Copyright Friendly Wiki This wiki offers an extensive listing of websites that are what they call “copyright friendly”, for use in media projects, web pages, blogs, wikis, etc. It’s worth noting that students should still keep an eye out for copyright notices on these sites and, of course, continue to cite or attribute materials to their creators.
Glogster EDU There are innumerable ideas for student activities and assignments using the Glogster application. Students can build multimedia pages or ‘posters’ - images, text, video, sound - creating such things as literary magazines, personal reflections, storyboards, etc… Be sure you use the EDU site, where you can build the online equivalent of a gated community for your classroom (inappropriate advertising or exposure to ‘outsiders’ will not be a problem). On the main page of the site, you’ll find tutorials and resources to get you started, along with some great examples of student work.
The Learning Network A blog produced by the New York Times, this site offers a pile of lesson planning resources in a number of subject areas, each linked in some way to the content of the newspaper. However, that doesn’t mean that all of the lesson ideas are therefore ”New York” or “American” only, (which might make them a little irrelevant for students living in many parts of the world), and a lot of them could be easily adapted and used in conjunction with your local newspaper.
Moodle Mayhem A community of Moodle users who have come together to share ideas and resources for using Moodle in the K-12 and adult-learner classroom. You’ll find articles, links to other ‘Moodler’ sites, course listings, podcasts, video tutorials, … to name just a few of the features that they offer.
PBS Teachers This site not only includes lesson planning resources and “Activity Packs” for a variety of subject areas and grade levels, but there’s also links to online professional development and free access to an online webinar archive in which experts share “resources and strategies to help teachers use digital media to engage students in rich learning experiences.”
Wallwisher This would be a great tool for ongoing collaboration and communication in the classroom. When I looked at this, my first thought was how easy it would be to set up class activities beforehand, with ‘sticky notes’ containing videos, articles, websites and any other online resources and then have the students access the wall and respond to what I’ve posted and/or add their own resources. The cycle of collaboration could be ongoing for a particular topic or unit as everyone continues to post and respond. When it’s time to wrap up, it becomes a resource that can be embedded in other blogs/websites and a reference for summative activities. There are many, many other ways it can be used. Check out: “Wallwisher – 105 Classroom Ideas” and “Using Online Sticky Noticeboards”.
Wordnik A great site for learning more about a selected word. Once you enter your word, the result provides access to multiple dictionaries, a thesaurus, quotes that contain the word, recent Twitter entries that contain the word, Flickr photos tagged with the word, and many other online references related to the word being searched. One very interesting view is the frequency of use of a word over decades, shown in a bar graph.
