I also, had the same experience when looking at our tag cloud of realizing "Oh I get it now." I did not really understand the function/purpose of the tag cloud completely until this activity. Like others, I am not surprised that Written/Informative is at the top of our list. I feel that this is the type of resource that people in general are the most comfortable with because it requires the least amount of "technological savvy" for lack of a better term. It is written text and familiar. I feel that as technology becomes more commonplace and digital immigrants are replaced by digital natives, the other types of websites will "rise to the top of the cloud" so to speak.

When looking at our cloud I was surprised to see that there were very few categories that were content-specific. Instead the categories had more to do with the type of technology or how it woul dbe implemented.

PBS has pages the go along with all if its history documentaries. These have been a rich source for my classroom as they often include alot of content, even primary source documents, images, video clips, etc.

Corbis images just requires that you signin then you will have access to thousands of clear/beautiful images. I use these in presentations to support the content. The images help studentsremember the information as they provide a cue that helps with retrieval.

This site makes it easy to create wikis and website. The information can be easily shared and many people can have a hand in editing the information. It could be used to share ideas on professional development. For example, teachers could share their m

Harper's Weekly gives Thomas Nast cartoons for a variety of diffent subjects that I teach such as Andrew Johnson's impeachment. Political cartoons are important tools of the media and can be used as a form of propaganda, so they are invaluable to the stu

Videos, although specific to social studies, can be integrated into lessons to increase interest. Video span from short clips to a full2-hours.

This site has a large selection of classroom-friendly video clips that can be easily integrated into a lesson. The video clips work well as an activating strategy or to boost the content of the lesson.

This site gives lesson plans focused around different primary source documents. They can be used to create problem-based lessons. Students can explore the documents to try to answer historical questions rather than simply having the information given to

Theses images or primary source document sets can be seen as a form of social media representing the time period that we are studying. Students can interpret them to find a greater understanding of the culture's values and beliefs and how this may have e

This sites slogan is "Poster Yourself." Students can create multimedia "posters" that include pictures, music, video, etc. and share them with their classmates. Students can write comments under each other's posters and can message each other on the sit

Sometimes its just better to hear it "from the horses mouth." This site has a list of some of the most well-known speeches from world leaders in text. Many of the speeches can also be listened to from the site.

Sometimes other people can explain a topic more eloquently...which is why podcasts are great to use in the classroom. Podcasts can be used to show alternative viewpoints on a subject or just to give a more thorough background. Sometimes podcasts can be

Here is my PDF. Sorry I thought I had posted this on the 13th but I guess I never hit the post button! http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B2uybUDta9tyMGVjMjA5NGEtY2VmMi00Y2U2LTk0MDItOWQzODVkMGJlNzhl&hl=en
I think student resources, teacher resources, and lesson resources is a great idea, but I also felt it might be too broad. I think everyone is going to have essential elements that are a little different from one another. I also feel that many of the same internet sources can be used as different essential elements depending on HOW you use it. What if we divided up these three categories by the type of technology: Audio (such as podcasts, songs, etc), Visual (any graphic representation, animation, etc) or Written Text (information, something that could be printed out etc.) The directions say we can have up to 10 main classes, and that puts us at 9, so we're good!

This sounds good to me. If people want to add their essential elements as subcategories they can, but I think this will work well for our group as a whole.

Since nobody else has replied back to this, Im going to assume the classes listed by Micheal are okay with everyone and add them for the group :)

Here is my classification system. I created it using Inspiration then posted it to Google Docs. Please let me know if it is not showing up for you. I wasn't quite sure how to post it publically!

Here is my PDF version. Sorry I thought I posted this on the 13th but I guess I never hit the post button!
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B2uybUDta9tyMGVjMjA5NGEtY2VmMi00Y2U2LTk0MDItOWQzODVkMGJlNzhl&hl=en

I also had a lot of areas of overlap when I broke everything down. This sounds very well thought out. I am impressed that you were able to utilize six different categories of collaboration!

When making the classification system, I first looked at the definitions for instructional sites and learning sites and also looked at the Levels of Processing Theory to gain more of an understanding of how to organize my internet sources.
I thought about organizing everything by my essential elements, but found that I could use every type of internet resource for each part of the lesson depending on my creativity of how to tool was utilized. I also considered organizing into my classes 9th grade U.S. History, 10th grade U.S. History or Legal Systems, and found this to me too monotonous as well.
Finally I then looked at my bookmarks that I've made previous to this class and the ones made on my delicious and starting grouping them into categories based on the type of tools they are. I realized that I could group these tools into printables/guided practice, collaborative spaces, visual supplemental material, audio supplemental material, and interactives with little to no overlap. I color coded the different tools to tell whether they were more likely used as an instructional site or learning site, but found that there was much overlap there as well.
In addition, I still felt there was something missing that would not be included in instructional sites or learning sites and that to me was professional development. I added a separate list for professional development and my different PD uses for WEB sources.
The classification system overall showed me how flexible the web sources can be, in that with a bit of creativity, they could be used in many different ways.