Monday, May 23, 2011

Weekly Core Subjects Resources

For many of you summer is about to start or has started.  For others (those plagued by snow, flooding, and severe weather) you still have a couple weeks left.  Summer is usually a slow time for this blog as I take time for family and other endeavors.  However, with graduate classes and working summer school, there might be more action around here....you just never know.

English
1.) Netspeak helps you improve your writing.  When searching for words, Netspeak can give you directions. Their dictionary contains billions of phrases and how commonly they are used.

2.) English Tenses With Cartoons is a website that helps users learn the proper tenses of words by providing cartoons to teach them.  Great for middle school grammar lessons.  

3.) Stick Figure Hamlet is the story of Hamlet in stick figures.  Not much else to say...but easy for students who struggle with Shakespeare to understand it.

4.) Ape Word is a website that helps you improve your writing.  You copy and paste some text into a "chalkboard" and it will generate drop down menus that provide synonyms or alternate words for users.  How it chooses those words I am not sure...am guessing it looks through and finds the ones used more than one time.

5.) Cool Tools for Writing is a four part series (this link takes you to the 4th part and then you can get to 1-3 from there) from the Ed Tech Ideas Blog.  It provides links and information to resources to help with writing.

Mathematics
1.) From Free Technology 4 Teachers comes a blog post with links to 5 Free Online Scientific Calculators.  A valuable asset for 1 to 1 schools so that students can save some money. 

2.) Math Maps is a activity idea from Tom Barrett where students use Google Maps to complete math activities.  If Google Maps zooms in enough to your hometown this would be a valuable activity to study the community.  What an interesting idea...kudos!

3.) Java Applets on Mathematics is a website that provides numerous (like that math vocabulary usage?) interactives that use Java to teach various math concepts.  Source: Educational Technology Guy

Science
1.) The Howard Hughes Medical Institute offer five virtual labs for teachers and students to learn about Transgenic Flies, Bacterial Identification, Cardiology, Neurophysiology, and Immunology. 

2.) Build a Solar System allows users to input the diameter of the sun and from that users will learn about how that impacts other planets in the solar system.  Users will also learn about the distance and speed of light as well.  You can also visit a more extensive page that allows more features.

3.) At My Science Box you'll find complete, scaffolded lesson plans to teach a 4-6 week middle school science unit through activities, projects, and field trips. Every lesson has been kid-tested with students at Archway School.

4.)  Java Applets on Physics is a website that provides interactives that use Java to teach various physics concepts.  Source: Educational Technology Guy

5.) From the iLearn Technology Blog comes a great list of 33 Space Websites to Celebrate the Luanch of Endeavor.   A great and a good synopsis of several websites that have been shared on this blog as well.

Social Studies
1.) Google Geography Teacher's Institute is a professional development opportunity for social studies teachers to learn how to sue the various Google Tools, such as Google Earth and Sketchup.  Travel and Room are not provided however.  Winners will be selected on August 15th, so make sure you apply well before that. 

2.) Newspaper Map allows visitors to find and discover the newspapers from all over the world.  A great way for students and teachers to be kept up to date on events happening from the journalists in those countries.  Each color coded place mark lets you know what language the paper is available in as well.

3.) YouTube Town Hall is a channel where videos are shown of politicians discussing various government policies.  A great way for students to see the differences between conservatives and liberals.  You can choose the issue, click who you support, and see who is winning. 

4.) Free Maps offers blank world and continental maps for free.  Choose from various styles and print them out. 

5.) Thinkport Tools offers a free online timeline creator for teachers and students.  You can start on a project, save it, and then get access to it later by the name you give it.  The setup and final product is very simple.  A good tool for introducing timelines.