Elev8ed.org is a site for students to submit videos that:
- Offer new ideas for what education could be, and/or
- Inspire others to transform education, and/or
- Propose actions to improve education in the community.
Ask your students to check it out and see if they are interested in participating. There are lots of sample student productions to view.
Ward's is offering free webinars on teaching forensics. See the schedule at the bottom of the link provided. The webinars are presented by Professional Development Academy experts,featuring the same content and interaction as live workshops, but without the cost of presenter travel fees. Webinars are broadcast live via the internet to your school building or multiple sites within your district.
Population Connection is hosting a video contest for high school students that challenges students to create a public service announcement that illustrates the impact of population reaching seven billion as it relates to environmental and global issues. Students can win cash prizes, the deadline for entries is coming up on March 1, 2011. If at least 10 students submit videos, they will send the teacher a set of free classroom resources. Contest information and forms are available at World of 7 Billion.
Howtosmile.org, from the University of California, is an online collection of thousands of hands-on interactive science and math activities dedicated to making learning exciting and engaging for everyone. All activities are freely accessible. Howtosmile.org, funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the National Science Digital Library, brings together a consortium of science museums across the country to empower educators working with students in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology.
Skype is developing a free online directory to make it easy for teachers to connect with other teachers and resources from around the world. The directory will launch in December 2010 in English only. Once you sign up with your Skype account and create a profile, you'll be able to search for other teachers and classes by subject and region. You can also share inspiration and tips to help students learn with Skype. The beta version is available for investigation now at the Skype pre-registration site.
The Timetree of Life contains electronic files of articles and figures from the book The Timetree of Life (2009), Oxford University Press, and a wall poster. These resources are copyrighted but are provided free for personal, research, or educational use.
TimeTree is a public knowledge-base for information on the evolutionary timescale of life. A search utility allows exploration of the thousands of divergence times among organisms in the published literature. A tree-based (hierarchical) system is used to identify all published molecular time estimates bearing on the divergence of two chosen taxa, such as species, compute summary statistics, and present the results. Check out the "resources" section, too, for links to other sites that focus on evolutionary history.
TED's Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation -- a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness.
TweetDeck is a personal real-time browser, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more. The download is free. You can also sign up for a TweetDeck account, which allows you to add columns and Twitter Lists straight from the TweetDeck Directory, as well as rate and comment on all the lists you find. You can also participate in the TweetDeck Support Forums and you can use your TweetDeck Account to synchronise your TweetDeck groups and searches too.
The edtech blog, Teacher ReBoot Camp, offers several useful tips (July 10,2010 entry):
- You can add more than one account to Tweetdeck such as your LinkedIn or Facebook account. Click on the ones you want to update your status on and they will be highlighted. A separate column will show you the updates in these accounts. Choose which to be your default browser to change the account.
- By clicking on the person’s profile picture you have several more options, such as replying to all members in a tweet, favoriting the tweet, blocking them and more!
- You can add to your settings to automatically tweet with a hashtag or include hashtags when you reply to a person.
- You can automatically shorten links, upload videos and images by dragging and dropping them into the status bar at the top.
- If you get the small screen notifications then you can reply quickly by clicking those tiny windows. In the settings, you can set them not to show up.
- With the newest version you can set tweets to tweet later! If you know you will be somewhere with no wifi you can still participate in a discussion or tweet resources!
The ISTE National Technology Standards for Students say that we should be preparing students so they can effectively use technology tools and demonstrate…
1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication & Collaboration
3. Research and Information Fluency
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
5. Digital Citizenship
6. Technology Operations & Concepts
JeopardyLabs allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. You can build your own jeopardy templates or browse other jeopardy templates created by other people. It's free, without login requirements.
Looking for information about a hypothesis or chromotography? Or maybe the scientific method or how to build a wind tunnel? The Science Buddies website is full of reference materials and Project Ideas, particularly for free science fair ideas. There are:
Making Tracks Challenge provides downloadable nature guides and species lists for hiking trails throughout the United States. It offers resources for students to make their own educational nature trails on school grounds or in nearby communities and the site will automatically generate an illustrated field guide for their site. It has more than 2,000 species in the database already but users are encouraged to suggest additions. There are also inquiry-based trail activities and short nature films.
MIT OpenCourseWare is a collection of over 1,800 college-level class materials offered at no-cost to the public. Upgrade your knowledge and skills by studying the lecture notes, completing assignments, reading study guides, and watching lecture recordings. All classes are available through the official Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare website.
The courses are designed for learning independently; learners do not have access to professors and cannot earn credit. The collection is organized by category and by class format. If you search in Audio/Video, you will find recordings of entire lecture series. Pre-college students may be interested in the "Highlights for High School" section, with AP and college prep resources.
