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to integrate History Buff into the classroom: History Buff is a website that can help history come to life through story, virtual tours, audio and primary source news papers. I suspect that most students fall into the judge-a-site-by-it's-cover category like me. For this reason, if I was using it in my classroom, I wouldn't send students directly to the website to do a lot of digging on their own. Instead, I might direct them to the portion of the site I knew we would be using through a classroom website, wiki, blog or use a Weblist or Symbaloo to link to them. It is amazing how changing something as small as the entry point into a site can change a students attitude about the site (heck, I'm like that too!). Once I got into History Buff, I really appreciated the connection to primary sources and the way that the "actual" newspapers bring history to life. I REALLY liked the hoaxes in news section and suspect that students will get a kick out of it to. Your kids will be asking, how can people be SO gullible? These kinds of stories are wonderful discussion starters and will make students think critically about their own news media. As a fun extension, have your students write their own hoax news stories. Okay, now for demystifying the navigation of this site. See the itty bitty brown words in the left sidebar that are all squished together? That is the navigation. For real. I didn't notice it at first either! Go ahead and click on one to test it out…not so bad when you know what you are looking for, right? Right. For your convenience, I'm linking to each page of the site below so you can easily find what you are looking for. :) Online Newspaper Archives Historic Panoramas Reference Libraries (audio resources, hoaxes) Primary Source Material State Facts Interactive Quizzes Tips: History Buff has a newsletter you can subscribe to if you are, you know, a history buff. Just enter your email in that box under the header and clic

Cite Bite could be a handy little tool for those times when you want all of the students in your classroom to read and discuss a passage from an online article. While you could probably accomplish the same thing by just posting the source link on your classroom blog, the benefit of Cite Bite is that it will automatically highlight and direct students to the passage you want them to discuss.

We Give Books instantly increases your classroom library and puts high-quality books within reach for children everywhere. We Give Books makes an excellent companion to the interactive whiteboard or projector-connected classroom computer for a class read along. Pull up a story and read the book chorally, ask students to take turns reading, or simply follow along. Everyone can see the pictures and words! This is a great resource for practicing reading strategies together as a class. We Give Books makes a wonderful reading station on classroom computers. Students can access wonderful stories any time through We Give Books. For those students that struggle with indpendent reading (or are emergent readers) there is a read-along option on some of the stories. Students can follow along with the reading building fluency, flow and vocabulary. If you are a primary or elementary teacher, this is a must-add link to your classroom website or blog. Be sure to share the site with families so that students can access the same wonderful library of books from home. Students (and teachers) can create their own library where they keep the books they have read (or enjoy reading). To add a book to a library, you must be a member of We Give Books- no problem, it is quick and free to become a member! Tips: Students can use the word cloud on the right side of the We Give Books page to find books about their favorite subjects.

If you're looking for a new way to find Creative Commons-licensed images for yourself or your students, Photo Pin could be a good option for you. I like that Photo Pin offers a clear reminder to users that they must correctly link to the sources of the images that they choose to use.

ou can add text, images and links and share the board with others.

Scrumblr is a very simple brainstorming tool. The post-it notes you can add to the page are purely text - you can't add links, images or videos like other tools such as Wallwisher or Stixy. It's basic, but this can be a useful feature as there are less distractions or things to confuse learners. Simply click the + icon to add more notes and double click on the notes to add text. You can also add text to the backgound to create different zones.

It gives you a virtual space where you can post short text notes in the same way that you could put post-it notes onto a notice board in your classroom. But this noticeboard can be shared between people all over the world. As well as text notes you can add images, video and links to other websites.

Surfboard is a very cool service (similar to Flipboard on the iPad) that displays any website in a flippable newspaper-like display. All your different blog entries or pages are displayed and all the links stay alive. This makes the web reading experience a much more enjoyable one. This is a great Web 2 tool for everyone! To use Surfboard all you have to do is enter the url of your favorite website and click "get surfing." That site will then be displayed in a manner that allows you to flip through the site's content without seeing the sidebar widgets and or advertisements. For proper flippable display Surfboard requires the use of the latest versions of Chrome or Safari.

For visual learners Spider Scribe could be a great way to organize information. Students can upload pictures about a subject then organize them into a sequence or pattern that explains a concept or event.