes to correct his-realizing how difficult this makes things. Another con (or more of a precaution). In internet explorer and Google Chrome, you are only able to print what is visible in the window. For this reason, it is essential that the strip be minimized to fit in the screen.

Create high-quality videos and give them an online home.

9-12 This tool can be used by teachers to guide students through computer programs-among its many other capabilities. I have recently used this to demonstrate for my colleagues a "how to" for setting up their grade books using engrade. One downside to this -for me- was that it took me a lot of trial and error before I realized how to properly use the software. Check out the video for how to use Screencast on the home page.

Take this quiz to uncover your strengths.

4-12 This is another pre-assessment tool for shaping instruction. The benefit of this is that you can choose to cater to students' strengths or you may choose to challenge their weaknesses. As with the Learning Style Inventory, I would suggest that this be conducted several times during a school year since children are so prone to change. I would suggest that a teacher take this test as well, so that we are careful to not always teach with the understanding that students have the same strengths and weaknesses as us. After you take the test, read the information that applies to your intelligence.

Take the quiz to uncover your learning style

This can be used in all content areas. It is a terrific tool for pre-assessment. This can be for yourself as an educator or as a student. This can be helpful so that we -as teachers- know our audience. One con of this is not necessarily the fault of the site, but I have found that students' learning styles seem to vary. For this reason, I would have students take the inventory several times during a school year. 4-12

Online quiz building tool

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.

Online book builder.

This site can be used as an alternative to web quests and scavenger hunts. Teachers are able to create instructional books for students which lead to task prompts. This is beneficial because it helps to scaffold student-learning. It also has the potential to translate instruction to languages other than English. You can also add images and audio files. Check out how easy it is to add a coach and think of how it would benefit your students. K-12

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

This is an online resource for lesson preparation.

This site is accessible by all, but if you want to unlock all that it has, you must purchase a subscription. There still is a lot to be accessed for free though. I really like the fonts that they use. Check out their holiday lessons. They teach the history of holidays-such as Valentine's Day. The Valentine's Day activities have been very interesting to my ninth graders over the past few years. You may be surprised to find out all that you don't know. K-12

ABC Teach.com is the Quick check of education. Too many benefits to list.

This one covers it all. It has resources for educators, students, and even parents. The benefit of this site is that the information can be printed directly from the screen and you do not need to dowload it. This is particularly beneficial if your district does not give you the authority to download anything off of the web. If you are a parent, I would suggest that you first look at the various resources for parents. You will be hooked. k-12

This is a free site for accessing and sharing lesson plans.

This site would be used for lesson preparation by teachers. They're not all that fantastic however and I would caution anyone using it to review their plans carefully. Check out "Seasonal Lesson Plans" for interesting, current activities for your students. Pre K-12

A web-based pd site.

This site is strictly for educators and would be of no use for students. The advantage of this site is that it focuses on emerging research-driven strategies. For this reason, it is constantly evolving. The difficulty with this site is that if you are a kinesthetic learner this would not be for you necessarily. Pre K-12

This is a web-based thesaurus that provides a physical representation of synonym and antonyms.

This works really well in an ELA class for choosing character traits or crafting a writing piece. There is a limit to how many times it can be accessed without a subscription, but it's workable. You simple go back a page and start again. What I like best about this site is that the site will provide you with relatable words to what you're looking for and they don't have to be exact matches. By illustrating them at a distance, it is communicated that this is the nature of the connection. 4-12