Omnivorous Surfer

CC Licensed photo by Clint Gardner

I'm always on the lookout for good listings of websites, and this one via Twitter was a real gem of a find! It brought to my attention another blog to follow: The Innovative Educator: Way out of the box!

The sites included on the 100 Video Sites Every Educator Should Bookmark post are categorized by Educational Video Collections
General Video Collections
Teacher Education (my personal favorite, Teacher Training Videos, is included here)
Lesson Planning
Science, Math and Technology
History, Arts and Social Science
Video Tools
Network and Program Videos
Free Movies and Clips (free is good!)
How- Tos
Government Organizations.

If this listing doesn't appeal to you, you ought to take a look at the blog anyway. There's some pretty great stuff there!

I have encountered and learned from the Interesting Ways series so many times and yet never thought about sharing it here. Then today I found this page by creator Tom Barrett where he includes links to all of them. This puts all the information he has put together at your fingertips

He has used Google presentations to create slides with uses and tips for using technology in the classroom, inviting others to add to the content. The result has been a rich resource of tested-in-the-classroom ideas for a wide range of topics. Examples of topics include using audio, the Wii, Twitter, Prezi, or Google Docs in the classroom; and  supporting spelling or writing in the classroom. This morning I was looking at Twelve Interesting Ways to Use an iPod Touch in the classroom,; I found things I had never considered and a piece of technology I did not know about, a way to share audio from a single iPod Touch with 5 students.

Note that since content may be added as teachers share their ideas, the number in the title may change. For example, the link I found and used to the iPod Touch presentation specified "Eleven," while the current count is up to twelve. By the time you look, it may be at thirteen!

Reading an old blog post on Edutopia, I was reminded of TeacherTube, a site I had looked at quite some time ago. This is a site for teachers to post videos (and docs, audio, and photos) for use by the educational community. The blog describes it this way:

...it's a place that takes advantage of what uploaded, shared video offers -- community, customization, sharing, creating, and learning from each other.
According to TeacherTube, community members can

• upload, tag, and share videos worldwide.
• upload support files to attach educational activities, assessments, lesson plans, notes, and other file formats to your video.
• browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
• find, join, and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests.
• customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists.
• integrate TeacherTube videos on Web sites using video embeds or application programming interfaces.
• make videos public or private; users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.

 There are tutorials on a vast number of topics, from applications to using different technologies in the classroom. Videos are available which could be used to augment curricular materials. It was suggested by one commenter that since the videos download slowly sometimes, they could be downloaded ahead of time.

I think this looks like a great FREE resource for teachers, for both themselves and their students.

"How do I integrate the Internet into my classroom curriculum?" The Curriculum Ideas section of the cyberbee website seeks to help answer this question for the vast number of teachers who have little extra time to search out curriculum-related websites. Included sites are organized by content area, cross-curricular, and teacher ideas, with a separate section for science fair ideas. Each curricular item leads to a listing of websites which fit that description. All the ones I checked were very good, and I recommend this site. Most of its hundreds of resources seem to be geared to elementary teachers, but some would also be appropriate for middle school.

In addition to the Curriculum Ideas, the site also has Postcards for students to send and pickup from the site, Research Tools to help students be better users of the Internet, Treasure Hunts, Web Links, Web Projects, and Web Picks. Check this one out. You'll be glad you did!

EduHound is the technology resource site provided by THE Journal.  It provides links to Site Sets (collectioins of topic-based online education resources) on everything from Aaron Burr to Zoos. It includes an exhaustive list of categories including Grants & Funding, Lesson Plans, Museums, Reference, Social Studies, Software, Substitute Teaching, WebQuests, Worksheets, and many more. Links are also included to additional EduHound Websites; examples are Awesome Clipart for Educators (it has fonts, too!), and Educator Templates. This is a top-notch resource!