Issues and Trends

Smithsonian Education offers a wide variety of free resources for teachers, students and parents.

The Gateway contains a variety of educational resource types from activities and lesson plans to online projects to assessment items.

Educreations is a global community where anyone can teach what they know and learn what they don't. This website is on a mission to democratize learning by extending the reach of great teaching. I would use this site to find different lesson ideas.

This website has original content, including lesson plans, practical information for educators, information on how to integrate technology in the classroom, and articles written by education experts. I will use it for different lesson ideas and ideas on how to integrate technology into my classroom.

Wikispaces Classroom is a social writing platform for education. It will make it incredibly easy to create a classroom workspace where me and my students can communicate and work on writing projects alone or in teams. Rich assessment tools will give me the power to measure student contribution and engagement in real-time.

I can use this to connect students with free school safe email, participate in learning experiences that encourage exploration and innovation, join collaborative cultural exchange and language learning projects, and explore resources and learning centers featuring content from top brands.

NCTM website used to keep up on the latest information in mathematics education.

A presentation tool for creative and artistic students to use in the classroom.

Great question style wiki!

Wiki designed to promote technology and 21 century skills to use for technology integration ideas.

Master list of Web 2.0 Tools

This quick article went through 35 web 2.0 tools. I like this list because it has some of the easier things to work with (Prezi, Twitter) to some more advanced things like Diigo and Wikispaces.

I love lists like this because it is so much easier to rely on someone else's compilation as a starting point rather than gathering tools on your own.

Buzzmath is an interactive website designed for middle school students to practice skills specific to common core. Teachers can create free accounts for limited access or pay for premium accounts. With a premium account, buzzmath will collect data on students progress which makes grouping easier on the teacher. It is a great way for schools with one to one initiatives to incorporate technology into the classroom.

The Connected Classroom is a one stop shop for all your 21st Century learning tools. The page includes links to blogs, graphic organizers, podcasts, and much more. Teachers can use this sight to find popular web tools to use in the classroom. It is also helpful for learning about 21st Century skills and examples of them.

A blog about the use of foldables in the math to be used in my math journals.

A blog about the use of foldables in the math to be used in my math journals.

This can be used to put a website into the QR code generator and made into one.When the QR code is scanned the website that was generated into it will display all of the information on the website. It can be used my teachers and students to use to manipulate for information. Multiple QR codes can be put around the classroom and students can do a scavenger hunt to find, which one is pertaining the information they need.

I have never thought about using QR codes in this fashion and it seems like a great idea. One such way that I can see this being a huge helper is during presentations. If a student wants to link to more information but doesn't want to type out the huge URL that is associated with the site they can simply make a QR code that links to the URL and insert it as a picture. Then the other students can snap the QR and go to the website and read up on more that the presenter had to say. This would be used primarily by the students because it would be the teacher integrating it for the most part. I haven't heard of any other types of technology such as this.

What a cool idea. Thanks for posting this Megan. The scavenger hunt idea is a great one to facilitate meaningful instruction.

Prezi is a way of working on a presentation online and then when you go to your class you can log on to your account and pull the presentation up that you have been working on, instead of using USB drives, etc.

I think Prezi is a great Web 2.0 Tool. Powerpoints are very beneficial and fun to create, however Prezi takes that to a whole new level. It is a great interactive tool that keeps learners engaged! Prezi is great for anyone to use, whether you are a student or an educator. I think all students should learn and hear about Prezi, so they can make interactive presentations!

This is the best presentation tool out there. Whenever I see a Power point I kind of laugh to myself. Prezi is just so much more pretty. With the types of transitions and effects you can make it just makes the experience so much better. As some of the others were saying it keeps the learners engaged. Power points came often become very repetitive and boring but with Prezi this is rarely the fact. Prezi is catered to many different levels of education, teachers, students, and even business. Anyone can use it, and they should. To my knowledge there aren't any different types of presentation tools out there.

Super website designed for teens that help them explore mental health issues.

Awesome website that provides students interactive information surrounding the human body and health.

Providing medically accurate information surrounding comprehensive sexuality health education.

Great website to provide scientifically accurate information regarding drug education to teens.

Picasa is a great application by Google, it allows you to upload and edit photos. A great web 2.0 tool that could be implemented into an activity. I love using Picasa, since photography is one of my many hobbies!

I love using Picasa! Every since I learned about it I use it for personal editing and professional editing! It's so easy to manipulate and very fun! I think that both students would love using this as an interactive tool in a class! I also think that it's fun and great for teachers to use as well!

I've used Picasa before and it seemed simple enough to use. I think the upper elementary grades would definitely be capable of using this but I would maybe wonder if something like iPhoto would be a little easier for them to use? I've had a little better experience with that. If you were trying to get teachers to use the software I also think iPhoto might make them a little nervous about using photo editing programs. People tend to have good thoughts more often than not when they think of Apple.