Technology for Teachers
Computer Skills Tips and Tutorials
- Internet4Classrooms Excel Tutorials and Information - Basic and advanced Excel tutorials along with a page covering keyboard shortcuts. Learn how to make your own Excel charts and graphs. Download existing Internet4Classrooms science, math, social studies, and language arts charts, graphs, and workbooks you can use on interactive whiteboards.
- Internet4Classrooms PowerPoint Tutorial - Basic and advanced PowerPoint tutorials. Learn how to use PowerPoint's toolbars and ribbons. Download colorful customizable PowerPoint Game templates (such as Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?).
- Internet4Classrooms Web 2.0 Tools - Familiarize yourself with Web 2.0 tools which allow you to become an active online participant, creator, and collaborator instead of a passive user who simply surfs the web. Topics include Apps for iPads and iPod Touch that can be used in the classroom, Creating Audio Files and Podcasts, Blogging, Managing and Sharing Collaborative Online Documents, File Converters, Graphic Organizers, HTML Editors, Open Source (coding, programs and tools that have not been copyrighted), Organization Tools, Personal Learning Networking (PLN), Presentation Tools for interactively sharing text, audio, pictures, and videos with others, Social Bookmarking for saving and organizing a collection of bookmarks to be shared with others, Survey Makers, Video and Photo Editors and Enhancers, Wikis for creating and editing interlinked web pages in collaboration with other people, and Word Cloud Generators.
- Internet4Classrooms Word Tutorials - Basic and advanced Word tutorials along with a page covering keyboard shortcuts.
- Code.org - This website belongs to a non-profit organization whose goal is to provide every student in every shool with the opportunity to learn computer science. Teachers and students can participate in an hour of coding tutorial on-line. The site also provides information on the dates and locations of the free workshops it conducts across the country to teach teachers how to code so that those teachers can, in turn, share those skills with their students.
Create Your Own Online Activities, Quizzes, and Games
- Jeopardy - Create your own Jeopardy games for test reviews. Browse Jeopardy games already created by others.
- Quizlet - Enter your notes and Quizlet will turn them into flashcards, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blank quizzes, as well as race-the-clock games. The program includes audio files so language students can hear and respond to (translate, spell) new vocabulary words spoken in the target language.
Public Domain Photos
- Wikimedia Commons - Millions of photos you and your students can use to illustrate handouts, research papers, and PowerPoint presentations. Before downloading an image, be sure and read the terms and conditions for use.
- Finding Public Domain Images for Multimedia Projects - Extensive list linking to Internet sites containing public domain photos. Emphasis is on photos related to the humanities.
Clipart
- Free Original Clipart for Non-Profit Use - Over 1,500 hand-drawn cartoon images suitable for use on bulletin boards, Powerpoint, teacher websites, handouts, etc.
- Music Graphics Galore - An extensive collection of simple, colorful music-themed gifs. Most of these have white backgrounds.
- Webweaver's Free Education Clip Art - Simple, colorful cartoon gifs.
- WP Clip Art - Public domain clip art for use by teachers and students.
- Cool Archive Clip Art - Once you work your way past the pop-up ads, you will find over a thousand clip art gifs sorted into thirty categories. The clips have transparent backgrounds and the site includes an online editor you can use to tweak the images.
Videos
- Associated Press Video Archive - The Associated Press has set up a YouTube channel providing access to over half a million historical videos. Visitors are welcome to share and embed the videos. New videos are being added daily.
- You Tube Educational Videos - Short videos suitable for supplementing and enriching classroom instruction. Topics include English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Languages
- Khan Academy Videos - Short video lessons by top teachers. Show them in class to enrich lessons or watch them outside of class to give you ideas on how to present specific topics. Topics include American Civics, Art History, Astronomy, Banking and Money, Biology, Brain Teasers, Chemistry, Economics, History, Math (all levels), News and Noteworthy, Physics, and SAT Preparation
- Khan Academy - Español - Spanish language educational videos. Topics include Sistema Bancario de Reservas, Fisica, Biologia, Quimica, Aritmética, Desarrollo de Matemáticas, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometria, and Trignometria. Many more videos will be coming soon as Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has pledged funds to translates thousands more Khan Academy Videos into Spanish.
