Links

=Highly Recommended - Learning More about Technology and General Resources=

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy
This single web page is a treasure for any teacher who uses technology as a teaching tool. This diverse site offers a taxonomy of technology tasks. It provides a way to analyze and evaluate your uses of technology and the assignments you give to students and uses the new Blooms as a taxonomy to analyze technology tasks. The site provides specific tasks for each level of the taxonomy.

Also check out Visual Blooms
This wiki is all about applying Blooms Taxonomy to learning tasks using web 2.0 tools. If you know you would like to challenge students to APPLY new knowledge, for example map skills, look at the Applying page for ideas and tools to use. Participate in this wiki project by making comments and suggestions in the Discussion tab. The offerings for each level are far from exhaustive, but that is exactly the point of this teacher-to-teacher wiki: to involve you and your professional judgment, too. Follow the sidebar link to Blooms Rubrics (a separate but related wiki) to find examples (links) of rubrics teachers are using to assess different visual Blooms projects. As you launch into more and more student-centered learning projects and want to be sure you are getting your "bang for your web-buck" in terms of learning and thinking, this resource can get your thinking juices flowing.

Brian Mull's wiki on Online Safety
This wiki, maintained by Alan November presenter Brian Mull, discusses various facets of online use and safety. He has specific pages geared towards the lower grades, upper grades, and parents. The wiki includes links to useful tools such as the [|Wayback Machine] and discusses the use of alternative ways for students to show their knowledge, such as creating videos and hosting them on [|YouTube].

Comic Life Wiki
lots of ideas about how to use the Comic Life program in the classroom; it's great for students without a lot of written language ability, as well as anyone just looking for a fun way to share information

E-learning for Kids
Check out this site offering free learning courses to students in science, language arts, English language, math, health and life skills, and computer skills. Choose from a wide variety of different learning experiences in the subject areas for earning in a fun and engaging way. Each subject area has countless interactives ready to go! Detailed instructions are provided for each activity. **Available in English, Spanish and French.**

[|Google Docs in Plain English]
Wondering what Google Docs are? Check out this short video, it is under 3-minutes. Instead of attaching a document to an email, attach an email to a document. Want to learn more? Take a look at this video. There is a link provided to embed the video (perhaps on your class web page when you introduce Google Docs?).

[|Ideas for Teaching Computer Technology to Kids]
This blog contains many exciting ideas about how to teach technology to students in a fun, engaging way that relates directly to the curriculum. Categories covered include Animation, Artificial Intelligence, Audio, Programming, Robotics, and Video Editing. This blog, like most blogs, can be subscribed to by using RSS.

[|TeachersFirst Edge]
A good place to learn about new web 2.0 tools, such as wikis and blogs, is [|TeachersFirst Edge]. This website offers some very practical [|tips for first time teachers]but also maintains an [|incredible database and review of web 2.0 tools]specifically aimed towards teachers who “want to try tools but cannot envision the how and why.”

[|Thinkfinity]
Teacher Resources and Professional Development for technology integration; includes full lesson plans.

[|Websites Worth a Look: Teaching With Technology]
A large collection of technology resources, covering topics such as Virtual Field Trips, Simulations, Communication and Collaboration, and Tutorials.

[|4Teachers]
This large website includes a host of free tools that teachers will certainly find useful! Here are a selected few; view the full complement of free tools at their website.
 * [|QuizStar] - create and store quizzes with multimedia material and in multiple languages
 * [|RubiStar] - Rubric creator
 * [|Classroom Architect] - create a classroom map
 * [|TrackStar] - collect Websites, add notes, and create an interactive online lesson (called a Track) for your students; can also search already created Tracks by theme, subject, or grade
 * [|KidsVid] - video production for students, including a Storyboarding tool and video editing help

[|American Heritage Education Foundation]
The highlight of this site is ready-to-go lesson plans (with standards) divided by age level (elementary, middle, and high school). These FREE lesson plans are available online via a PDF file or you may order a FREE CD (they say it is a $150 value). The elementary topics range from Colonial America to U.S. Presidents (with a focus on George Washington) to the History of Thanksgiving to The Pledge of Allegiance and MANY others.

