Cool Websites - 21st Century School Teacher

There are so many outstanding websites for use by educators in the classroom, sometimes it's hard to know where to start. The following websites are some of our favorites...

www.lulu.com

There are several self-publishing sites on the web, but lulu.com is my favorite. Students can self-publish their work or you can publish individual or class products. It is a great site to introduce students to publishing and our global economy.

www.exploratorium.com

For students that don't like to read or need something highly engaging to motivate, this site can do just that. There are several fun topics that students can read to learn about. In 20 or 30 minutes students can read 15-20 web pages packed with print and non-print text. This is a great site to use to teach reading of non-fiction text.

HowStuffWorks

Your students can find easy to understand information about how anything and everything works on this site.

And have you been here yet?

Polldaddy

Create surveys and polls for your website, blog and social network profiles.

StoryTellingAlice

Alice was developed at Carnegie Mellon as a way to get students excited about computer science and to make learning programming fun. Over 100 universities and 100 high schools now use Alice as their introductory computer sciences class. After a few hours of using Alice or StoryTellingAlice, students have already learned looping, multi-threading, and method encapsulation, and they will think that all they are doing is creating stories. Well known for its ties to Randy Pausch...

Toondoo

Create your own comic strips, publish, share & discuss...

Wizlite

Enjoy collaborative page highlighting with this tool.

Lesson Writer

Plan Lessons, Create Teaching Materials and Track Classes - Automatically!

PBwiki

Wiki spaces available for use by educators--ad free!

esnips

eSnips is a website where you can upload anything - photos, videos, links, music and documents - and share it with others. You get 5 Gb of free storage

Babbel

Babbel... Like to talk? Want to learn a new language? Try Babbel where you can learn languages online. If you teach a foreign language, this could be a great resource for you!

Tolerance.org

Tolerance.org is a principal online destination for people interested in dismantling bigotry and creating, in hate's stead, communities that value diversity.

Pageflakes

Pageflakes is a free web-based start page tool. You can use it to aggregate all kinds of resources and tools on your web-based desktop (to create a personal learning environment). All "flakes" are editable and deletable, and there are thousands of flakes that can be added, e.g. wikipedia flake, calendar, bookmarks, and so on. You can also RSS feeds. And you can share your page with others. There is a special Pageflakes for students' version tool.

Scriblink

Another whiteboard application--set up nicely for collaboration...

"Scriblink is a free digital whiteboard that users can share online in real-time. Sorta like pen and paper, minus the dead trees, plastic, and the inconvenience of being at the same place at the same time. Scriblink is all about collaboration. Whether you're there for fun or more practical things like layout, planning, concept diagramming, or tutoring a friend in math, Scriblink brings you the power of free hand expression with anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world.

fablusi

THE ONLINE ROLE-PLAY SIMULATION PLATFORM
Creating Learning Experiences that Deliver Real Change

chartgizmo

Create charts for your website, blog and social network profiles. ChartGizmo may be useful for those who needs to visualize financial, scientific or other type of data.

Teachertube

This site provides resources for the classroom as well as for you and your colleagues...

yacapaca!

Create quizzes, surveys, tests, eportfolios and more.. Discover modify and share assessments. Set work for the whole class with a few mouse clicks. Mark automatically. Analyze with tools that improve your teaching.

Meebo

Want a fun and engaging way to run a group dialogue in your classroom? Try Meebo... You can create a free chat room and embed it on your homepage or your blog... Students can access it and discuss away...

ePals

The Internet's largest global community of connected classrooms! Safely connect, collaborate and learn using leading protected email and blog solutions for schools and districts.

The Universcale

Today, using the electron microscope and astronomical telescope, we can see the objects which we have not been aware of its existence before. Are you able to fathom, or even roughly grasp, these sizes? See the Universcale and experience the sizes of various objects.

pixton

Online collaboration tool for teachers and students. Engage active learning through comic strips in a private, virtual classroom. All levels: K-12, ESL, post-secondary.

Alien Empire

All about bugs!

New to the Cool Websites page...