Programs, Timelines, and Graphs for Interactive White Boards
- Internet4Classrooms Excel Workbooks - Download these Excel workbooks. Content includes interactive branching stories, data tables students can use to evaluate fractions and percents, literacy activities, crossword puzzle templates, a Jeopardy template, Mad-Libs, a Bingo template, and a quiz about the planets.
- Internet4Classrooms Inspiration - Use Inspiration with your students to make Venn Diagrams, Character Maps, Story Webs, and to do brainstorming exercises. Website includes a tutorial and tips on the use of the Inspiration program.
- Internet4Classrooms Language Arts and Social Studies Graphs and Worksheets - Content includes Concept Maps, Templates for Graphic Organizers, Pilgrim Timelines, Make a Story Web, a Pre-Reading Clock, Templates for Graphic Organizers, Customizable Timelines, and Venn Diagrams. These materials require Excel to operate.
- Internet4Classrooms Math and Science Graphs and Worksheets - Download these Excel files for use on your interactive white board. Content includes a Coordinate Plane, a Hundreds Chart, a Number Line, Ten-Frames, a Daily Weather Worksheet, Mitosis Stages, Moon Phases, and Water Cycles. These materials require Excel to operate.
- Internet4Classrooms Excel Math and Science Workbooks - Download these Excel files for use on your interactive white board. Content includes a Four-Quadrant Coordinate Plane, Calculating Sales Tax on Purhases, an Earthquake Project, a Fahrenheit to Celsius Convert, Graph Paper, an M & M Spreadsheet for Collecting Data and Making Predictions, a Physics Crossword Puzzle, a Pizza Calculator to calculate the price per square inch, Quadrille Paper, Review Bingo, a Trip Calculator to calculate the cost of a car trip, and a What Would I Weigh On (name of Planet}?
- PowerPoint Game Templates - Download and customize these templates for games including Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Employing Popular Games as Learning Tools
- Minecraft in Education: Leveraging a Game-Based Learning Environment - A growing number of teachers are using the popular game Mincecraft to teach desired skills. This website provides teachers with a series of webinars on how to implement the use of Minecraft in their classrooms.
Website Development Tools
- Wikipedia Web Colors - Color chart with HTML codes
- Visibone Color Codes Color chart with HTML and CSS hex codes
- CSS Validator - Test your CSS for errors
- HTML and XHTML Validator - Test your HTML or XHTML for errors
- Code Style Most Common Fonts - This compact list identifies and shows samples of the fonts most widely found on all computers.
- Cool Archive - You have to put up with a couple of pop-up ads when you first enter this site but the site's contents make it well worth it. These contents include over a thousand clip art gifs with transparent backgrounds and an online editor if you need to tweak them; over four thousand colorful gif icons; hundreds of animations; hundreds of textured backgrounds; a huge selection of bullets, bars, and arrows; sound effects; a logo generator; and a button generator. Have fun!
- Newspaper Clipping Generator - Create your own newspaper clipping image and save it as a jpg for use on your website. You give the newspaper a name and a date, create a headline, and write the first few paragraphs of text.
- Wikimedia Commons - Millions of photos you can use to illustrate your website, as well as handouts and PowerPoint presentations. Before downloading an image, be sure and read the terms and conditions for use.
- Opera Mini Simulator - Download Opera's mini-browser to simulate how your webpage will appear and behave on handheld mobile devices.
- TagCrowd - Create Your Own Tag Clouds and Word Clouds - This quick and simple online program lets you upload or paste text from your web page or from any other document and creates a tag cloud (or word cloud). It also allows you to customize the appearance of the tag cloud. Tag cloud refers to a word cloud that's created in html code which can be read by search engines to optimize your ranking. In this case, you embed the html coding this site produces into your web page code. It will appear on your webpage as a word cloud, but search engines will be able to read it behind the scenes. You can also save the word cloud as a pdf file. If you want to save it as an image to paste into other documents, you will have to take a screen shot of the word cloud image. Fortunately, the web site explains all this in great deal under FAQs.