Curriculum assistance sites

Purdue OWL
This site is littered with hundreds of ideas and tips to help with writing questions that may come up during the normal school day.  The site is very easy to access and very comfortable to navigate. The search box in the upper corner is very useful and quickly helps you find what you may be looking for.

Goodle Docs - This is a free word processing tool that can be used by one user or can be used and accessed by many users.  I have used it before in a group setting from multiple computers and have found that if too many people are viewing or changing the text that it is difficult to use.

Video Conferencing - This is a site with tons of possible "field trips" available to help to supplement the curriculum that is being taught.  Hardware is required to make this possible.

Online Stopwatch
The name says it all.  This is an easy tool to project a stopwatch onto the screen to show how much time is left or how much time they are taking to complete a task.

Common Craft - This site shares videos "In Plain English" to help to explain common things that might sometimes be considered difficult to understand but in a well articulated way that is visually easy to follow.

Smarttech - This is a must have for any teacher that has access to the smart tools technology.  The site has thousands of searchable lessons created for use in the classroom.

Discovery Education/United Streaming - This site will allow you to interject short video clips into lessons to help enhance lessons in areas that are better understood when seen rather than discussed.

Wordle -  Wordle is a fun way to present information in a different way.  All you need to do is to input text that has things you are interested in sharing and you can create a neat display that will show the most common words in the test that was used.  The more the word is used the bigger it will be.  This allows the most important facts to be more prominently displayed.

Shephard Software -  There are many interactive educational games that can be played on this site.  I have made use of many of the geography games on this site.  My students have really liked to challenge themselves with the scoring system that is involved in the site for each game.

Grading Sites

Rubistar is a really neat tool that allows you to quickly and efficiently make rubrics for any type of activity that you may have in the classroom.  You can create one quickly using already loaded and formatted information.  You can then modify that information to fit the specific needs of your classroom.  There is a free version that is very easy to use.

Organization Sites

Evernote - This site is a catch-all of information and gives a nice searchable way to find things that you enter into the site.

Delicious - This site is a useful site for bookmarking your websites and then being able to access them from anywhere that has an internet connection.


Diigo - This is a great site that allows you to bookmark websites, highlight sections of articles, archive articles and keep track of information.  It is incredibly useful but it requires you to download  a toolbar to your computer in order to collect information.  It is a really great tool, but not as good if you use multiple computers where the toolbar might not be easily downloaded.

Dropbox - This is a site that allows you to access files from all of your computers.  You need to download a tool to your computer to use it.  This is a nice way to save things to a cloud system rather than emailing documents to yourself.

Presentation sites

Prezi - Prezi is a much cooler version of powerpoint.  It gets away from the basic bullet pointed presentations and allows for a faster paced presentation that is much more appealing to view.  It takes a little more work than the traditional powerpoint presentation, but the final product is worth it.  Here is my first attempt at making a prezi.

Animoto - This site is as much a sharing of experiences as it is a presentation tool.  It has a really easy template that allows you to quickly throw together a presentation that otherwise might have taken quite a long time. I made one the other day from our trip up to Michigan.

Interaction Sites

Blogger - It is because of Blogger that you can view this site.  This is a quick, easy and free way to connect with many people all around the world.  All they need is the web address and you can share with them just about anything you would like.  Blogger can be open to the public, or can be locked down to only allow people who are invited to view the site.  It is a fantastic way to keep in contact with parents about the happenings from day to day.

Wikispaces -  This wiki is a useful way to interact with others in a group.  Our principal manages a wiki for our staff information and shares all important information in the wiki.  It is a really useful tool that has made things for our secretaries easier because their new reply they can give when asked for information is to direct others to view the wiki.

Webs - Want to create a fast website?  Use this site.  

Poll Everywhere - This is a web based alternative to the clickers.  You can use cell phones or you can cast your vote using a supplied website.

Club Penguin -  This is a site for kids to interact with each other.  It is video game social networking with more games than socializing, but it can still have some neat features that kids can use to get together with their friends in a safe environment.

No Cost Conferencing - This is a free way to have a phone or video conference with one or more people.