instructional technology network
tri-county educational service center

There are more resources on the web than any one person can possibly keep up with - that’s why we need organized collections like those at www.ohiotreasurechest.org and www.d3a2.org to help sort it out. The great part is that there’s that much material, the bad part is that it’s easy to overlook great stuff.

One such resource is the Library of Congress (LOC) website - www.loc.gov. It’s really not possible to write an exhaustive post on the breadth of the resources on the LOC site. The “Selected Resources for School Librarians and Teachers” guide alone lists 37 specific collections.

The scope of resources includes such items as:

• historical collections
• veterans history
• an international section
• prints and photographs
• children’s literature
• poetry for American high schools
  
• terrorism studies
• copyright information
• a map collection of “Places in the News!“
• and LOC webcasts.

This is to name only a small handful.

As a starting point, let me point you to three items from the site:

1. LOC Teachers’ Page: www.loc.gov/teachers
2. Selected Resources for School Librarians and Teachers (PDF): memory.loc.gov/learn/educators/handouts/school_lbn.pdf
3. Handouts: memory.loc.gov/learn/educators/handouts

A great collection of multimedia resources on the web is at Teachers’ Domain. Developed by PBS affiliate, WGBH, the collection includes a number of free videos, interactive modules, and articles. Age appropriate content is available for essentially all grade levels.

Free registration is required, but worth your time. The primary content areas include: Earth and Space Science, Engineering, Life Science, and Physical Science. A dozen or so Special Collections touch upon Civil Rights and Literacy (e.g., “Between the Lions Early Literacy”).

Good stuff. Good price.

[Side Note: Teachers' Domain also offers a handful of online courses. More information on these at PBS Teacherline]

www.free.ed.gov

There is a wealth on information available on the websites for government agencies. However, given that there are so many of them (agencies, that is), hunting down good stuff can be hard to do, especially for students who have less experience with search skills, or even a limited ability to scan through materials.

This site brings the resources of well over 60 different organizations together in one place. As described on the site’s “About FREE” page:

“FREE makes it easier to find teaching and learning resources from the federal government.

“More than 1,500 federally supported teaching and learning resources are included from dozens of federal agencies. New sites are added regularly.

“FREE is among the most popular K-12 websites maintained by the U.S. Department of Education because of the many great resources being offered by participating federal agencies.”

The major subject groupings include:

• Arts & Music
• Health & Phys Ed
• Language Arts
• Math
• Science
• World Studies
• U.S. History, including
  • Business & Work
  • Ethnic Groups
  • Famous People
  • Government
  • Movements
  • States and Regions
  • Wars
  • Other History & Social Studies
• U.S. Time Periods

Receive free.ed.gov resource updates via their RSS feed at: http://www.ed.gov/free/free-rss.xml

Gapminder is data visualization tool.

Yes, it sounds a little dull when you put it that way, but when coupled with a mountain of socio-economic and demographic data, it is an unbelievable picture of our world. It is an excellent resource for charting and comparing data on countries around the world and looking at the relationship between those data.

Compare life expectancy, number of doctors, internet use, infant mortality rates, phone use, boy:girl ratios in schools, and a big handful of other indicators.

This is a great tool for helping your student visualize the discrepancies (i.e., gaps) between their lifestyles and that of others worldwide and could spark some incredible discussions.

Find it online at http://tools.google.com/gapminder.

Tri-County ESC is offering a technology integration class series targeted toward middle and high school grades teachers.

During the 4 face-to-face sessions participants will explore topics such as:

• information literacy
• presentation skills
• online publication media
• online learning environments and best practice (e.g. Moodle)

Complementing the face-to-face sessions, is an online component to the course designed to foster continued learning opportunities and participant dialogue between sessions. This blending of instructional delivery allows time to not only learn about featured topics, but also to develop and try new skills in a supported environment to encourage real integration experiences.

No prior experience with online coursework is necessary.

The course is available at any of four locations in the area, and each site is open to teachers from neighboring Tri-County districts.

Course locations and dates include:
Black River Education Center (BREC) Media Center, Black River Schools
Thursdays, 9/20, 10/4, 10/18, 11/1
Time: 3:30-5:00p; Last session 3:30-6:00p

Loudonville High School, Lab 101A, Loudonville-Perrysville Schools
Wednesdays, 10/10, 10/24, 11/7, 11/14
Time: 3:30-5:15p; Last session 3:30-6:00

Rittman High School Computer Lab, Rm 117, Rittman Schools
Tuesdays, 9/25, 10/9, 10/23, 11/6
Time: 3:00-4:45p; Last session 3:00-5:30

Waynedale High School Computer Lab, Southeast Schools
Tuesdays, 10/16, 10/30, 11/13, 11/27
Time: 3:00-4:45p; Last session 3:00-5:30

A similar course experience for elementary grades is planned for sometime after the holidays.

Register online at event.youresc.k12.oh.us or call the ESC office at 330.345.6771. One hour of graduate credit is available through Ashland University.

INFOhio recently announced the release of the new INFOsearch tool.

INFOsearch allows the user to search many of INFOhio’s resources simultaneously. This resource will make it quicker and easier to locate good content via INFOhio. Records can be targeted toward the usual K-5 /6-8 /9-12 groups and can be filtered by resource types.

Tip: This would be a good place to introduce students to search skills using multiple databases.

More information:

• Full Press release from Theresa Frederick, Executive Director of INFOhio
• INFOsearch Frequently Asked Questions

I last referenced Google Earth in the spring to make mention of an exceptionally good visual presentation of the crisis situation in Darfur compiled by the United States National Holocaust Museum.

In its latest release, Google Earth has added Sky to the list of features available in this tool.

With about a hundred million stars and two hundred million galaxies, Sky in Google Earth lets you explore the heavens like never before.

This tool has great potential for astronomy explorations. Key items are clickable and provide a more detailed description. Downloadable or custom-created tours make this resource still more useful for guiding your students through your specific instructional topic.

Downloading of Google Earth software v. 4.2 or better is required and will most likely involve your district’s tech coordinator due to both permissions and filtering software issues. Though a couple of the above links are marked as “blocked “, once the application is downloaded and installed on a computer, it plays well with filter restrictions.

Target Grades: 3+ for demonstrative purposes, higher for independent use.

[via TechLearning.com]

Harry Grover Tuttle, writing for TechLearning, offers 14 tips for integrating technology to enhance reading instruction.

Some suggestions require more specific resources or are incompatible with our filtering, but several can be implemented in essentially any classroom setting with commonly available computing tools.

Target grades: Varied