New to me & worth sharing:
iGoogle. Simply go to Google's homepage and click on the More option and then "even more>>" at the bottom. iGoogle will set up your own, personalized Google homepage and it has been directing my daily surf-- check my mail and facebook (as usual), and the news I want. I can read through the major headlines of NPR, Wired, Dallas News, NEA, U.S. Dept. of Education, and CNET all at once! Need a funny? I gots a joke. I'm particularly fond of the artist of the day gadget. AND this circumvents the whole no-outside-e-mail-and-facebook-at-work issue.
Wordle. Type in some text from a blog, favorite speech, or poem and get a neat word art picture. For example, here's my ACL recap from Xanga in Wordle:
Wikispaces. Tried & true, but even better-- FREE! Wikispaces has opened 350,000 free wikis to K-12 educators! I am so stinking stoked! I'm just waiting confirmation that my HEAT ticket was approved so I can set up my wiki for my classroom. For our first project, we're going to create something similar to WikiHow.
Scribd. If you're familiar with Google Docs, this will be a similar concept to you. The neat thing about Scribd is that there are thousands of documents on this site and you can embed any of the documents into your webpage. I'm new to Scribd, but this is a really exciting site for me-- lots of fantastic educator resources (without having to buy books!).
Edublogs. This is a site which allows teachers to set up blogs for their students. I'm new here also, but I would really like to set these up so I can have one day a week with the laptops or a computer lab to work on the blog or the wiki!
TeacherTube. Most of the materials on this site are already teacher-friendly (not always, they do have to be previewed). TeacherTube still doesn't have enough videos to be really worthwhile-- most of the time, I will try Discovery Learning first. But it has a lot of potential to become a strong classroom resource. Sometimes, even if the material isn't 100% appropriate for my 6th grade classroom, I can still use the concepts taught by other teachers and incorporate them into lessons. As a teacher-to-teacher communication tool, TeacherTube is wonderful! I can't wait to get some of my stuff onto the Tube!
Education Innovation. I can't do it justice. It's a little overwhelming with professional resources. If you're a teacher, block out a few hours and go play on this site. I keep seeing the name Seth Godin on a thousand webpages, so obviously I need to pick up one of his books.
OK-- I'm going to shower and read some of The Book Thief before I hit the hay.
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