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

I’ve had a handful of links hanging around in my reader that I’ve wanted to pass along, so I’m doing a little housekeeping here and getting those posted.

• TechLEARNING.com > Making Book Trailers with PhotoStory3 (If you haven’t checked out PhotoStory before, you should at least take a look at the sample movies and screen shots in this article)
• David Warlick > Some Sample Blog Assignments Links to the New ISTE NETS-S (”NETS-S” is the National Educational Technology Standards for Students)
• Codswallop> The Excel Magician: 70+ Excel Tips and Shortcuts to help you make Excel Magic
• TechLEARNING.com > 25th Annual Awards of Excellence A great showcase of top-notch tech tools
• The Savvy Technologist > Policies 2.0: Rules for the Social Web
• TechLEARNING.com > Play That Tune: Music Sites for the Classroom
• TechLEARNING.com > Assessment with Video and PowerPoint
• TechLEARNING.com > Digital Storytelling: It’s More Than Just Software

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

PBS Kids Go! “Don’t Buy It: Get Media Smart” helps students understand the ways in which people and products are often portrayed by the entertainment and advertising media.

“Children spend the majority of their days consuming mass media. On average, children spend four-and-a-half hours a day using television, video games and computers. Yet children are not provided with the tools needed to evaluate and analyze the media messages they see.”

The site is interactive and visually interesting. Teacher and parent guides are included, as well as bios of a few “Teen Heroes” who are noted for their roles in combating media issues they perceive as harmful. This a great resource for addressing the evaluation of communications as outlined in the tech standards.

Find the site online at http://pbskids.org/dontbuyit/.

Target audience: Grades 3-5

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[via TechLearning]

The Ohio Treasure Chest, a website created by the tech staff at North Canton City Schools, contains a wealth of standards-organized resources as well as curriculum connections, lesson plans, and assessments.

Thousands of resources have been identified by other educators as being useful tools for teaching many of the indicators in each grade level. I’ve also identified connections between technology indicators and those in language arts, science, social studies, and math to help determine where these concepts may already be addressed across the curriculum.

Those of you who’ve visited the collection before, will be glad to see the site has a new web address: www.ohiotreasurechest.org.

I encourage you to visit the Treasure Chest and take a look around.

Staff handout: http://www.ohiotreasurechest.org/otc4staff.pdf

Parent Flyer: http://www.ohiotreasurechest.org/otc4parents.pdf

Scott McLeod (one of my favorite education/technology/leadership bloggers) has pointed out the availability of [free] tutorials on data analysis at School Data Tutorials.

“The tutorials on the web site highlight many of the Excel skills that are helpful when working with building- and district-level data. The tutorials are targeted at data managers, principals, guidance counselors, teachers, and other school personnel who have the responsibility for collecting, analyzing, and reporting K-12 performance data (which is just about everyone these days!).”

Specifically highlighted are four categories of skills that McLeod and his team think every education-related professional should understand: freeze panes, sort, filter, and conditional formatting.

While you can jump straight over to the site at schooldatatutorials.org, I recommend you start with the original article, cross-posted at LeaderTalk.org and DangerouslyIrrelevant.org , and follow the links provided there.

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

Via Lifehacker.com :

Where the Web Archives Are

“Some of the most intriguing resources on the web are located in archives—compilations of data that in the past, could only be found by making appointments in dusty libraries. Today, I’m going to take you on a quick tour through some of the most fascinating archives on the web.”

Depending on your subject area focus, some of these resources can be an instructional gold mine. The categories discussed include the following: History, Multimedia, Print Media, Science, Web-Specific, and Government.

Remember, always exercise your good professional judgment and preview any resource before using it with or recommending it to your students.

I came across and briefly found myself addicted to this language arts resource this summer.

“Word Frog provides practice in matching antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms.

The target word appears on the frog, with the word category underneath, defining the relationship to be matched.”

The producers of this resource, Arcademic, have other word and math games available, but I haven’t taken the opportunity to preview those to see if they are of similar quality. These are primarily geared toward an elementary audience.