ALTEC a site supporting the use of “innovative technologies to improve teaching and learning” is involved in creating instructional technologies to meet educators’ needs. ALTEC provides multitudinous practical and diverse assets to educators such as 4Teachers.org “the Online Space for Teachers Integrating Technology into the Classroom.” , for information literacy purposes, a particularly valuable section is Teacher Tacklebox. The Teacher Tacklebox enables users to locate WebQuests, TrackStars, and ThinkQuests. The search interface is facile and allows searching by theme and state. 4Teachers.org is just one aspect of ALTEC’s site that contains much to rave about. Educators will also want to delve into other sections such as Trackstar (also useful for creating and accessing online lessons). Most of the pertinent information literacy related resources are available from the 4Teachers.org homepage. With all of the wizards and stars on this site, the results are almost magical!
AOL @ School K-12 Classroom Resources
AOL@School K-12 Classroom Resources is both for teachers to utilize with their students and for students to use by themselves. For students, the site includes content area support, games, reference tools, news sources, and ideas. Students of all ages will find content especially for them at this site (e.g., AOL@School Jr. particularly for K-2). For teachers, the site includes professional development opportunities, classroom tools, lesson plans, technology tips, and interactive learning resources. As a site that provides educator-reviewed classroom resources in all of the content areas, AOL@SCHOOL is a site for teachers of all levels to bookmark and use when in need of activities, research materials, educational games, multimedia resources or lesson plans.
CyberSmart!
CyberSmart! offers educators the chance to implement myriad safe and effective Internet activities. Particularly noteworthy are the sections for Lesson Plans and Activity Sheets and the Technology and Standards Alignment Document.
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA): 21st Century Information Fluency Project
The IMSA 21st Century Information Fluency Project constructs its city around an information literacy model based on the definition provided for Digital Information Fluency: “Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically”. Be sure to check out the Wizard tools section which provides tools to help users utilize effective research strategies throughout the entire research process and the tutorials section which provides hands on activities such as MicroModules (media rich learning experiences with pre and post tests) and Search challenges (practical research problems to test user strategies in solving these problems). The site also includes a resources section which includes features such as lesson plans and action research database and annotated links.
Educator’s Network
The Educator’s Network is a resource collection, lesson plans, Webquests and Reference Tools including Library Tools. The website contains an entire section devoted to librarianship.
Education World
Besides all of its many lesson plans and professional development offerings, Education World also has a section specifically related to Technology Integration which covers basics every teacher should know as well as interactive projects for teachers to appropriate. Interactive projects include opportunities for collaboration, virtual field trips, WebQuests, Technology Lesson Plans, and more. Teachers who are looking for a site that is updated regularly with high quality projects and interaction should check out this site.
Educause: Transforming Education through Information Technologies
While Educause is focused on providing scholarly support to academic librarians, its resource section is felicitous for all librarians who are wishing to remain informed regarding information technologies. Classroom teachers and teacher librarians will find much to rave about in the resources section, particularly in “Libraries and Technology” and “Teaching and Learning”. The resources available include books such as Educause: Educating the Net Generation and articles such as Digital Game-Based Learning. This site is scholarly, timely, and relevant and a boon to any educator who utilizes its resources as a means of pursuing professional development and improving teaching.
Marco Polo: Internet Content for the Classroom
MarcoPolo is a website to be cognizant of for its production of free and standards-based collection of lesson plans, interactive content, worksheets, and reviewed Websites separated into content areas.
ReadWriteThink
ReadWriteThink is the result of a partnership between the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the resources on the site are evaluated by at least two members of the ReadWriteThink team before they are placed onto the site making it highly current and reliable. The website features section includes links to lessons, standards, related websites, literacy engagements (to target a specific literary skill), student materials (online activities for students), and a calendar (featuring a new literature-related event daily). This is a particularly useful site for teachers in the language arts content area, but also it contains general critical literacy information useful for all teachers.
Scholastic
Although a commercial company, Scholastic purports to adhere to a corporate mission of helping children around the world to read and learn and to this end has a variety of useful classroom teacher and teacher-librarian resources. Also noteworthy is Scholastic’s current School Libraries Work report which provides lengthy and persuasive evidence of the efficacy of school library media centers when they are integrated into a school’s curriculum.
Scholastic provides an online activities center for all grades Pre-K up through grade 12. The activities center provides Web-based activities that enhance cross-curricular learning. Scholastic also offers teacher guides to support the implementation of the activities into extant lesson plans or as ends in themselves. The online activities, along with the other resources offered for teachers such as the lesson plans, teaching strategies, and tools section, makes the Scholastic site worthy of frequent visits to plumb its depth repeatedly for new ideas. Scholastic’s site is not solely a resource for teachers but also includes resources for teacher-librarians, administrators, parents, and kids.
TeAchnology
TeAchnology styles itself as the online teacher resource. While the site is a commercial endeavor offering various levels of membership and added services, many of the site’s basic time saving and innovative services are free. TeAchnology’s mission is “to provide services designed to support educators’ in effectively incorporating technology in teaching and learning”. The site provides a variety of free resources to enable teachers to integrate technology into their curricula with confidence. This teacher resource wonderland includes lesson plans (over 27,000!), worksheets, WebQuests, games, and more.
Web English Teacher
Web English Teacher is an exemplary site displays the way in which information literacy may be effectively integrated into the curriculum. All of this activities on this site reveal that the creators of this website take all types of literacy development—including media and information literacy—seriously and have created this website as one means of actively working to enhance that development. The link provided is to the section of the website specifically related to media and information literacy but the site also contains myriad other useful sections such as critical thinking, interdisciplinary, reading/literacy, and speech and debate. In addition, this remarkable site is updated frequently such that links remain working and relevant.
Multiple Intelligences
MISmart
MISmart has a page for each of the intelligences of activities that a child who is strong in that type of intelligence might particularly enjoy.
Walter McKenzie’s Surfaquarium
Walter McKenzie’s Surfaquarium contains a plethora of valuable information relating to multiple intelligences. Check out the resources section which includes a link to a separate innovative teaching website for teachers as well as links for parents and children.
Webquests
Best Webquests
Best Webquests chosen by Tom March another prominent promoter of WebQuests is a notable site for providing high quality, ranked, categorized WebQuests. The site is well-organized and frequently updated with new WebQuests as well as current news related to WebQuests. Tom March also provides an incisive About section which explains what needs to be included in a WebQuest that fosters higher-order-thinking skills.
March suggests that improperly designed WebQuests proliferate and impede the maximum transfer of learning and student engagement that results from a properly designed WebQuest. To this end, March has created Best WebQuests to hold educators to higher standards of creating and utilizing WebQuests to engender transformative learning experiences for today’s students.
The WebQuest Page
The WebQuest Page is maintained by Bernie Dodge, the creator of the constructivist lesson format the WebQuest. Bernie Dodge asserts the following motivation and rationale for the site he has developed to foster the facile integration of WebQuests into curriculum, “A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web.
WebQuests are designed to use learners’ time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners’ thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation” (Overview & FAQ). For those new to WebQuests, The WebQuest Page provides training materials. For both new and old WebQuest users, the site provides a portal into WebQuest news, a search tool, and many WebQuest examples accessed via The WebQuest Portal.
(WebQuests are also excellent collaborative projects through which classroom teachers can capitalize on the strengths of teacher-librarians.)
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