Classroom 2.0 is an online community for teachers who are interested in education technology. Members share web 2.0 tools and learn through online events.
This is a free website for teachers to keep track of online grades. Its free for teachers and you can create unique user names for your students. You can create online quizzes and flashcards.
In Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary you can look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. You can produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. It helps to learn how words associate.
Strivney is a free, online program for learning to read English. Over a thousand interactive, animated learning games, exercises and presentations provide a quality educational experience. Strivney can be used both at home and in the classroom. Gifted and/or dyslexic children and slower learners all love learning to read English with Strivney because they can work at their own pace.
ABCya.com is a free online resource, which incorporates computer educational games and activities for elementary students to learn on the web. They are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn. Grade level lessons incorporate areas such as math and language arts while introducing basic computer skills.
This site is free to all users. I feel that with a brief introduction to the site, it should be very easy to navigate for all students and other users. Considering the content, this site would be useful to students grades 8-12. Much of the site is also dedicated to teachers of these grade levels. It does not look like the most exciting website one will ever visit, but it seems like it could be a nice break from a history textbook. What might be difficult for some users is trying to find historical information that is not featured in the main exhibit at the time. While it seems like if you dig deep enough, you can find what you want to about American History, it is much easier to simply explore the featured exhibit, which currently (as of 6/8/11) is the Reconstruction era. The information is very credible and up-to-date. Aesthetically, it may be more appealing to students who like an online platform than a textbook. It has a look of being very organized, though personally I feel like it could look slightly more "professional." In terms of user-help, the site notes that its "Ask a Historian" and "Contact Us" features were disabled due to SPAM. Therefore, users can no longer contact the site managers. I believe this to be a huge drawback of the site.
Prezi is free to the public, although there are a couple different deals you can get as a educator if you wish to go a little further. With the basic public access (free), you can create Prezi's online, and then download them to present them offline. With EDU Enjoy access (also free), you can make content private, use your logo instead of Prezi's and get more storage online. If you wish to pay, you can download Prezi onto you desktop and create offline and also receive premium support. Usability and aesthetic appeal is great and very appealing to students of all ages! It can engage students more during a presentation and be an effective learning tool! Older students can also use Prezi to make presentations for class.
This free website allows teachers to create custom rubrics. It is a great tool to use if you have trouble creating rubrics and setting different criteria. You can create a rubric based on a template with the following subjects: oral projects, multimedia, math, writing, products, reading, art, work skills, science, music, and reading. You can also save your rubrics online, and export them to a word processor. This site is mostly for teachers to create a rubric. Its usability is acceptable, although the navigation takes some time to get used to. This website does not seem to be undated frequently and that copyright date says 2007-2008. Overall, this website is extremely helpful to teachers when it comes to making a rubric, and differentiating criteria. There is a tutorial available on how to use rubistar, and a contact us page for support.
This website provides quick animated lessons on life skills like cyberbullying, self-esteem,self-control, peer pressure, online safety,and others. After every lesson students are given opportunites to try and apply the skill in a form of test and conversation.
Educational games are a great tool for building foundation math and language skills that today's elementary school curriculum requires. These online learning games and songs for kids are fun, teach important skills for preschool and elementary school kids and they're free.
Online math games for students in 4-6th grade to practice math concepts. This is a free website for students to practice various math skills. Students will enjoy this website because students who are weaker in math can review math concepts. I think students would enjoy having the freedom to choose the games to play to review the concept. All the games are listed on the left side, but to find which concepts to review the student would need to go through each game. The directions for each game are listed and students can also play games in pairs. The website was updated in 2010, but there is no link to ask for any assistance to use a game or to leave any comments. The games itself are fun to play, great graphics and background music and best of all students are having fun with math!
Founded in 1999, BrainPOP creates animated, curriculum-based content that engages students, supports educators, and bolsters achievement. Our award-winning online educational resources include BrainPOP Jr. (K-3), BrainPOP, BrainPOP Español, and BrainPOP ESL. All are supported by BrainPOP Educators, our teacher community now more than 125,000 members strong and featuring free lesson plans, video tutorials, professional development tools, graphic organizers, best practices, and much more.