Site of the Week
Wikipedia co-founder launches YouTube-like web site for childrenNov 18, 2009
Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, has launched a new web site designed to gather and organize educational videos for students ages 3 to 18. The site, WatchKnow.org, currently features more than 11,000 videos across 2,000 categories on subjects such as math, science, and history. The nonprofit site features new software, developed specifically for the site by Sanger, that allows wiki-style collaboration among users. "Think of it as YouTube meets Wikipedia, filtering out everything but quality educational videos," Sanger said.
DreamBox Learning gives teachers free resources to boost math literacyNov 11, 2009
Educational software company DreamBox Learning is offering free digital math resources for kindergarten through second-grade teachers to use in their classrooms. These "DreamBox Teacher Tools" include a variety of lessons using virtual manipulatives, ideas for incorporating these lessons into the elementary curriculum, and resources to support teacher's professional development as they use the online toolkit.
'NASA Images' assembles all of NASA's multimedia content into a free, searchable collectionNov 04, 2009
"NASA Images" is a service of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library. It was created under a Space Act agreement to offer unprecedented access to NASA media (including images, video, and audio), functioning as a free online library for all of NASA's multimedia content.
Digital student magazine broadens engineering's appealOct 26, 2009
The American Society for Engineering Education has launched a free, online, interactive version of "eGFI-Engineering: Go For It," its magazine intended to inspire middle and high school students to consider engineering careers. The new digital magazine features examples of engineering innovations that are transforming society, profiles of dynamic undergraduates who want to make a difference, and descriptions of the most popular engineering career paths and disciplines.
New guide helps educators steer students on the path toward collegeOct 19, 2009
The federal What Works Clearinghouse has released a new online practice guide, "Helping Students Navigate the Path to College: What High Schools Can Do." The guide recommends five steps that educators, administrators, and policy makers can take, beginning in ninth grade, to increase students' access to higher education.
iNACOL launches Continuity of Learning web site for swine-flu planningOct 14, 2009
The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) has launched a new web site to help schools deliver continuity of learning in the event of a swine flu outbreak or other pandemic. iNACOL's Continuity of Learning web site provides free resources to help schools, districts, and states prepare for the H1N1 flu pandemic or other natural disasters.
'Homework Day' to promote the use of Wolfram Alpha for education Oct 06, 2009
Wolfram Alpha, a free research web site powered by a computational knowledge engine that generates answers to questions in real time by doing computations on its own vast internal knowledge base, has announced a new live event on Oct. 21 to promote its use for education, PRWeb reports.
ALA issues guidance on showing video content in classroomsSep 30, 2009
When the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act was enacted in 2002, librarians hoped it would clear up copyright exceptions for the digital delivery of content for distance education. In reality, understanding what is permitted under the TEACH Act in combination with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and existing fair-use exceptions has become even more confusing.
New Smithsonian site lets teachers and students create short historical moviesSep 23, 2009
"Picturing the 1930s," a new educational web site created by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in collaboration with the University of Virginia, allows teachers and students to explore the 1930s through paintings, artist memorabilia, historical documents, newsreels, period photographs, music, and video. Using PrimaryAccess, a web-based teaching tool developed at the university's Curry Center for Technology and Teacher Education, visitors can select images, write text, and record narration in the style of a documentary filmmaker.
Free resources help celebrate National Hispanic Heritage MonthSep 15, 2009
To help educators pique their students' interest in Hispanic-American history and celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, Verizon Thinkfinity.org is offering free lesson plans, activities, and educational resources on a special section of its home page.










