Useful Information In and Out of the Classroom 8/2/13

Here are some interesting sites that I’ve found this week, thanks to my PLN. As a teacher, I feel we have to keep up to date concerning research in our field and current issues in the education system. I hope some of these inspire you, inform you, and even have you asking questions. Thank you for coming by and visiting!

Note: Each resource is labeled with a level and subject area to make it easier to use.

Levels: E: Elementary; M: Middle; H: High; G: General, all levels; SN: Special Needs; T: Teachers

Subject Areas: LA: Language Arts, English, Reading, Writing; M: Math; S: Science; Health; SS: Social Studies, Current Events; FA: Fine Arts; Music, Art, Drama; FL: Foreign Language; PE: Physical Ed; C: Career; A: All

Phrase.It - “Create your own comic strips online with phrase.it, the free and easy to use speech bubble photo editor. Put speech bubbles on your photos and create your own comic strips within minutes! Great looking results guaranteed, no sign-up needed, 100% free. phrase.it is probably the best speech bubble photo editor you will find on the web.” (L:G; SA:A)

Connect Safely - “ConnectSafely is for parents, teens, educators, advocates, policy makers – everyone engaged in and interested in the impacts of the social Web. The user-driven, all-media, multi-platform, fixed and mobile social Web is a big part of young people’s lives, and this is the central space – linked to from social networks across the Web – for perspective on safe, civil use of  Web and mobile technology” (L:M,H; SA:A)

Mindmup - mindmapping; it was not intuitive and took some exploring to figure out how it worked. (L:G; SA:A)

Snap - “(formerly BYOB) is a visual, drag-and-drop programming language. It is an extended reimplementation of Scratch (a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab) that allows you to Build Your Own Blocks. It also features first class lists, first class procedures, and continuations. These added capabilities make it suitable for a serious introduction to computer science for high school or college students.” (L:H; SA:A)

Digital Explorer - “inspirational lessons and resources from the world to your classroom.” (L:G; SA:S)

Original Image: Tools by Pat Hensley