Shmoop is a new learning and teaching resource, lovingly made by experts and educators from Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, and other top universities."Shmoop goes out of its way to contextualize its content in a smart and consistently humorous tone." - Poets.org

and how about...

PreZentit
MathMovesU
Visuwords
Pocketmod
Flashcards
Historical Scene Investigation
Thinklinkr
Metropolitan Museum of Art
SFS Kids
Periodic Table of Elements
VocabSushi
BrainPop

21 Classes

This site is a must-use for all 21st century teachers. Educators can create a community of bloggers that can only be accessed by entering a password protected portal. Older students? Try 21Publish.com

Edmodo

Have you checked out Edmodo?
It's another interesting web 2.0 application to add to your tool box, and one that you can use fairly easily with your students. It is similar to Twitter, but Emondo does much more. Students and teachers create short messages--140 characters or less--and disseminate them. The messages are sent to defined individuals or groups--not the whole world. You have much more control over who views each message, instead of allowing public access for all.

Slideshare

SlideShare is the best way to share your presentations with the world. Let your ideas reach a broad audience. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to create a webinar.

dabbleBoard

dabbleBoard-- is a really cool whiteboard program. It's highly intuitive, easy to use, with some cool features!

www.americanrhetoric.com

This is one of those sites that I go to frequently to enhance my existing curriculum. This site has it all: text, video, and audio. It engages students while they learn about rhetoric and American History. You can find 100s of speeches including Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have a dream..." as well as more obscure speeches from our history.

Many Eyes

"At an experimental Web site, Many Eyes, (www.many-eyes.com), users can upload the data they want to visualize, then try sophisticated tools to generate interactive displays.

Animoto

Gotta have this tool! As an educator, you can sign up for free access. Your videos/presentations will look so cool! Animoto is a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos using patent-pending technology and high-end motion design. Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Produced on a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.

Ning

Tikatok

Tikatok™ is where kids channel their imagination into stories and publish those stories into books to share with friends and family.

FreeRice

Have your students play this vocabulary game, and they’ll learn while donating food to people in need.

Voki

Get a voki for your blog or website here...

www.hulu.com

Loads of videos and video clips--great for building background or enhancing lesson plans...

Project Gutenberg

This project has more than 25,000 free books, and over 100,000 titles in its network.

bubbl.us

Free mind mapping tool...

ClassTools.net

Create free educational games, activities and diagrams in a Flash!
Host them on your own blog, website or intranet!

Netvibes

Create a class start page full of useful resources with Netvibes.

www.weebly.com

Again, there are many sites that students can work on to create their own web sites. I like this site because it is highly intuitive--no instruction required... (read terms of use--only 13 and above can publish here...) Our website is a weebly.com website as well.

Jing

21stcenturyschools

This site is a resource for what it means to be a school of the 21st century, and why it is so important that teachers make the shift...

Web 2.0 Guru

Self-proclaimed Web 2.0 Guru has designed this wiki-web site to assist teachers and other professionals with the tools and strategies to effectively and meaningfully implement these tools into their current practices.

Google Maps

Maps for all your needs...

Ustream

With ustream in just minutes you can broadcast and interact with a global audience from one to thousands! All it takes is a camera and an internet connection.

Notecentric

Share and store your class notes with this online note taking application.

acroflip

create 3D virtual page turning flash brochures and catalogues instantly, online - FREE!

Wetpaint

Free wiki websites...

novlet

Novlet is a web application designed to support collaborative writing of non-linear stories in any language. With Novlet you will be able to read stories written by other users, create your own ones, and choose the plot you like most from several alternatives.

placeSpotting

Find the place on this map...

Electronic Fieldtrips

Take field trips online with this site.

Mogulus

Launch your own live 24/7 television station...

Acroflip

The AcroFlip control panel allows you to upload PDF or JPEG files and create online flipping brochures easily and quickly with no further work. Signing up gives you access to this process.

www.waterbuffalomovie.com

If you haven't seen this short video, it is a must see. Robert Thompson shot and produced "4 Generations" in 2007 while living in China. It is a story documenting a journey in southwestern China (near Tibet) to first find, then deliver a water buffalo to a poor family. The water buffalo led him to a family with an phenomenal story.There are many ways you can use this video in the classroom-- Watch this one with tissue in hand--Inspiring!

authorSTREAM

Present and share PowerPoint presentations...

