"A 21st-century education revolves around the Internet for everything from collaboration, tools, lessons, and even earning degrees online. If you are looking for ways to integrate online learning into your science class, then take a look at these cool online tools that are just perfect for both teachers and students."
National Geographic Maps: Tools for Adventure is the best everything-map site I have seen. The site was created by the Children's museum of Indianapolis. Maps are presented as the keys to adventure. Students learn to use maps to find their way, share information, look at patterns, and solve problems. There are six excellent interactive games for students to practice putting their math skills to use. Students can explore a pyramid by guiding a robot to hieroglyphs, find sunken treasure, explore Mars, go on an adventure, see GIS in action, and visit Adventure Island. I love the realistic feel of these games, as students explore and guide robots, they get a "live" video feed of where they are navigating. On the National Geographic Maps: Tools for Adventures site, you will find information about the Indianapolis exhibit, how to use maps, related map links, and lesson plans. This is one of those websites that my description just won't do justice to, be sure to check it out!
Interactive tool for anlayzing primary sources, such as pictures, books, manuscripts, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, oral histories, political cartoons, sheet music & songs. Students answer guiding questions and can save and/or print results.
"AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic feedback tool. Use it for real time audience participation, online brainstorming and classroom feedback. " Teacher poses a question, students answer with 20-40 character answers. Answers generate a word cloud.
Tools for constructive conversation skills, argumentation activities, cause/effect thinking, opinion discussions, etc. Scaffolds students in having academic conversations.
The new ebook platform Zing offers thousands of free trade-book titles that students will want to read, including award-winning book and series titles from well-known authors, Spanish leveled books, and short texts, poems, and articles. On Zing you can browse for books by topic, language, or reading level and access the books anywhere-on desktops, laptops, tablets, and interactive whiteboard. Customizable teaching points within the books support students in developing the skills and strategies they need in order to comprehend the texts. In the Zing reader, students will find a built-in dictionary and tools for taking notes while they read. Zing also enables student progress monitoring and reporting to provide actionable data for teachers and schools.