Tech Apps PD Course Participants

List of resources for contacting experts in various science fields

Article on flipping professional development

article from Tech & Learning

Create personal or group notebooks online using text, graphics, and calendars with content that can easily be uploaded to blogs. Choose notebooks for personal or group use that may be used to easily access content, bookmarks, and links with 2GB of free storages space. Tip: Collaborate with students and teachers as you develop a notebook of digital resources with annotated links or post your library calendar to facilitate scheduling.

It is time to engage your senses in outer space. Join the NASA Kids Club and take off into a universe of STEM activities that engage and inspire teaching and learning. Join the Discovery Crew with Buzz Lightyear, visit NASA with Elmo, explore outer space with Nebula, and follow those Angry Birds into another universe. NASA Kids Club guarantees an out-of-this-world experience. Tip: Use with a digital projector and full classes can get involved.

Use Study Blue to study millions of flash cards and online quizzes or if you cant find what you are looking for, create your own. Available in mobile formats as well. Study Blue is a powerful tool. Tip: Use Study Blue to practice language skills when learning new words.

How to Smile is an online community of educators that have vetted over 3,000 engaging hands-on, interactive STEM activities. With both desktop and mobile capabilities, How to Smile is full of activities that are both physical and virtual that are sure to get students involved. Tip: Use How to Smile's search by chemical directory to find activities for any type of experiment.

Over 1,000 online video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses are housed in this website maintained by the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation Institute, established in 1994 by Steven Spielberg. Students can be involved with the videos, teachers will enjoy the educational materials. Tip: Link videos for social studies and language arts classes.

Educators can "find and create learning activities with primary source documents that promote historical thinking skills." Use the more than 3000 original documents from the National Archives to create rich, online learning experiences for students.Tip: Use the interactive learning activity tools to help students "think like historians."

ARKive gathers together films, photographs, and audio recordings of the world's species to establish a comprehensive multimedia digital collection of profiles of species either rare or threatened with extinction. Tip: Incorporate these materials into lesson plans, presentations, work sheets, projects in hard copy or digitally to engage students in key science and biology topics, or use as creative inspiration for art and design projects.

Learn It in 5 is for professionals, students, and parents who want to increase their Web 2.0 skills. A series of videos, all 5 minutes or less, guide users through lessons of their choice. Users can search for specific topics or browse to discover new techniques. Tip: Include videos in your weekly newsletter.

StudyLadder, geared for elementary and junior high/middle grades, lends itself to being an interesting, ready to use stock of activities to reinforce many content standards from a wide range of curricula. Many of the activities offer a game-like feeling, while building conceptual understanding. The site is also supportive of the flipped classroom concept, and a variety of different user account options are available, including parent accounts. Tip: Set up a station with a white board at a parent open house that showcases this site as something parents can use at home, too.

BoomWriter is a supremely engaging creative writing website that has students reading, writing and assessing content in ways they've never done before! The teacher selects or produces his or her own story start, and the students let their imagination and writing skills take over. One chapter at a time, the students write, read, and then vote on the submissions they like the most. The winning chapter is then added to the story and the process continues. The teacher determines the total number of chapters to be completed, and when the competition is over a new book is ready to be published.

Collaborize Classroom is an online education platform allowing students and teachers to participate in a collaborative learning environment. It is designed to extend classroom instruction by engaging students in online activities, assignments, and discussion.

Wiggio promotes itself as "a free, online toolkit that makes it easy to work in groups." Host virtual meetings and conference calls, make to do lists, send messages, poll groups, manage events and more. Wiggio has something for everyone when it comes to collaboration. Tip: Use features such as polling or to-do lists with group members in your state or national committees.

This web site supports the use of cell phones in the classroom by providing a controlled, secure environment for users. Students join teacher-created "cells" where phone numbers are kept private. Teachers can moderate all comments to make sure they are on-topic and appropriate for the group. Tip: After students text comments about a reading assignment, teachers can review the comments and display them using a projection device at the beginning of class the next day to stimulate discussion.

This site is a powerful, user-friendly tool for creating to-do lists and task management. The full-featured mobile version allows you to manage your lists and tasks anytime. Reminder methods let you receive notices of upcoming tasks via email, SMS, and instant messenger. To-do lists and tasks can also be shared with others who use the site. Tip: Use the site to work with others on a collaborative project to organize everyone's tasks and to help the group meet deadlines.

SpiderScribe is the visual learner's ideal tool. Collect a series of files including documents, pictures, maps and more, and create a concept map based on the collection. Lay them out for optimal visualization. Share them. Even collaborate to build them. Be it text, images, files, or events.