• Reflection on uses of the Web in the classroom

• Evaluation of Websites

• Ghana Scavenger Hunt

• WebQuest Evaluation

• Final Project: Sea Creature WebQuest

• Classmate's Pages

• Listservs or Forums

• Telecollaborative Projects

• Search Tools

• Lesson Plan Sources

• Online Tools

• Bonus Data Set

www.udel.edu/itug

ITUGDE's mission is "to facilitate the sharing of information and resources related to instructional technology to empower PreK-16 educators to enhance teaching and learning."

I find this list to be very helpful.  Since the participants are local and educators as well, it feels much like a family, all working together.  List members can pose questions to the group, and can usually expect a concrete answer within a day.  Its an excellent resource!

http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/ali

ALI's list is run by Apple and is a great way to connect with educational technology resources on a wider scale.  Besides having access to search the lessons, projects, and units on the website, educators are able to utilize on another via the list.  However, all message go through the list administrator, and are thereby evaluated before being posted.  ALI also sends fabulous notices that alert members to upcoming Quicktime webcasts that are the web equivalent to "Cable In the Classroom". 

http://tli.treca.org

TRECA's website and listserv is much like a combination between the Integrate site and the ALI site.  It is developed and managed by educator trainers in Ohio and is primarily intended for educators in the TRECA consortium of schools.  However, it is also partnered with the Apple Learning Interchange, and its resources are quite grand. 

I had the great opportunity to meet and work with these ladies during the summer of 2001 at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC).  They gave a workshop focused on integrating technology into education, and it was fabulous.  While they are located in Ohio, I highly recommend attending their workshops.  Every teacher/participant receives the technology that they use in the workshop by way of an excellent grant program.  Get in touch with TRECA!  You won't be sorry.

"A key to iEARN's success is the leading role that participants play in determining the content within the network. All projects within iEARN are designed and facilitated by participants to fit their particular curriculum and classroom needs and schedules.

When schools join iEARN, the network is open to all teachers and students at a school, with resources available for finding iEARN projects across age levels and disciplines.

Participants may join existing structured on-line projects, or work with others internationally to create and facilitate their own projects to fit their own particular classroom and curriculum needs.

"All iEARN projects involve a final 'product' or exhibition of the learning that has taken place as part of the collaboration. These have included magazines, creative writing anthologies, websites, letter-writing campaigns, reports to government officials, arts exhibits, workshops, performances, charity fundraising, and many more examples of youth taking action as part of what they are learning in the classroom."

iEARN offers projects from the following disciplines: Creative/Language Arts, Science/Environment/Math and Social Studies.  It is one of the oldest resources for online telecollaborative projects for youth in education, established in 1988.  The projects are informative, educational, and service based.  iEARN's project pages are especially helpful since they list: the project description, the ages group, the languages, the dates, and the appropriate website links for the project.  iEARN is a wonderful resource!

A project I recommend is "The Art Miles".  It is a project that is ongoing and for young people Preschool through College age.  The purpose of the project is for "Students [to] create murals to establish the Guinness Book of World Records for the Longest Children's Mural in the World."   I believe that this project would be great for an after school program, special ed students, or a community center project.  The incentive of being added to the Guinness Book of World Records os wonderful, and the since of community mural making brings is contagious.

"Montageplus aims to:

• Develop awareness of cultural diversity and individual circumstances so that students - irrespective of geography, gender, disability or economic circumstances - are given the opportunity to participate and to explore and develop their ideas.

• Encourage and support professional development of teachers in the use and understanding of new technologies to enhance the quality of teaching and learning.

• Build a network of education policy formulators and opinion makers by initiating executive linking programmes, video-conferencing forums, workshops and web-based discussions."

Montageplus provides an extensive database of tellecollaborative projects available on the web.  A project sited on Montageplus that I recommend is "The Convention on the Rights of the Child".  "The Convention on the Rights of the Child" is a project that looks at "at some of the worst sides of human behavior - the mistreatment and abuse of millions of children and also at some of the best of human behavior - the work of thousands of people who are fighting to end this mistreatment and abuse. "  This project is great because it helps young people see beyond themselves.  It is intended for youth between the ages of twelve and eighteen in the study of civics and citizenship.  The project is on-going therefore teachers and students need not worry about a closing date.  I recommend this project as a supplement to secondary school Social Studies units.

"ePALS' projects offer learning opportunities that span subject areas, age levels and the world. By allowing young people to learn through cooperation with peers near and far, ePALS projects foster cross-cultural understanding and enhance technological skills as well as meeting diverse curriculum objectives. "

In my opinion, ePALS.com offers itself as one of the BEST resources available for telecollaborative projects.  It provides the opportunity to search for projects on the web as well as developing e-mail relationships with schools and individuals around the world.  They monitor everything that is posted on the site, and the e-mail accounts have filter levels chosen by each teacher.  ePALS even provides an internet usage permission form that teachers may send home to parents.

ePALS has their projects listed in the following categories: Group Projects, Class-to-Class Projects and ePALS Recommends.

Group Projects
These cross-curricular projects involve many members of the ePALS community simultaneously. ePALS tools and resources are used throughout and participants can improve their computer skills as they work with peers around the world to explore any number of topics. 
Class-to-Class Projects
Class-to-class projects allow you to work with other ePALS members at your own pace. These projects are highly customizable, letting you meet the needs of your students. You pick your partner. You pick the time line. Enjoy all the benefits of collaborative learning with these diverse projects. 
ePALS Recommends
You could spend a lifetime sifting through all the educational offerings on the Internet. But with ePALS, you don't have to. If you can't find a project to meet your needs here, ePALS has a list of recommended projects offered on other websites. 

