AASL+Best+Websites



Animoto Create a video in five minutes – no kidding! Using Animoto, educators and students can create videos that contain photos, graphics, music, text and more! It is only limited by your imagination.
 * Tip:** A great resource for visual learners! Instead of the typical book report, challenge your students to create a dynamic Animoto to capture the essence of their favorite books.

[|Classroom 2.0] Do you find it difficult to keep up with the latest Web 2.0. technologies? Join Classroom 2.0 Ning, a social network for educators who are using or want to use Web 2.0 in their libraries and classrooms.
 * Tip:** Look at the Classroom 2.0 weekly webinars, featuring leading Web 2.0 educators - a great way to learn for both the novice and experienced educator.

[|Curriki] Seeking new teaching strategies? If you’ve got an old lesson that you want to breathe new life into, Curriki can help. It is a free member website where educators share ideas and hear from others in the profession.
 * Tip:** If you have a lesson that you love to teach with your students, share it with others. Everyone can be successful if we all help each other to be better teachers.

[|Edublogs] Do you want to blog? Edublogs, created especially for educators, is a resource where teachers and librarians can create their own blogs with templates and help from other educators.
 * Tip:** Blogging is a good strategy to help students develop their own voices in writing.

Evernote Tired of trying to keep track or find your various notes on taken throughout the day and want to be able to organize your thoughts from a variety of sources? Evernote will do this and you can access it from anywhere, even your iPhone.

Glogster Remember the old the poster board presentations? Well, they are now digital, motivating and very visually exciting. Use these digital posters to create a book review, an interactive front page for a wiki, an innovative topic exploration or any other demonstration of learning using video, graphics, text, etc

[|Good Reads] A social network for book lovers! Members can keep track of the books they have read, make recommendations to others, vote on book lists that are posted, see what their friends are reading and recommending, and form book groups.
 * Tip:** Teachers can develop a reading group for their students where discussions can develop, suggestions for new material can be found and lovers of particular genres can find each other.

jogtheweb Do you want an easy and innovative way to guide students through the Internet? jogtheweb is a web-based tool that allows anyone to create a synchronous guide to a series of Websites. Its step-by-step approach of taking viewers through Websites allowing the author to annotate and ask guiding questions for each page is unique. Give it a try and start creating your own jogs.

Learn Central Connect with Steve Hargadon and an ever-growing number of educators on Learn Central, the social network for professional development that is ready when you are. Join free webinars and discussions in real time or participate with members asynchronously. Host a group of up to three participants for free. Develop networks with colleagues across town or around the world. Lifelong learning is just a few clicks away!

Livebinders This fun and easy-to-use site makes it easy to organize and share sources. Teachers can use it as a presentation tool, plan an interactive lesson, or engage with students on the research process

Masher Are you a little hesitant to create videos? Masher makes it’s easy. You can "mix, mash, and share" video clips, audio files, and photos into polished movies. Students own content as well as media from the BBC Motion Gallery and Rip Curl free for the mashing, and can then be shared on social media sites or via email.

[|Mindmeister]and [|Bubbl.us] Be creative -- think maps! Mindmeister and Bubbl.us are both online mapping tools: Mindmeister is better for middle and high school students, while Bubbl.us is for younger students. Both websites allow users to think visually, collaborate, and share ideas through concept maps.

Museumbox This site allows students to place items into virtual boxes; these items can include images, video, text, and sound. MuseumBox can be used across the curriculum and can help students to describe a person, place, thing, event, idea, or issue. The site facilitates description, debate, investigation, and exploration and development of ideas and issues.

[|Ning] Create your own social network for your classroom, your school group or your library. Share your ideas, pictures, and plans. Choose the features, a forum, a blog, members' pages, RSS feeds - whatever you would like to share and collaborate and control the membership.
 * Tip:** Classroom or library nings give students opportunities to learn how to effectively and safely be members of an online social network.

[|Our Story] Create your story! Our Story permits users to develop and save collaborative timelines that can be personalized with annotations, photos, and videos. Stories (timelines) can be printed in book format, archived on DVD, or even sent as postcards.
 * Tip:** Teach your students to develop content-specific timelines that are linked to the teaching of research and information literacy skills.

Pageflakes Create your own personalized homepage with Pageflakes. You can include all of your favorite internet sites and arrange them as you wish on your page. The "flakes" - small versions of the web pages you prefer - could include sites that focus on a specific hobby or interest, a particular subject area, a classroom study topic or current events

[|Partnership for 21st Century Skills] What skills will our students need to be successful in the 21st century? Partnership for the 21st Century offers educators information, resources, and tools to understand, identify and integrate the 21st century skills of creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving skills and communication and collaboration skills.
 * Tip:** Here’s a great resource to help educators learn how to integrate 21st Century Skills into the curriculum.

