Educational Information Sources Online

Readers Theater

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 07:45:00 -0500

Some resources online for Readers Theater that I've come across.

Internet Resources For Conducting Reader's Theater

Aaron Shephard's Readers Theater Scripts

Gander Academy Readers Theater Scripts

Education World Readers Theater Resources

Fiction Teachers.com

My Web Tools & Blogging Presentation Blogs

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 10:35:00 -0500

I've designed two new blogs, as companions to my Web Tools Workshop and my Educational Uses of Weblogs Workshop. Here they are:

Web Tools

Presentation Blog

Education Blogs

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:20:00 -0500

If you're looking for a decent site to set up an educational blog for yourself or your students, Edublogs is the site for you. The site uses WordPress open source software, which is a very user-friendly and robust application. You can have multiple users, categorize, and password protect posts with WordPress. There are a number of templates to choose from and you can upload audio, video, or document files you would like to share with others (with a size limit). I love WordPress, and the best part is you don't have to have your own host. Edublogs hosts your educational blog for you.

Scrapbook Online

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 07:55:00 -0500

I came across this really fun little site called Scrapblog. It allows you to post photos in a scrapbook type format. There are all kinds of neat backgrounds and decorative touches you can use.

Modern American Poets

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 07:52:21 -0500

Of course this site, Modern American Poets, is very comprehensive as well as easily navigable. Click on the letter of the last name of the poet to get to the link for that poet.

Classic Poetry Archive

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 07:48:11 -0500

A number of classic poets and poems are listed on this site. It's fairly easy to navigate, although the authors are only listed by last name, rather than their whole name.

Student Email Accounts

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 31 May 2006 07:55:19 -0500

Gaggle has free email for students. Teachers set up the accounts and can monitor email content safely while teaching students about how to use email for educational purposes. Free account space is limited, but upgrades to pay accounts are fairly reasonable, if schools find it useful.

Best Sites On The Web For Teachers

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 31 May 2006 07:49:40 -0500

Teachnology.com has compiled a wonderful portal of web links for teachers. Categories include downloads, printables, lessons, tutorials, sheet-makers, and rubrics. The only problem is that resources are not categorized by subject area, which can be difficult if you have a particular topic you want to browse.

Museum Education Consortium

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 31 May 2006 07:46:06 -0500

The Museum Education Consortium of Western New York has collaborated with a number of local organizations to link to each org's websites and listings of educational programs. There are links to the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo Zoo, Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, Botanical Gardens, Theodore Roosevelt Inagural Site, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Naval & Military Museum and the Buffalo Science Center.

Odyssey Ancient Civilizations

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Tue, 23 May 2006 07:56:57 -0500

The Odyssey Online site is a very attractive site that has exhibits and activities for the Ancient Civilizations of the Near East, Egypt, Rome, Greece, Africa, and the Americas. It is affiliated with the University of Rochester and Emory University. Click on the different areas to see photos of artifacts, read about mythology, daily life, people, archeology, and death & burial.

Starfall Reading Site

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Tue, 23 May 2006 07:51:09 -0500

I found this early elementary reading site that has some great online reading activities for beginning readers. There are activities for ABCs, early readers, comics, puzzles, plays, non-fiction and selections based on holidays. Nice site to help kids with reading as well as learning to navigate web resources.

Creating Flash Tutorials

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 08 May 2006 13:20:03 -0500

Here's a great little tool called WINK, which lets you create flash tutorials. Use it to demonstrate to users how to use software or navigate websites, etc. The best part is that the software is open source, which means it is free.

Erie Canal Resources

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 03 May 2006 10:20:00 -0500

I've found several useful sites for studying the Erie Canal. The first site at Epodunk incorporates video, text, music, and photographs into a great tool to teach about the history of the canal as well as teaching kids information literacy skills on the Internet.

The second site at the Library of Congress is useful for studying primary sources (photos, maps, and other documents) related to the Erie Canal. The site has a teacher's guide and a wealth of other information. This site is NOT kid friendly and must be reviewed by a teacher first, and then direct links to the sources you want kids to see, such as in a webquest, would be most helpful to them. Here's a direct link to a page of links to student resources as well.

Legislative Resources for Teachers

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:55:10 -0500

The Library of Congress THOMAS Site has a number of useful links for classroom activities and lessons related to government.

Math & Science Teacher Archive

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:53:21 -0500

The ENC Online is a portal for resources for math and science teachers. You can browse weblinks, curriculum resources, and professional development topics.

Open Access Educational Resources

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:49:21 -0500

The Development Gateway is a site that offers access to educational resources. Here's a snippet from the site:

Over the past decade as learning content has cascaded into the Internet, for many, many subjects one website about it has become truly superb. This is a trend caused by an open network: users tend to flock to the best website for a topic and similar web pages that are less appealing tend to fade. An advantage to this effect is that students around the world are more and more tending quite literally to learn from the same page.

