This hotlist is a collection of useful instructional tools that I’ve come across over the past couple of years.  I have broken these down into the technology integration categories offered by Dr. Larry Tomei in his article “Taxonomy for the Technology Domain” ©.

 

21^st Century Skills: www.21stcenturyskills.org

 

Collaboration Tools

• How to create a blog: http://www3.essdack.org/socialstudies/blogs.htm
• How to make a Wiki for the classroom: http://www.wikiineducation.com/display/ikiw/Ways+to+use+wiki+in+education
• Schoolnotes.com: http://www.schoolnotes.com

 

Decision Making Tools

• Good general search: http://www.google.com
• Good media search: http://www.altavista.com
• Education Planet (searchable teacher resouces): http://www.educationplanet.com/
• AT&T’s Blue Web’n (collection of many education oriented websites grouped by content area and indexed for easy search): http://www.kn.att.com/wired/bluewebn/
• Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators (Discovery Media hosted site that provides links to many content-related sites as well as teacher tools. Indexed for easy searching and grouped by content area for browsing): http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/
• Learner.org (Lessons and resources for teachers in all content areas): http://www.learner.org/
• Teach-nology (lots of teacher tools): http://www.teach-nology.com/
• American History References (papers, images, audio, video, etc): http://memory.loc.gov:80/ammem/index.html
•  Excel Tutorial: http://www.internet4classrooms.com/on-line_excel.htm
• Tech Tools Tutorials (great Excel tutorials): http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/archives/techtorials.shtml
• Edutopia (George Lucas’ site; has a lot of reference material and videos): http://edutopia.org/
• New American Studies (collection of many resources that can be used to supplement traditional texts in classes): http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/asw/
• Primer on how to create a lesson plan for a web-based lesson/project: http://www.ed.psu.edu/nasa/target1.html
• Rubric for evaluating web-based projects: http://www.bcpl.net/~sullivan/web/rmrubric.html
• Evaluation Tool for Web-based Projects: http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/teachnet/three/eval_g3.html
• Free Education ClipArt: http://www.awesomeclipartforeducators.com/
• Education Backgrounds (a variety of backgrounds that may be used with IWBs): http://www.gtcocalcomp.com/erc/interwritebackgrounds.htm

 

Infusion Tools

• United Streaming: http://www.unitedstreaming.com/
• Edutopia: http://edutopia.org/
• Marco Polo: http://marcopolo.k12.wv.us/
• SASinSchools Curriculum Pathways: http://www.sasinschool.com/
• Nikon's Universcale Tool: http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/feelnikon/discovery/universcale/index_f.htm
• Cells Alive (excellent interactive science tool): http://cellsalive.com
• National Gallery of Art Teacher's page (Awesome Site with interactive tools for infusing art and technology across all subject areas): http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/
• Online Math Manipulatives: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html
• Online Science Interactive Tools: http://science.nhmccd.edu/biol/animatio.htm
• MathTools (Interactive Computer-based Math Manipulatives for All Grade Levels): http://mathforum.org/mathtools/sitemap.html
• Explore Learning (Interactive science and math tools; free use is time limited): http://explorelearning.com/
• Working the Web (great article that discusses ways to better integrate the web into teaching): http://tommarch.com/writings/theory.php
• Google Earth: http://earth.google.com/
• Sketch-Up: http://sketchup.google.com/
• Exploratorium (Online museum of science, art, and perception): http://www.exploratorium.edu/
• EduHound Hotlist (Allows you to easily and quickly create and share collections of web resources – this sheet is a hotlist): http://www.eduhound.com/hotlist/
• Pre-created treasure Hunts and WebQuests (organized by content area): http://homepage.mac.com/cohora/ext/internethunts.html
• Best WebQuests (collection of good web quests across different content areas: http://bestwebquests.com/

 

Integration Tools

• Google Pages: http://pages.google.com/
• Tripod Web Design: http://www.tripod.lycos.com/
• Yahoo GeoCities Web Design: http://geocities.yahoo.com/
• QuestGarden (web quest hosting and easy development): http://questgarden.com/
• Filamentality (free web-based project hosting): http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/
• Filamentality Fact Sheet: http://www.edtechleaders.org/documents/wel/wel_filamentality.pdf
• Filamentality Instruction Sheet (very important to read this): http://www.edtechleaders.org/documents/wel/wel_filamentality_instrux.pdf
• Fundamentals of Designing a WebQuest: http://tommarch.com/writings/wq_power.php
• EBC’s “What is a Webquest”: http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index.html
• Taxonomy of Webquests: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/taskonomy.html
• A WebQuest About WebQuests (Elementary Level): http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquestwebquest-es.html
• A WebQuest About WebQuests (Middle and High School Level): http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquestwebquest-hs.html
• Web Quest Rubric: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquestrubric.html
• Tutorial for creating a multimedia scrapbook: http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/scrapmultimedlo.html

 

When creating Internet-based Activities and Resources such as Hot Links, Treasure Hunts, and Web Quests, you have several options to help you with the design and hosting of your activity.  You can use United Streaming to host your activity (as I have done here: http://www.unitedstreaming.com/studentCenter/index.cfm?cdCode=T95E9-A2E5).  You could also use other tools for creating and hosting your Internet-based activities. Sites such as Filamentality (http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/) and Quest Garden (http://questgarden.com/) offer full service solutions designed specifically for helping you to create and host these types of activities. An example of a Treasure Hunt that I created using Filamentality is here: http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/hunttechnolomc.html.  One can also easily create and host a Hot List, Treasure Hunt, or WebQuest using a free web editor and hosting packages such as those provided by Google Pages (http://pages.google.com/), Tripod Lycos hosting (http://www.tripod.lycos.com/), Yahoo! GeoCities (http://geocities.yahoo.com/), or other similar and free services. If you would like for a class that you are teaching to design and share these types of Internet-based activities and resources, Tripod's classroom is a great tool for you to use (http://build.tripod.lycos.com/classroom/demo/). Finally, you can also use a word processor like MS Word or a web editor like MS Front Page or Adobe Dreamweaver to design an Internet-based activity or resource and host it using your own hosting package (like what comes with an AOL, Verizon, or Comcast ISP account) -- just check on your ISP account provider's homepage for more information on how to setup your personal pages with them.

United Streaming (US) does not provide for spell checking tools for fields such as this. If you use US to host your Treasure Hunt or WebQuest, I strongly recommend that you download a free toolbar program, such as the Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com), that has a spellchecker built-in.

Finally, when designing your Internet-based activity, remember the tool at TinyUrl (http://tinyurl.com/); this tool allows you to convert very long, unmanageable URLs into a much more manageable size just by copying and pasting the URL into a box.