Mathway

Mathway is an application that solves math equations with step-by-step explanations. Mathaway is for students, parents, and teachers--covering many of math's basic operations. I'm not a math teacher, but I think this could be a cool classroom tool!

More sites by Category

Social Networking, RSS, Collaboration...
Thinkature: Thinkature offers real-time collaboration online for students, teachers, and more.
Flickr: Share and store classroom images with this incredibly popular online photo storage service.
Diigo: Diigo is a great tool for highlighting and sharing the web with your students.
PBwiki: Create an easy-to-update web space and resource for your class using PBwiki.
del.icio.us: Save your favorite sites and share them with your class using del.icio.us.
Clipmarks: Create Clipmarks to clip out little pieces of the web to share with your classroom.
Wizlite: Enjoy collaborative page highlighting with this tool.
Netvibes: Create a class start page full of useful resources with Netvibes.
Gliffy: Create and share flow charts, diagrams, and more with Gliffy.
Notecentric: Share and store your class notes with this online note taking application.

Search Engines & Directories
Clusty: With this clustering search engine, you’ll be able to search on Wikipedia, blogs, and more at one time.
BUBL: Find selected Internet resources in specific academic subject areas through BUBL.
Turbo10: This search engine looks on more than 800 deep web search engines at once, so you’ll be able to save time and find great information you can’t find anywhere else.
Complete Planet: On Complete Planet, you can find more than 70,000 searchable databases and specialty search engines.
Ask for Kids: This search engine was created with kids in mind, offering tutoring and reference help as well as search.
Librarians’ Internet Index: Find websites you and your students can trust in this directory compiled by librarians.
CyberSleuth Kids: Get searches, homework help, and more from this website.
Geniusfind: Geniusfind offers a directory to some of the best resources you can find on the web.
Internet Archive: Check out the Internet Archive to get access to websites and pages that have fallen off the web.
KidsClick!: Visit this website for a kid-friendly search engine.
Digital Librarian: This site offers a librarian’s guidance for the best resources online.
Infomine: Infomine is full of scholarly Internet resource collections that you and your students can use.
ProTeacher Directory: ProTeacher has teaching ideas, resources, blogs, and more for elementary school teachers.

Google
Google Custom Search Engine: Create your own custom search engine and tell Google which sites you want it to index, and you’ll be able to offer your students the best of the web.
Google Docs: Google Docs offers teachers and students a web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation editor that can be used securely and collaboratively from any computer.
Google Book Search: Search the full text of books ranging from popular best sellers to out-of-print books on Google’s Book Search.
Google Groups: Set up a discussion group for your classroom on Google Groups.
Google News: Google News is a wonderful place to look for news in newspapers and magazines around the world.
Google Maps: Your class can use Google Maps to build maps of your community, learn about cities, and more.
Google Page Creator: This Google tool allows teachers and students to create useful web pages without having to use complicated code.
Google classroom posters: Help your students search the web better with these posters that contain tips for using Google Search and other Google products.
iGoogle: iGoogle allows you to create a custom page for your classroom that includes components like a school calendar, bookmarks, news, and more.
Blogger: Start a class blog with Blogger, and you can share work, pictures, and more, all while staying connected with your classroom community.
Google Notebook: Use Google Notebook as an easy to use notepad for the web.
Google Calendar: With Google Calendar, you can easily communicate school schedule information with your classroom community.
Google classroom activities: Here, Google offers a few activity ideas for elementary school children.

Templates & Lesson Plans
Student information roster: Download this PDF to have student information easily at hand.
Lesson Plans Library: Discovery Education offers a wide variety of lesson plans, from Ancient History to Economics.
Record-Keeping Template: This chart is useful for a wide variety of applications, including permission slip checkoffs, parent communication, and more.