The really excellent websites for focused topics are not too surprising, because one or just a few experts in a field can fairly easily keep up with a limited subject. Small subject examples that are favorites of mine are Theban Mapping Project, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, and Avian Brains. The first is a magnificently illustrated ongoing description of the exploration of ancient Egyptian tombs. The second is a gorgeous online interface to great Dutch art.

The third is the openly shared collaboration of scientists who study the workings of the brains of birds. But not just little gateways thrive. Surprisingly, there are some very large study topics that are marvelously represented in virtual form through single websites. These great gateways include the following outstanding online knowledge treasure houses for mathematics, chemistry, and...

Free Scholary Archive

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:46:38 -0500

Connexions is a site that contains scholary materials submitted by researchers. What they say:

Connexions is a rapidly growing collection of free scholarly materials and a powerful set of free software tools to help

authors publish and collaborate
instructors rapidly build and share custom courses
learners explore the links among concepts, courses, and disciplines.

Our Content Commons contains small "knowledge chunks" we call modules that connect into courses. Thanks to a Creative Commons open license, anyone can take our materials, adapt them to meet their needs, and contribute them back to the Commons. And everyone is invited to participate!

First Gov for Science

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:44:49 -0500

First Gov For Science is a well laid out portal for all things government and science-related. This is your place to start.

Free Law Dictionary and Encyclopedia

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:41:36 -0500

I have a thing for portals and dictionaries and databases. Of course, I'm a librarian. Cornell Law School has a free law dictionary site just for you :)

Searching Open Access Resources

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:38:33 -0500

The Open Access Toolbar allows users to find scholarly information that is free on the Internet. Some of the features include:

This information retrieval resource from University of Michigan allows you to search collections of freely available, academically-oriented web resources, including online books, full-text journal articles, images, and audiovisual files. Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. Currently 461 journals are searchable at article level. FindArticles: FindArticles includes magazine and journal articles from more than 900 publications, dating from 1998 through to the present. Many of the millions of articles in FindArticles can be read in their entirety and printed at no cost.

Searching Tutorials

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:31:33 -0500

CARLI is the Consortium of Research Libraries in Illinois and this site has a number of flash tutorials on how to conduct searches in their databases. Interesting if you're in charge of designing this type of thing for your patrons and students.

Informed Librarian Online

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:27:49 -0500

The Informed Librarian Online is a "monthly compilation of the most recent tables of contents from over 305 titles - valuable domestic and foreign library and information-related journals, e-journals, magazines, e-magazines, newsletters and e-newsletters. View the list in subject collections ."

Multicultural Library Blog

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:22:58 -0500

Just what the name says: a blog about multicultural issues in libraries.

OPAL Library Training

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:20:51 -0500

OPAL is an online forum for library training, including archived web sessions. Here's what they have to say:

OPAL is an international collaborative effort by libraries of all types to provide web-based programs and training for library users and library staff members.

These live events are held in online rooms where participants can interact via voice-over-IP, text chatting, and synchronized browsing.

Everyone is welcome to participate in OPAL programs. There is no need to register. OPAL programs are offered free of charge to participants.

Poetry Archive

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:18:25 -0500

The Poetry Archive is chock full of recordings of poets reading their works. If you're interested in poetry or teaching poetry with students, this is a great resource for audio files.

Information Literacy Assignments

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:15:08 -0500

Not sure if I posted about this site before, but here it is again. Many links defining information literacy and how to design library-related assignments.

Podcasting News

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:13:00 -0500

All things podcasting can be found here, at Podcasting News. If you're interested in downloading podcasts or making them and publishing them to the web, here's a site that you need to review.

Self-Publishing With Lulu

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:10:00 -0500

For you writers out there, LULU looks like a great self-publishing, publish-on-demand company. You don't have to pay the large up-front costs of vanity presses and since you do more of the design work yourself, there are very few fees to print your book. This might be a great idea for compiling student work. The buyer of each book pays for the costs of printing as they demand a book.

Searching With Clusty

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 23:05:59 -0500

CLUSTY is the newest search engine idea, that goes beyond meta-searching (such as Dogpile, which offers results from multiple search engines in one query). The idea is to group your search results into clusters that are connected and in a heirarchal format. Try it. Very interesting. You can see your FAQs answered here.

Teaching Critical Thinking

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 22:53:58 -0500

The link to this compilation of information about teaching critical thinking skills was posted on one of my library listservs. I thought it ties in nicely with information literacy skills education. There are articles, ideas, rubrics and more.