This writing site offers interesting prompts for upper elementary and secondary students. The site is set-up as a blog, and you are able to make comments on the writing prompts. New prompts are added at least once per week, sometimes twice or more. There are archived writing prompts dating back to 2005 - so there are PLENTY of choices to use in your classroom.

[|ClassTools]
ClassTools provides teachers (and students!) with online templates that are interactive, from the name generator to timelines to venn diagrams and to many other interactive tools. There's even a game creator, where teachers can enter vocabulary words and definitions and a matching game is created. Teachers could set up activities ahead of time, or students can use the templates to create their own work.

[|Glogster]
Create an interactive poster (graphics, links, etc); can use as a homepage for training or a particular class - can be embedded on any website. Could also have students create a poster as the culmination of a unit.

[|Google for Educators]
This website is created by Google (obviously). It includes links to their most popular programs for educators, as well as suggested activities using these tools and classroom posters (make sure to check out the Google search tips). There is also a discussion group set up solely for teachers who are using Google tools. Especially useful is the section on [|Space], which includes links to Google Mars and Google Moon (satellites on Mars and the Moon - including all landing sites), a Solar System Maker that helps students understand how large the solar system really is (centered on their own street address!) and lesson ideas for using the new Sky feature in Google Earth. Also check out [|Google Earth Lessons] - a large variety of social studies lessons that use Google Earth. Topics range from virtual vacations to plotting endangered species to decision making activities. A great resource!

[|The Manuals]
Need a manual? 'The Manuals' website is just that, in a nutshell. Simply type in the name of the manual you need. Press Search, and Google will find the manual for you. Over five million manuals are available from this site.

[|Read Write Think]
This website is full of engaging, interactive tools for students to use. The website also includes suggested lesson plans for using these tools, as well as web resources for teachers plus Standards documents. The tools are primarily language arts centered and range from Poetry ([|Acrostic][|Diamante ,] and[|Shape]Poems) to Writing ([|Fairy Tales], [|Persuasive Essays], [|Concept Mapping], and [|Character Trading Card] summaries) to diverse tools such as the [|Comic Creator] and [|Doodle Splash] (which encourages students to make connections between images and text). There are many interesting tools here, it is definitely worth exploring!

[|Scratch]
Scratch is a free program created by the geniuses of MIT. It is used to create animations or interactive games. In the classroom setting, students can create engaging animations or games that showcase what they have learned during their unit. The creations can be shared with the world via the Scratch website, hosted by MIT.

[|Smithsonian Images]
This website contains a huge collection of images from the Smithsonian, from such categories as [|Air and Space], [|Art], [|Cultural History], [|Technology History], [|Military History], [|Natural Science], [|Political History], and photographs on [|the National Mall].

[|WebQuest.Org]
Home of the approved webquests (inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web) - can search by grade, content, or keyword

[|Websites Worth a Look]
a HUGE repository of links covering categories such as Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, and Teaching with Technology

[|Weekly Reader - Crazy Quiz]
This quiz varies each week, but it usually accompanies the articles that are found in [|Weekly Reader] (in print and online). Topics range from Poetry to Animals to Ecosystems.

Welcome to EduWikis
This site aims to answer one question: **How can I use wikis in education?** With your help we aim to provide:
 * 1) A list of articles and resources that describe how to use wikis in education
 * 2) A comprehensive list of existing educational wikis that we can learn from
 * 3) A place to post ideas and discuss them

[|Woices]
This site, still in beta, offers a FREE service that allows you to create and share "echoes." Echoes are words (audio recordings), left by anyone at any place, and can be played over and over by any visitors who find them. Listeners will feel as if they are really there! Echoes can be anything from personal memories, personal messages to a class, history or art related annotations of a place, music to accompany that place, or any kind of audio you can connect to a location. The audio recordings are linked to geographic locations or real-world objects (in the place where they are located). Echoes could also be fictitious accounts "placed" somewhere in the world to tell a story. Woices states that the goal of the site is to "extend reality by creating a new layer of audio information, what we call the echosphere, that will make the world a more interesting place."