Research & Reference
Infoplease: Infoplease combines an encyclopedia, almanac, atlas, dictionary, and a lot more, all in one place.
HowStuffWorks: Your students can find easy to understand information about how anything and everything works on this site.
MetaGlossaryMetaGlossary defines more than 2 million terms, phrases, and acronyms.
Repositories of Primary Sources: This index is a wonderful place to find strong sources for manuscripts, archives, historical photographs, and more.
Refdesk: Find kid-friendly research resources through Refdesk.
eHow: eHow explains in simple language how you can do just about anything.

Games
FreeRice: Have your students play this vocabulary game, and they’ll learn while donating food to people in need.
Brain Boosters: Discovery Education’s Brain Boosters are challenging mental games.
Learning Adventures: This collection offers multimedia education on sharks, slavery, and more.

Reading & Writing
The Online Books Page: This website is home to more than 30,000 free books that you can read online.
Bartleby: Bartleby offers lots of different texts online, from novels to reference.
Audio Books for Kids: Allow your kids to listen to audio books for free with this site.
RhymeZone: In the RhymeZone, you can type in a word to find its rhymes, synonyms, definitions, and more.
Children’s Storybooks Online: This site offers illustrated children’s stories for free.
Word Search Generator: Create a customized printable word find worksheet with this tool.
Free Classic Audiobooks: On this site, you’ll find classics like Huckleberry Finn on audiobooks for free.
Poetry Idea Engine: The Poetry Idea Engine is a great tool for writing haikus, limericks, and more.
Orangoo: Use this quick online spell check to make sure your text is perfect.
Bibliomania: Bibliomania offers more than 2,000 classic texts, along with notes, author biographies, and study guides.
Writing Prompts/Journal Topics: Check out these topics to assign to your students.
Handwriting Worksheets: Use these worksheets to help your students practice their handwriting.
Project Gutenberg: This project has more than 25,000 free books, and over 100,000 titles in its network.

Math & Science
SuperKids Math Worksheet Calculator: Create math drill worksheets using this tool.
Calcoolate: Give your classroom an awesome calculator with this "cool" tool.
Produce Oasis: Visit the Produce Oasis to learn about nutrition and food.
eNature Zip Guides: Find wildlife that lives in your local area with this online nature tool.
The Abacus: Check out The Abacus to find an abacus tutorial, calculations, and more.
Visible Body: Use Visible Body to give your class a 3D look at human anatomy.
Universal Currency Converter: Teach your class about money around the world with this currency converting calculator.
whonamedit: Find out about the name behind medical conditions with this online tool.
Ask Dr. Math: Dr. Math has formulas, instructional resources, and more.
TryScience: TryScience has great ideas for experiments, field trips, and science adventures.
Create A Graph: With this web tool, you’ll be able to quickly and easily generate graphs.
Climate Zone: Teach your students about the climates of the world with Climate Zone.
Math Playground: On the Math Playgound, you’ll find worksheets, logic puzzles, and more.
Roman Numeral Converter: Use this converter to easily switch back and forth between roman numerals and regular numbers.
Amusement Park Physics
Ask Dr. Universe
Beyond 2000
BrainPop
Bill Nye the Science Guy
Color Matters
Cool Science for Curious Kids
Dr. Bob's Interesting Science Stuff
Exploring Leonardo
Extreme Science
FT Exploring
Funology.com
Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century
How Stuff Works
Human Anatomy Online
Infrared Zoo
Planetpals Earthzone
Popular Science
Questacon
The Revolutionaries
Robot Constructor
The Rudiments of Wisdom Encyclopedia
The Science Explorer
Time for Kids
Science Made Simple
The Science of Hockey
ScienceMonster.com
Sea and Sky
Skateboard Science
Strange Science
Triumph of the Nerds
Volcanoes
Volcano World
Your Weight On Other Worlds
A+ Math
AAA Math
Ask Dr. Math
Brain Bashers
Brain Teasers
CoolMath.com
Education 4 Kids
Figure This!
The Fruit Game
Funbrain
Math.com
Math Advantage
Math Goodies
Math in Daily Life
MathStories.com
PlaneMath Activities
Prongo.com
Rick's Math Web
Teach R Kids Math
Arts
The @rt Room
A. Pintura: Art Detective
The Age of Enlightenment
The Animation Learner's Site
Art Express
Awesome Clipart for Kids
Cartoon Critters
Color Matters
Create A Creature
Exposure - A Beginners Guide to Photography
Haring Kids
Inside Art
KinderArt
Kodak: Taking Great Pictures
Krannert Art Museum
Learn How to Draw with Gary Harbo
Lite-Brite
Making Oatmeal Box Pinhole Cameras
Mark Kistler's Imagination Station
Metropolitan Museum of Art - Explore & Learn
The Pinhole Gallery
The Rudiments of Wisdom Encyclopedia
The Guggenheim Museum: Share the Guggenheim’s online collection with your students.
Louvre Museum: Find some of the Louvre’s collection available online here.
Catalog of American Portraits: You can find more than 80,000 portraits in this portrait search.
Classical Music Archives Listen to the works of the great composers on this website.
National Gallery of Art: Find galleries of photographs, sculpture, and more in the National Gallery of Art.

