EDU560-Su2011

This website is very helpful when looking for tips on how to to integrate technology while differentiating instruction.

This is a free website that allows you to use different media sources to help you supplement learning in your classroom. It's free and can be used from grades PreK to 12. Its very easy to use and can also help you align lessons to standards.

This website offers teachers lots of great tools and ideas to incorporate in the classroom. Also there's a link to free worksheets and other fun stuff. There's a also a great link to some puzzles and games that you can use.

FreshBrain is a free social networking site designed to give teens a chance to explore technology in a safe way. It allows students to create different projects and share them with other teens but the site focuses heavily on being a safe environment for students.

This is a great website with tons and tons of resources for assessment. There are rubrics for incorporating technology in various subject areas.

This is a great tool for students learning a foreign language. I personally used it for 2 years in my Spanish class in high school and it helped me a lot! It's a great way for students to practice their conjugations. There is a suggested fee of $35; however, if your school truly cannot pay, you can send them a note saying so and can use the site. There is also a contact us page available for support. Graded activities and games available in Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Latin. This would probably be most effective if used with middle school to high school students in a foreign language class. It is very user friendly and the quality of the content is great. I think this site would be very appealing to students because it is simple and easy to use. I believe that it is an effective way to skill and drill while still being interesting.

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.

I LOVE this website. You can make rubrics in Spanish, too!

Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. This free site generates word clouds. It can be used for any grade level when coming up with words to describe a concept or topic. Usability, aesthetic appeal, and quality of content is excellent. I feel that it would be very appealing to the students of all ages when coming up with words to summarize something, rather than just listing words. It can be effective learning tool when trying to establish hierarchy among a summary. There is a section available with FAQ that appears to be very helpful.

This is a free website that allows students to put together a human skeleton. It is easy to use and is visually appealing. It is an effective learning tool that students would enjoy using because it is a game. Although students label the bones of the body, there is no information about the bones. This would be an ideal game for students who are learning about the body (probably 4th grade and above). There is a contact page for user comments and questions on the abcya.com homepage.

Registering for TED.com is free and open to anyone worldwide. With site membership you can create a profile page, contact other members, join the conversation on individual talks, save items to your favorites, and more. The user community, usability, aesthetic appeal, and quality of the content is all great! This site inspires new and innovative ideas, and can be appealing to teachers and students. I think it can be a great learning tool and provide for good discussion in higher grades, especially high school students. TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer -- TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.

This is a free tool to help children learn about bones. It would be appealing for students to use, but could use more color and graphics. It is easy to use and would be an effective tool for students between 3rd and 5th grade. In addition, the content is accurate and simplified. There is a "Contact Us" page that can be accessed by going to the www.e-learningforkid.org homepage for users to submit comments or questions.

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.

OurTimeLines.com is a useful website for social studies classrooms who wish to connect history to their students lives. It is a free site (and there is a whole page on the site dedicated to explaining how and why it is free) that allows users to create timelines from 1000 A.D. to current times in history, then add their own events relating to their lives or to those of their ancestors. I believe that it could appeal to users, specifically students because it involves them in creating history and relating it to their lives, their ancestors' lives, or their interests. It is not the most aesthetically appealing website; it is not created or managed by a large corporation, so the platform is not what one would expect from a professional website, but because I discovered this site through one of our class textbooks, I believe this to still be a good site. Its information says it is up-to-date, and it has a great page for feedback with other user comments. I believe this could likely be used for any age, though teachers would need to help younger users more. I think this would be appealing to students because it involves them in a history lesson and gives them a chance to use an easy technology in class.

A great differentiation resource, this wiki has all of the information contained in our book and more. With templates for many of the related strategies discussed and everything you need to know and how to do it. A free web resource this really is a great, easy to navigate wiki for all to use for free - but no support is available - but none needed. Aesthetically the wiki has a very nice design and i believe students in High School and above might take some interest in this site. Published two years ago the content is right up to date and of good quality.

Costs - no costs to this straight forward learning-style resource. Usability - just one page with three links easy as pie. Great learning tools with an actual test to determine your personal learning style - students could and should take this test as well. Aesthetically it is not much to look at but serves its purpose. Content is right on point and in your face. This resource is appropriate for middle school and above. There is no support available for this one page resource - it is what you get and you get what it is - I really love the simplicity of this site.

A great website for students to play games, solve problems or puzzles and watch videos.

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.