Laura’s Blog

With back-to-school season is in full gear, educators and parents are on the lookout for safe, reliable, educational social media sites. Here are a few to investigate (click each headline to go directly to the site):

Google News Timeline

A handy tool for graphically skimming current events. You can customize newspapers, magazines, blogs, and more for which you’d like to view headlines and excerpts (contains links to full articles).

SchoolTube

An educator-moderated video sharing site with over 35,000 videos organized into 24 categories. Every student-uploaded video is screened by a classroom teacher before it goes live.

Microsoft Live Mesh
OR
Google Docs

Collaborate and share documents in real time. You can create a new document in your browser window, or upload a HTML or plain text, Micorsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, and other types of documents.

Wikipedia for Schools

5,500 articles, each checked for accuracy and appropriateness, with topics chosen for relevance to an educational curriculum. You can browse articles online or download them for free onto DVD.

Twitter For Teachers

A collaborative effort to teach teachers about Twitter. Includes examples of how to use Twitter in the elementary, secondary, post-secondary and ESL classroom.

Twitter4Teachers

If you want to find other teachers in your subject area who are tweeting, check out this site.

Google Books

Search for and inside of books. If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given Google permission, you’ll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it’s in the public domain, you’re free to download a PDF copy.

Readers: What’s your favorite online educational resource?

Sources:

• “Tech Toys for Teaching,” NEA Today, August/September 2009
• Google Grab Bag, National Education Association