The Top 101 Web Sites for Teachers

Nova, the long running PBS series, is known for it’s excellent, in-depth, hour-long explorations of interesting scientific topics. While the broadcasts contain some excellent material for the classroom, they are also usually too long for the attention spans of most students (or to fit into most lesson plans).

That’s where Nova ScienceNow is a great alternative.

Presented five or six times a year on most PBS stations, this program is a video magazine featuring four or five short pieces on current science topics. The language level is appropriate for middle or high school, although some could be used with upper elementary students.

Even better, the segments and lots of supporting and supplementary materials are posted on their web site. Most of the video can be downloaded in several popular formats allowing teachers to play them without having a fast internet connection. Look in the Archive to find segments from the past three seasons as well as new programs soon after they are broadcast.

The Teacher section of the site offers ideas for activities to go along with the videos and links to other science education resources.

All in all, this is a great resource for teachers who want to include current events in their science lessons.

Posted on August 26th, 2008
Filed In: Science & Math

If you teach science, especially Chemistry at the high school level, here’s a wonderful resource for illustrating the elements on the periodic table.

The Periodic Table of Videos consists of 118 short films in which scientists from the University of Nottingham in England demonstrate the properties of each element using a casual style, humor, and some don’t-try-this-at-home experiments.

Although the producers have completed videos for all the known elements in the table, they continue to create improved and alternative versions so subscribe to their RSS feed to know when new items are added.

While the language and images are completely suitable for middle and high school students, you may run into some problems if your school blocks YouTube, which hosts the materials.

But this is an excellent example of why teachers should have access to the video sharing site.

Posted on August 16th, 2008
Filed In: Science & Math

It’s hard to find good material to use with young children online but that’s what you’ll find at StoryPlace.

Created by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, this site for students in preschool through grade 2 features animated stories, interactive activities, off-line activities and suggestions for parents to extend the concepts in the online materials.

Everything is available in both English and Spanish, is organized by topics, and the entire site has a refreshingly simply (and totally ad free) layout. It’s so good we’ll be adding this to our permanent collection.

Posted on August 9th, 2008
Filed In: Strictly Elementary

Last spring we noted that the Library of Congress had placed a collection of their images in The Commons section of the photo sharing site flickr.

Now the Library has been joined by five other museums from all over the world, including the Smithsonian.

All pictures carry no known copyright restrictions which means that teachers and students can use them for any projects or presentations without legal concerns.

The flickr structure also allows anyone to contribute to understanding the context of each image by allowing them to add tags (keywords) or leave comments.

Posted on August 4th, 2008
Filed In: General Resources

We are working on upgrades to the site and, as you might expect, there may be some little glitches that pop up in the process. We hope to track down and squish all the little buggies in the next day or two.

Posted on August 3rd, 2008
Filed In: Site Info

In advance of the summer Olympic games in China, the National Geographic Society has put together China’s Journey, a wonderful section about the country on their web site.

Most of the materials are also in the May issue of their magazine but online you’ll find many more photographs, including those uploaded by Geographic readers, along with interactive quizzes and maps, and links to much more information.

The writing level of the articles is at least high school so it may not be a place to send your students. However, there is a wealth of information and images for any classroom studying China, the country, the people, and culture.

Posted on April 16th, 2008
Filed In: Around the World

The numbers and types of overlays for Google Earth just keep on growing. Now they’ve merged their mapping technologies with the contents of the New York Times.

To display the layer, open Google Earth and in the Layers section in the left column, open the Gallery and click the box next to New York Times.

When you zoom in you’ll see Times icons in places where stories in recent editions of the newspaper and web site are set. Click on the icon for a summary and link back to the full story.

If you don’t see the Times layer, you may need to update your copy of Google Earth, the basic version of which is free. If you see too many icons on the map, turn them all off first by clicking on the box next to Primary Database in the Layers section.

This is just one more example of why Google Earth is fast becoming an essential tool for the classroom. And for more help with using Earth and Google Maps, take a look at this page.

Posted on April 9th, 2008
Filed In: Around the World, Information & Current Events

For those who still study dinosaurs, the National Geographic Society offers a wonderful interactive Prehistoric Time Line for you to use with your students or for them to explore on their own.

Each stop on the time line is accompanied by a short description and a picture illustrating the concepts being described. Each article also has a link to another page that offers much more information about that particular period.

While you may have some parents and students disputing the opening statement that “Humans have walked the Earth for 190,000 years, a mere blip in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history.”, this is a great tool for clearly illustrating some huge concepts of time and history.

Posted on March 23rd, 2008
Filed In: Science & Math

The people at the Library of Congress have worked hard to provide access to materials from the public collections on their web site, especially through the wonderful American Memory.  Now they are reaching out even farther by posting more than 3000 images in flickr.

Based on a quick scan through their section, the pictures seem to be pretty high quality, most in color from the 40’s and 50’s. More importantly, the images come with fairly detailed documentation about the subjects and origins of the pictures, are extensively tagged, and have no copyright restrictions.

Hopefully, this is just the start of the Library and other public educational institutions extending access to their materials by offering them through the common gathering places on the web like flickr.

I wonder when their video collection will start showing up in YouTube.

Posted on January 17th, 2008
Filed In: Information & Current Events, US History & Government

In the more than 150 years that Scientific American has been publishing, their mission has always been to explain a wide range of topics in science and technology to the educated layman. But their material (both print and on the web) is still usually too complex and/or too long for most teachers to use in their classroom.

That’s where 60 Second Science comes in.

The site is written as a blog with frequent posts about current events and issues in science, many accompanied by professionally produced podcasts. Each entry addresses a single topic using straightforward language and, of course, taking a minute or less. You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or any other service that uses RSS feeds.

The reading/listening level of the materials is certainly high school but science teachers at other levels may find some features they can use to present news and information to their students.

Overall, a good site that attempts to make science understandable to all of us non scientists.

Posted on November 29th, 2007
Filed In: Science & Math