Special Post

There were so many useful resources on Dr. Jacobs' site. That it was hard to choose my favorite six but somehow I managed. 

Newspaper Global Map:

This is a really fun tool that allows us to access newspapers from all over the world. This is a really cool because you can expose your students to the larger world. You can assign them all a country and have them read an article from there. You and the students can see how other countries perceive current world news. I get all my news from the British Broadcasting Corporation so this is taking that one step further. The students can look at it in the countries language or it will easily translate it to English. I saw this a couple of days ago when I was doing research on what resources I wanted to use. I got to read some cool stuff from other countries on the recent Supreme Court decision that I was very happy about.  So this is a very good tool just for an indiviual as well as a whole class. When grown ups ask my class if we ever read a newspaper we can say "From which country?" 

Interactive Solar System: 

This is by far the coolest resource I have looked at! I love all the sciences especially astronomy so this interactive solar system map is off the chain to me. The level of detail it has is incredible and could be an invaluable tool for teaching kids about the cosmos. It gives a great sense of scale and size of the planets. If you click on a planet it gives a wealth of fun info and facts. When you go to the site it shows where the planets are at this specific date! Tell me that is not the coolest thing to show kids (or Robert). It is labeled as being for middle and high school kids but I would show this to any age group. Seriously if you do not follow the links to any of the other resources I post, please look at this one. 

Mission US:

This is a valuable way to learn history for those who love it or hate it. I always enjoyed history so I will look forward to perusing through this further. This is a very interactive tool that is sure to fun for students of all ages. On the homepage you can choose from a few characters and you can go through missions to learn more about their place in time. They can play as a boy caught in the middle of the American Revolution, a runaway slave desperately trying to make her way to the North, and a Native American boy growing up on the Plains. These are great ways to immerse kids into the culture and time periods they choose. I played a little bit of one mission as Nat Wheeler the young revolutionary and it provided a wide variety of rich learning. 

Rubistar:

This is a tool that I have already put to great use while taking EDM 310. If you need help developing a rubric for your class, then this is the site for you. You have multiple templates to choose from and it has some for about every subject you can think of. So give this one a look if you have not already. 

Khan Academy: 

I cannot not say enough about how useful Khan Academy has been to me personally through the years. I am one of those that are shockingly not very good at math. So I am constantly looking for tools to help me get through whatever math is giving me trouble or just trying to become a better at it. This site is very popular and has received much love from the top philanthropists. Bill Gates has been a big advocate for Khan Academy. It offers many features such as tutoring, practice exercises, and a personalized dashboard for you to use. 

Visual Thesaurus:

Well this is is what your standard thesaurus would look like if it took steroids. You can search a platypus and it will give you a bunch of related terms to further research. This is a great tool for students who are having trouble with a word. They can type it in and get some more context of how that word is used. It will even pronounce it for you so will know if you are saying to correctly. This is a fun easy to use tool that would be great for any classroom.