LMS Academy

Middle school librarian's blog

Great set of archived webinars for Library Media Specialists. Focus is on public libraries, but there are several webcasts that pertain to school libraries.

Check here for new and upcoming webcasts. Previous ones are archived. Great for school library media specialists. 

Great wiki about all things School Library

This site contains examples webpages of effective practice for elementary, middle, and  high schools. 

Lots of resources here for teaching web search techniques. 

Lots of free downloadable e-books on distance learning and LMS systems

Learnopia is a new service that offers hosting for online courses. Learnopia is also a place to find and take online courses. If course creators make their courses free for others to take, then hosting is free. Currently, there are courses on Learnopia that are free and others that require payment.

Instructure Canvas is a free learning management system that teachers can use to record grades, post assignments, and interact with their students. Students can use Instructure Canvas to communicate with each other and collaborate on assignments. Instructure Canvas integrates Facebooks, Google Docs, and email systems outside of Instructure. Another neat feature of Instructure Canvas is that students can subscribe to RSS, email, and cell phone alerts to stay abreast of any new content their teachers post.

Search guides compiled by librarians on all subjects. 

Teaching Library is a place to find free teaching ideas and lesson resources, all linked to books that can be used in the classroom. Each book has ideas for uses in different areas of the curriculum, along with related video content and downloadable materials. You can browse by category or author.

Open source LMS. Free!

Share highlights and annotations you make on eBooks and the Web.

Lots of lesson plans to help students become better searchers. 

Today's reality is that readers and information seekers are having increasingly less need to visit a physical library to meet their basic information needs. Digital information sources, readily accessed from classroom, home or mobile computing devices, are the choice of many learners and teachers. The "Net Generation" student increasingly prefers the visual and the virtual rather than the printed text. Why, many educators are asking, does a school need a physical library when seemingly all resources can be obtained using an inexpensive netbook and a wireless network connection? How can these large physical spaces in our schools be re-purposed for greater educational impact? Doug Johnosn

EDpuzzle allows you to find existing video content (i.e. Youtube or the like) and personalize it for your students by adding your voice or questions or by cropping the video to your needs.

Mashpedia is an interesting service that matches reference articles from Wikipedia to materials from YouTube and news websites. The purpose of drawing materials from multiple sources is to provide users with a comprehensive view of news stories and reference topics. Mashpedia also presents Amazon lists of books related to your chosen topic.

Juvenile Series and Sequels - This database contains over 36,000 books in 4,900 series titles that are classified into three audiences: Juvenile Easy, Juvenile, and Young Adult.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts free online art history texts. It has expanded to 390 volumes. All of the books can be read online or downloaded as PDFs (warning, some of them are massive files). You can search through the catalog of books by thematic category, format, and publication type. And, of course, you can search through the books by title, author, and keyword.

The online exhibitions in the Google Cultural Institute feature images, videos, audio, and text about significant historical and cultural people, places, and events. Some of the exhibitions like the Eiffel Tower Exhibition incorporate the use of Google Maps Street View imagery too.