History & Social Studies
1492: An Ongoing Voyage
The 1900 House
America's Story
At Home in the Heartland
Collapse - Why do Civilizations Fall?
Color Me Egypt
Daily Life in Ancient Civilizations
The Firehouse Museum
The First Thanksgiving
Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad
The History of Labor Day
The History of Thanksgiving
HyperHistory Online
The Library of Congress
Mark Millmore's Ancient Egypt
Maya Adventure
MayflowerHistory.com
National Women's History Project
Odyssey Online
Plimoth Plantation
Pyramids - The Inside Story
The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games
The Revolutionaries
Selected Civil War Photographs
The Seven Wonders of the World
Triumph of the Nerds
50 States: This website offers a wealth of information about each of the 50 states in the US.
Geodata.gov: Find useful state, local, and federal geographic data on this website.
Maps.com: This online map store has lots of wonderful games, including a US Capitals map game and a geographic continent map game.
The Biography Maker: Use this tool to turn a biography into a wonderful story about a person’s life.
Visible Earth: Show your class unique perspectives of the earth with satellite images from Visible Earth.
Clickable Mummy: Explore the different parts of the mummy and learn about the mummification process with this online tool.
Countries of the World: Find country studies from the Library of Congress and other authoritative sources through this site.
EyeWitness to History: Get a look at the ancient world through World War II through photos, voices, and other media on this history site.
CIA World Factbook: The CIA World Factbook has useful information about the countries of the world, including maps and flags.
The History Beat: This site offers loads of history timelines on the web.
ANYDAY Today-in-History: Learn what happened on any day in history with this online tool.
dMarie: dMarie’s time capsules offer a way to look at data for dates from 1800 to 2002.
Beetle Science
Best of History Web Sites
Digital History
EarthCam
FindSounds
Geologic Explorations
Historical Photographs Online
How Everyday Things Are Made
Internet Archive: Moving Images Archive
LibriVox
Medieval Writing
Moving Image Archive
Televisioncommercials.com
The History Channel
The History Place -- Great Speeches
Virtual Learning Resources Center
Voices from the Dust Bowl
Voices of the Civil Rights Era

Online Libraries
Smithsonian’s Galaxy of Knowledge: The Smithsonian has a digital library, arts, science, lectures, and more.
Exploratorium Digital Library: Exploratorium offers a variety of collections in gigital media and digitized museum materials for elementary school students and beyond.
SONIC: The Library of Congress’ Sound Online Inventory and Catalog houses about 2.5 million audio recordings, including unpublished recordings.
The Internet Public Library: Founded by a class of students at the University of Michigan, the Internet Public Library is a full-service library online.
Stately Knowledge: This kid section of the Internet Public Library offers basic facts about the United States, the world, health, music, and much more.

Activities
Electronic Fieldtrips: Take field trips online with this site.
Exploratorium Hands-on Activities: Here you’ll find activities including sport science, a journey to Mars, and cow’s eye dissection.
GPS Activities & Lesson Plans: This resource will show you how to make GPS and geocaching an important part of your curriculum.