IT Cohort 2014

A very interesting educational wiki from Akita, Japan. Currently maintained, and looks like useful information no matter what country you're from! (Site in English). This site would be useful to a teacher interested in seeing how other people groups address instructional technology issues.

A very interesting educational wiki from Akita, Japan. Currently maintained, and looks like useful information no matter what country you're from! (Site in English). This site would be useful to a teacher interested in seeing how other people groups address instructional technology issues.

A current list of useful technologies, by Dr. Rafael Scapin, Coordinator of Educational Technology at Dawson College (Canada). Since he keeps it up-to-date, this would be a useful source in the classroom for experimenting with and evaluating the latest apps.

A current list of useful technologies, by Dr. Rafael Scapin, Coordinator of Educational Technology at Dawson College (Canada). Since he keeps it up-to-date, this would be a useful source in the classroom for experimenting with and evaluating the latest apps.

A great site for younger kids, to get an idea for the size & characteristics of various marine species. Some of the most detailed visualizations available on the web...and the audio recordings are outstanding. This is a great site to display via a projector in a classroom...be sure to turn the speakers up!

A great site for younger kids, to get an idea for the size & characteristics of various marine species. Some of the most detailed visualizations available on the web...and the audio recordings are outstanding. This is a great site to display via a projector in a classroom...be sure to turn the speakers up!

Augmenting Google Earth with your own place-based stories

HistoryPin is a focused collaboration site for including your own photos as part of the dialogue about larger historical events and topics.

I know many schools have used this but it is all archived online for use. Students can learn about current events and then share what they learn with others.

Kenton - We used to be a channel.one school, but stopped viewing it last year. I love the current news - but hated all of the commercials. Can you view online without all of the commercials? This site reminds me of newela.com. It is a wonderful site for reading current non-fiction articles and is also related to common core standards. I like that you can select the reading level for students on the article. You can create classes and assign readings and it has quizzes, too. I haven't used any of those features. I just used the articles for read-alouds and they were high interest. I can see Channel One working well for history, but also for English. We need to teach students to be critical viewers as well as critical readers. Let's face it - a lot of information they will receive (for elections, ads of products to buy, etc.) will be visual. They need to know how to interpret information in this medium, too.

Kenton - I agree that this seems like it would be a good tool for students and educators. I think that students could watch the short videos and do reports on what kinds of things are happening in around the world. I think educators could use it to stay more informed as well. I had not heard of this resource before I saw your posting. Do they post new videos weekly? Also, how do they come up with their topics? Do people submit ideas of different topics they would like to hear more about?

Students can use this to create animated presentations.  This allows them to be creative and engage their audience.

A list of 15 popular Social Networking sites and links to them.  

This is the web version of Inspiration/Kidspiration.  It's a tool to help students and teachers organize information.  There is a free trial offered, or districts may choose to purchase.

Fun easy way to share information in a poster/flyer form online

I love Smore posters! I used it to publicize my Bakery Business project and it was nice to have the social media outlets built in. My students also used it to make individual posters to print and hang around the school. It was nice to have a choice of mediums. I added Canva to this list but it is not as well adapted for online use. Smore is unique in its ability to forward through various social media networks and embed in email but still look so nicely done in print.

An aggregate of online courses, this handy site includes 'learning paths' which group disparate courses into a logical series for smart progression in learning.

Digital Citizenship lessons for students and teachers

Thanks, Mekca! We spend very little time teaching Digital Citzenship. I think it needs to be embedded in every teacher's curriculum. There are so many "teachable" moments that present themselves that could be linked to proper social media usage. This is going to be an excellent resource for me to share with my fellow educators.

This is an excellent source for me to use in my Teen Insights classroom. We started with a unit on bullying... then cyberbullying... I think we're missing the point- students just need to learn to be good digital citizens! I will use this source to build my curriculum. I appreciate that the curriculum is geared towards students but that it gives teachers and parents good background as well. Parents are a huge part of cyberbullying problems. Much of the conflict we have in school has to do with something students do online at home and then carry those hard feelings with them to school. I do not have resources similar to these. The video that my curriculum used to show warned students to avoid chat rooms and to only choose names that gave no indication of their age, gender, or location. It's good for students to stay safe, but the world has become much more familiar and personal with technology. Our curriculum needs to adapt to keep up.

Create and share collections of engaging web resources with your students. Browse courses in the K-12 Community Library to get started.

This site allows you to read an online document and highlight the information you are reading. It also allows you to take notes.

I really like this website! I use my SmartBoard often in class to highlight text to demonstrate main idea or important details. I would like to see what this looks like for students. It would be a great teaching tool for students to find main idea or practice researching for a paper. It would be very beneficial for teachers to see how students are highlighting main ideas in texts while also taking notes. Have you used this before? And how successful was it for students?

Sarah - I am new to using both Diigo and Scrible, so I did not realize all of the similarities between the two. I really like how you can highlight things with Scrible. Are you able to do the same with Diigo? Those were some of the same reasons I thought this would be a useful tool as well.

On this site you can find specific sites that you use all the time and they keep them all as thumbnails for bookmarking. This would be a nice way to organize sites/tools that you have students use.

Canva is a fantastic, user-friendly tool to create professional looking graphics and infographics. After reading this post by Cool Cat Teacher I gave the program a try and really enjoyed it. The tool has stock images available for $1 or you may upload your own for free. Students could use it to make infographics on research topics, business cards, or posters for their businesses.

Canva is a fantastic, user-friendly tool to create professional looking graphics and infographics. After reading this post by Cool Cat Teacher I gave the program a try and really enjoyed it. The tool has stock images available for $1 or you may upload your own for free. Students could use it to make infographics on research topics, business cards, or posters for their businesses.

This site has things to help students in many different areas.  From making conversions in measurements, online almanacs, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and more.  This would be a reference students could use in different content areas.

Skype is a tool that allows people to talk in a way that is similar to face to face.  This tool could be used in the classroom to become connected with other classrooms around the world.  Students would have the opportunity to learn about other cultures firsthand.  

Facebook can be used to stay connected to friends, but it can also be used as a way to collaborate with others.  In our class we have created a group where we can talk about different things happening in class and we are the only ones that can see it.