Resources

http://www.newscientist.com/ I rate this site a 4 star. Really good info about a broad range of techie topics.

[](Dawn Davis) I rate this site a 4 star because it has free resources and lesson plans in technology for teachers.

[](Dawn Davis) I rate this a 4 star because it has many worksheets in every area of teaching, with easy downloads.

[](Dawn Davis) I rate this a 5 star, my students love this site. It is a non-profit organization that provides free high quality educational activities on the Web at no cost to students or teachers.

[|http://www.moodle.org] (Kim Jordan) This is a (LMS) Learning Management System or a (VLE) Virtual Learning Environment. It is a free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.
 * I rate this resource as** //4 stars// because it is easy to navigate through and an excellent teaching tool.

[|www.rubistar.4teachers.org/] (Kim Jordan) If you like to use rubrics, this is a great site. This site provides teacher made rubrics or you can create/edit your own.
 * I rate this site as** //5 stars// due to the site having a wide variety of choices.

[|www.smarttech.com] (Kim Jordan) If you have a Smart Board and need ideas for lesson, then this is a good place to start. The lessons are divided up by grade level, subject, or standard.
 * I rate this site as** //3 star//s due to it not having a wide range of lessons.

[|http://thinkfinity.org] (Amanda Sheets) This web site is published by the Verizon Foundation. Anytime you conduct a search this site also searches five other top sites such as Arts Edge, Science Links, etc. Searches can be organized by audio, video, lesson plans, interactives, etc. I have always found something useful here.
 * I rate this resource as** //5 stars// because it has never failed to produce a useful resource.

[|http://www.techlearning.com] (Amanda Sheets) Tech & Learning is an educational publication which serves the K-12 educational community with practical resources and expert strategies.
 * I rate this resource as** //5 stars// for the top ten lists this publication generates.

[] (Theresa Church) Listing of educational blogs. Useful when looking for subject specific blogs. I **rate this resource** as //3 stars// since it is limited.

[] (Theresa Church) Kathy Schrock provides a wealth of links to resources and blogs. The best part is that she already screens the sites so you know that any link will take you to a worthwhile resource. You can also link off this page into Discovery Education for more free resouces.
 * I rate this resource** as //5 stars// for reliability of the quality of its recommendations.

http://www.pbworks.com (Matthew Horning) PBworks tauts itself as the world's largest home of online collaborative workspace. Teachers can use it to create class wikis for FREE. It is very easy to get started and you can invite all of your students to join your site by e-mailing them or by creating user names for them. All of the work you do is completely private so students can use their own names to tag their contributions. One of the best features is after you register, they send you an e-mail a day introducing you to the features of the site with short videos and sample pages.
 * I rate this resource as** //5 stars// for the easy startup and the daily "how to get started" e-mails sent to you for the first week.

[] (Matthew Horning) This website takes any text and turns it into dialogue between little cartoon characters. There are enough free characters and backgrounds to make it interesting for your students although they recently added paid accounts that you could use to "unlock" characters and backgrounds. My students enjoy using this for presentations because they don't have to speak in front of the room. I even used it to teach my class one day when I had lost my voice. Check it out...[]
 * I rate this resource as** //4 stars// only because they have slowly begun to move previously free features into the paid features.

[] (Matthew Horning) Zamzar is a free file conversion website. You can upload a file of almost any kind and it will convert it to a new format for you and send you a link to download the newly converted file. It is very convenient because you can convert files without purchasing or downloading any software.
 * I rate this resource as** //4 stars// because of its ease of use for a very specialized task.