The project which I found on ePALS.com and I am recommending is the "ePALS Online Book Club".   This projects provides an international resource of what books are being read around the world.  Students and teachers are able to post book reports in the forum, and gain suggestions from other participants.  This is wonderful because students can acquire book list suggestions that they may not have obtained otherwise.  Teachers have the choice of working directly with a partner school or having her/his students work solely as forum participants.  I believe that this project would be great for teachers that require and/or encourage free reading.  It adds another dimension to reading and makes the world a little smaller.

http://www2.lib.udel.edu/udlib-srchm/dbase.htm

UDLib/SEARCH - 
Databases for High Schools

http://www2.lib.udel.edu/udlib-srch/dbases.htm

UDLib/SEARCH- best used for scholarly database searches.

This website was suggested to me by our Middle and Upper School teacher/librarian, Kate Thomas (Wilmington Friends School).  Friends apparently signed on with this service this Fall (2001), and the librarians are suggesting that all the students in grades 6-12 utilize it.  (I was told that since Friends is not a state school, we pay a small fee.) 

In order to fully utilize this site students need to acquire the school assigned User Id and password.  However, once that is obtained, students have access to multiple journals, magazines and encyclopedias through this site. 

1.  A Middle School student researching the impacts of multi-ethnic groups on the United States of America may choose to utilize the DISCovering Multicultural America journal on UDLib/SEARCH. 
2.  The student needs to have the school's User Id and password.
3.  Then, they can login to the needed databases of resources.
4.  For instance, the student in this example would complete a search for information on "African Americans" and get led to a list of texts that they may choose to utilize in a research paper. 

http://www.search.com/

CNET Search.com - best used  for general searches. 

I sometimes suggest this site to my students when practicing the skill of retrieving clipart from the Internet.  Therefore, I ask my students to go to Search.com and do a search for "Free Clipart".   CNET Search.com then does a metasearch searching the databases of all the above search engines, and comes up with the following information.  (Free Clipart)

http://www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm

Kid's Search Tools- best used for filtered resource book searches.

This website provides links to several of the most used search engines for youth and educational purposes.  It was compiled by librarians.  I suggested this site to our seventh graders as a link to multiple educational resource tools.  They can use this tool especially when writing their Social Science papers. 

For instance, the seventh graders are now studying the various aspects of Africa in small groups.  A student may choose to utilize the systems at Kid's Search Tools.  On the site, they can search the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition for "Ghana" and get transported to the following list of site resources.  (Ghana)
If they don't find what they are looking for in that search, they still have twelve other search methods to use on that site such as, KidsClick!  They can do the same search there or choose to vary it slightly.  (Ghana or West Africa)

This site is very helpful to student researchers because they have access to many possibilities in one place.

http://www.intel.com/education/teachtech/lessonplans/

This site is a great resource that demonstrates methods of incorporating technology into academic curriculum.  One favorite lesson is  "Where do you want to go this year?"  In this lesson students create a plan to travel to a foreign country.  The students utilize many skills in the lesson such as: research, word processing, presentation and possibly spreadsheet management for the budget. 

This plan is indicative of the interdisciplinary projects that are available on the intel site.  Their creations are quite innovation and they demonstrate comprehensively how technology is a part of our lives.

http://www.montana.edu/4teachers/instcomp/
multipleintel/multipleintel.html

The lessons on this page "[incorporate] the use of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory with the integration of instructional technology. Each lesson contains a set of activities that enhances learning through the use of stations set up to help the students discover the topic while using a variety of multiple intelligence activities. These lessons are designed with constructivist learning strategies for cooperative groups. Each lesson incorporates computers/technology to enhance learning. Many topics and grade levels are available."

These lesson plans were created by graduate students of the Education Department at Montana State University-Bozeman for the above purpose.  I found this site to be interesting because of the fact that the lessons were created by graduate students.  In addition,  the lessons are created with multiple intelligence in mind.  One example of the lessons on this site is Art and Music Of Our Time.  This lesson provides multiple opportunities to integrate technology as well as the ability to teach to the auditory, visual and kinesthetic learner.

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/

I like this site simply because it is intended for general use.  It is a cool resource from which to pull substitute lessons.

http://www.gifworks.com/

"Create your own special effects with any GIF -- even animated ones! Resize it, colorize it, optimize it, and jazzercise it -- then save it and take it with you. You name it and you can do it!"

I would recommend this site to any educator that creates their own web pages and/or teaches web page creation/design. 

http://pages.prodigy.net/stanleysupport/onlinetools.htm

This site is jam-packed with cool tools that are excellent resources for anyone that creates web pages (beyond the beginner level).  I plan to recommend this resource to the Advanced Web Page class teacher at Wilmington Friends School.

http://www.franklincovey.com/missionbuilder/index.html

The Franklin Covey Mission Builder is a comprehensive tool that takes each user step-by-step through the process of creating their own mission.  I can easily see this tool used in Middle and Upper School advisee sessions, with students creating a mission statement in 8th grade and revising it each Upper school year until it really feels solid.

I recommend this tool to anyone who works on personal development issues.

http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/

This site is a "comprehensive collection of cartographic materials,
ranging from fourteenth century portolan charts through recent
geographic information systems data sets." (yahoo)

I recommend this site to any person that studies social science.  This site provides an extensive collection of maps.  One may choose to study cartography, and then have students create a map of their home or school community in one of the represented styles.