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AwesomeStories is a gathering place of primary-source information. Its purpose - since the site was first launched in 1999 - is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, and government web sites. Sources held in archives, which document so much important first-hand information, are often not searchable by popular search engines. One needs to search within those institutional sites directly, using specific search phrases not readily discernible to non-scholars. The experience can be frustrating, resulting in researchers leaving sites without finding needed information. AwesomeStories is about primary sources. The stories exist as a way to place original materials in context and to hold those links together in an interesting, cohesive way (thereby encouraging people to look at them). It is a totally different kind of web site in that its purpose is to place primary sources at the forefront - not the opinions of a writer. Its objective is to take a site's users to places where those primary sources are found, and to which the site's users may otherwise not go. The author of each story is listed on the "chapters" page of the story. A link to the author provides more detailed information.

Peter Krantz - January 10th, 2005 "A while ago I read the article "Observing Users Who Listen to Web Sites". In that article the authors report that visually impaired users scan web pages with their ears instead of reading them top to bottom. This may not come as a surprise to you if you read Jakob Nielsen's "How Users Read on the Web" back in 1997. Recently I have had the opportunity to study a number of screen reader users and my observations are similar. (...) So, here are some suggestions you can use to improve the browsing experience for visually impaired users: Use headings god dammit!"

SweetSearch Biographies offers profiles and outstanding search results for thousands of famous-or infamous-people from many walks of life, professions and countries, spanning many centuries. Our nifty filters help you choose the intriguing people you want to learn more about. Looking for female African American authors, for example? Choose Women from the categories on the left, then select African American and Author as your filters. The names in bold link to profiles on our sister site, findingDulcinea. The rest link to the search results for that person on SweetSearch, a Search Engine for Students, which searches only 35,000 Web sites that have been evaluated and approved by our research experts.

iBooks Author is a Mac only app that lets you create interactive textbooks for iBook 2. Here is the first review I have seen by someone who has actually used it.

There is a new type of wiki called the "federated wiki" that is the new brainchild of wiki inventor, Ward Cunningham. INfluenced by GitHub, this invention lets you "fork" a wiki page and make your own version with the original author having the choice to integrate your changes or keep it separate. This may be a great type of collaborative writing tool for researchers and academicians who often are concerned about adding to a common repository in that the page could evolve to no longer represent their views but their name is still affixed to the page. On the other hand, those who may not understand it, might incorrectly attribute something that has been forked and edited but not approved by the original author. I like the potential, however. For those of you who do collaborative work, this is an excellent read.

Comic Book Creator is a tool allows the creation of dynamic web comic books. An author can create an e-comic book by combining images of characters, pictures, background, text in balloons which can be placed in the frames of the pages of the book in that way and style desired. The produced dynamic web comic books are highly interactive flash based books that provide a great page flipping animation control opportunity as well as features like zooming, printing and easy navigation.

The author provides a short history of information discovery that provides a fascinating context for the article.  You see the evolution of web info over the paste decade. You also get some true insight on how to consume information using social tools.  Abundant links to web 2.0 apps make this article well worth the time to read (and re-read it).  

"Students from all over the world can collaborate in their classrooms and at home to create and publish books using Classroom Authors web based publishing application." Very cool website -- this from the publisher "Our software was developed working with Colombia University Teacher's College and over 40 classrooms with the purpose of engaging students in the writing process through collaborative book publishing." This looks to be a very cool website and another way to have students publish books and have an authentic audience.

From Joel - I'm a business teacher and member of Minnesota Business Educators, Inc. I've put together a little website with some of my lesson plans for high school web site design courses, and I'd like to offer this to other business teachers. The lesson plans are totally free. I'm wondering if you might be interested in adding a link to my website, http://highschoolwebdesign.com, on your Cool Cat Teacher blog. The site contains a complete, twelve week course in high school web site design, including projects with step-by-step instructions and rubrics. Thanks so much and have a great day! Joel Roggenkamp Business Teacher Author, http://highschoolwebdesign.com

Building a PLN has just gotten easier.

Organizations are starting to get things together to create widgets to help academicians, authors, and others to build a very powerful PLN (personal learning network) with their igoogle or netvibes. They seem to prefer Netvibes for a couple of reasons - and I maintain an account on both, although I startup on igoogle. There are Bespoke repository service widgets and repository information widgets. They even have a page to see what these widgets do (also in this post.) Every modern student (and professor and teacher) should understand how to build a PLN.

This is the best example of how professional development works.

I love this post. This is how Web 2.0 spreads. I want to quote from the author: "Then I showed him wikispaces and the lightbulb went off. In a voice full of what I can only describe as awe, he said, and I'm paraphrasing him, "This could change the way we teach." (Cue the heavenly music). While I was showing him each tool, we discussed how he could integrate it into his teaching practices. I know I probably overwhelmed him, but he's excited and energetic. He left with a brand new Google account and having created his classroom wiki. That and he's vowed to share what he's learned with his fellow teachers. Here's hoping this goes viral - if at least a little." I love it. It is the one on one time and the lights go off. This is how it works best. we need to have more one on one time planned in order to promote change. People want the attention -- no one likes to feel like an underappreciated cog in an overworked machine.

Timeline Tool 2.0 Recently improved from Timeline 1.0, The Timeline Tool 2.0 is a web- based tool that allows an instructor to construct an interactive timeline with audio and visual effects.  Multimedia Learning Object Authoring Tool enables content experts to easily combine video, audio, images and texts into one synchronized learning object.  Handwriting Toolis a language learning tool designed to help students learn to write and use asian characters. Vocabulary Memorization Platform Image Annotation Tool allows instructors to upload images and quickly create text boxes referring to parts of a diagram, painting, or photo. The tool will provide a link to the annotated image which can then be distributed to students.  Language Pronunciation Tool

Ten simple reasons for every teacher to have a website.

Free widgets to add to your iBooks with iBook Author

There are some cool new features in the Kindle app - in addition to xray and notebook (previous feature upgrades) you have multi-colored highlighting, brightness sync across devices and a prompt to rate a book when finished (I like this one because, perhaps, more REAL people will rate amidst many book reviewers who are either biased for or against an author for undisclosed reasons.) Update that iOS or Droid Kindle app or whatever device it is on. 

Nifty list of free tools.

Free model-based learning resources and software We are delighted to be able to offer a growing collection of free software and student materials that use this software. Finding it is a bit of a treasure hunt. Sorry. The software is being developed in different projects, so we have not collected it all in one place. The following describes the major places to look. * Three powerful modeling environments * Activity authoring * Algebra interactives * Sustainable development education * VideoPaper builder * License and copyright You may also wish to visit our complete Software Download Center.

Interesting podcast with the author of the Dumbest Generation and Tim Holt

The 1001 Flat World Tales Writing Project is a creative writing workshop made up of schools around the world, connected by one wiki. This blog will be the home to the award-winning stories from each group of schools that participate in the workshop, different topics, different grade-levels, different cultures, brought together by the power of stories.So, enjoy the tales, click around, meet the authors - and check out their blogs!

Excellent printable resource from Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers - this is one to print and share.