Assignment #3 Resources for Teachers

Diigo
I decided to use Diigo for my resource page. I really liked the way it was set up and all the options for it. You can tag the sites, you can highlight certain parts of the page you bookmark and you can also add a sticky note to it.

Diigo is organized by the date you bookmarked the site, but you can organize it any way you like. The sites I added are all things that I have come accross and thought would be good for future (or present) use. I can also belong to certain groups and networks and I could follow other people's diigos. You can do a search by tags to help you narrow down what you're looking for.

I thought it would be great for sharing with other teachers because you could write sitcky notes to each other and talk about specific parts of the site. The sticky note shows up under the listed title for the webpage, so you don't even have to click on it to read it. It would also be great to invlove all of the teachers from your school to form a group and be able to share resources.

Website Reviews

Smart Exchange - http://exchange.smarttech.com/
This is a site that everyone using a SmartBoard needs to know about. You can browse SmartBoard presentations by school subject and grade level and by keywords or phrases. I like it because it's very simple to use and is cleaner and more read-able than some of the other options the SmartBoard program provides. It also provides a preview before you actually downloand it, so if you just want to quickly check out what's out there for what you are teaching, it's a great tool.

Busy Teacher's Cafe - http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/
This was a cute site that is easily navigable (I'm obviously visually oriented) and has some good ideas for elementary teachers. It is still under construction, so some features aren't available, but I do like the idea. There is a place for themes that I thought was fun. Basically, there is a list of themes under headings by subject or month and then sub-headings, so if you want to do a day focused on fairy tales, there are ideas for how to incorporate fairy tales into each subject that day. Just a good place to start for ideas.

Learning Vocabulary Fun - http://www.vocabulary.co.il/
I have used this site a lot while doing lesson plans for my Visual Arts class. If you ever need a biography on a certain artist, but have to edit a lot of their life out, this site has kid-friendly bios that I found were helpful. There are also art projects that go with artists and ideas for anticipatory sets and so on. There is a lot here, so it's a great place to start if you don't have that artistic bent to come up with things yourself.