I have heard about these websites from various places throughout the past week. I hijacked a few of the descriptions, but I would rather give a hijacked description rather than an inaccurate description.
1. CoSketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images. No registration or plugins required. However, I can see this being a big problem for students with a low-maturity level who would love to draw right over what the instructor is drawing. So, be careful!
2. Thinkfinity is a free digital learning platform from the Verizon Foundation that offers comprehensive teaching and learning resources created by content partners such as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the International Reading Association, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the National Geographic Society, and more. Its content includes interactive student games, lesson plans focused on various themes, education blogs and online discussions, and much more.
3. FREE – or Federal Resources for Educational Excellence, is a U.S. Department of Education website that compiles free teacher resources available from dozens of federal agencies. Educators can sign up for the FREE RSS feed, which notifies users when new resources are added. Otherwise, they can browse by topic, from music history to life sciences.
4. Websites for Educations from Harvard School of Education, 50 Ways to Integrate Technology Into Your Classroom Tomorrow, 157 of the Most Useful Websites on the Internet, and 100+ Free Resources for Real Teachers in Real Classrooms are all 4 more places that have hundreds of more free learning resources for you to use in your classroom. Personally, I don't have time to even look at all of them today. But here's the upside: If one of our current resources goes down (which is likely to happen since technology is always changing), compilation websites such as these give us hope that there is something out there that will replace the void that needs to be filled.