[|Polleverywhere] If you want to get learners’ attention, then ask a provocative question. Poll Everywhere is a voting platform that can be used in classrooms and libraries to gather answers to a particular question. Participants vote by sending a text message via their cell phones or by voting on the web.

Prezi Getting tired of the old linear PowerPoint presentations? Then switch to Prezi and start to create fantastic, brain-friendly presentations. Use the "zebra wheel" to customize, non-linear creative presentations that can kept for online access or downloaded for personal or professional use. Include pictures, videos, and more. Free presentations for anyone and extended options for teachers and those in Education.

[|Primary Access] Capture your students' imagination with movie narratives based on primary sources. Primary Access is an online tool that allows students and teachers to combine text, visual, and sound elements, which are then combined to convey information about their chosen historical event or time frame. A library of Primary Access movies is available through a catalog by historical time period.
 * Tip:** Encourage active learning: have students choose a historical event or time frame to research and synthesize their information through a Primary Access movie.

School Tube This is the ideal place for teachers and students to share videos online. Create your own channel for your school or share videos with other students and educators. Instructions on how to load, create, and compress videos as well as how to create video contests and TV shows for your school. It's all here in SchoolTube.

Scratch Targeted to 8- to 16-year olds, Scratch allows students to create and share projects, presentations, stories and best of all – videos games! The emphasis is on multi-media and includes graphics, sound, music, and photos. Supported by National Science Foundation research, Scratch encourages creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration.

[|Simply Box] If you’re a visual learner, then this is the tool for you! Simply Box is a tool that allows users to capture, share, and organize anything found on the web into an unlimited number of "boxes" and then share with friends, groups, students, or the world. However, rather than saving lists of bookmarks, it allows users to capture just a part of a webpage, whether it’s a headline, a paragraph, a photo, or a video. Items can be saved and organized.
 * Tip:** As students collaborate on projects, this tool makes it easy to organize, cite and keep track of the individual resources culled from various websites.

[|Skype] //Can you hear me?// Skype is a basic and easy-to-use service that offers free voice, video calls, conference calls, instant messaging and group instant messaging. Download the software; connect to the Internet and you're good to go.
 * Tip:** Invite an author or a content expert to Skype with your students.

[|S.O.S for Information Literacy] Learn how to effectively incorporate information literacy into your lesson plans. S.O.S. for Information Literacy is a dynamic, collaborative web-based multimedia resource for educators, K to 16. This site links lesson plans and teaching ideas for information literacy through a comprehensive quality control system to ensure that lessons are high caliber.
 * Tip:** Create an account and build your own lessons or activities.

[|Teacher Tube] What could be better? You Tube – just for teachers and students! Teacher Tube offers videos solely for the field of education. Videos are created by teachers and students to be shared with other teachers and students.
 * Tip:** A great way to have students share their work with parents and for teachers to share with other teachers, peers, and administrators, both on-campus and off.

TED TED is a remarkable Website sharing ideas from the world's most innovative thinkers and experts related to technology, entertainment, design, business, science, and global issues. Watch, listen to, learn, discuss and spread TED.

[|Voice Thread] The end of the boring slide show! VoiceThread allows users to share images, documents, and videos with added narration by the authors and others.
 * Tip:** Bring oral history to life in the classroom, as students narrate a series of images that relate to the skills and ideas they have learned in a particular lesson.

Weblist Weblist is a great way to gather and organize content based on a theme with the added feature of one URL. Your weblist can then be shared through social media networks or posted on a blog or Website. No time to make your own list, then search their playlist for subjects from music to science and everything in between.

Wikispaces (http://www.wikispaces.com) This is the quintessential collaborative tool! This easy-to-use website allows anyone to write, edit and share content, depending on the permissions granted by the wiki owner.
 * Tip:** Students can use a wiki as a research journal, documenting their progress from beginning questions to finished products, as they receive feedback directly on the wiki from their classroom teacher and librarian.

[|Wordle] Do you like to play with words or create visual poems? A "Wordle" enables you to create a word "cloud," visually depicting the relationship between words based on their frequency of use. You can tweak your word "clouds" with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
 * Tip:** Teach students to create a Wordle to express their reading interests or their favorite book.

The following websites were complied from A Howie DiBlasi Conference from 2008 entitled Digital Tools for the 21st Century Classroom. There are some great sites for incorporating technology into the classroom.
 * Technology Tools**

[|Jing]: The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video...from your computer to anywhere. [|Awesome Stories] This link will take you to a terrific website containing a new primary-source database. It has an on-site search and it's free!

[|Zamar] : Free file converter.

[|Scratch]: Create animated stories.

[|KeepVid]: Help in downloading streaming video.

[|AudioGrabber] : Help in downloading and uploading digital audio.

[|Google Sketch-up]: Creates 3D models

[|Letterpop]: Help in creating appealing newsletters.

[|Gcast]: Create a podcast.

[|Photo Story]: Create a digital story with photos.