Online useful resources for teachers and learners Part-2

There is a vast knowledge available online relating to educational needs, educators, learners, students. I have started writing about useful links and resources for teachers and learners. This is part 2 which will be updated if required and I plan to add more sites and online links which can help us learn more.

* Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (C4LPT) is a major resource site about Social Learning (ie the use of social media for learning)for those in Schools, Colleges, Universities and Business(profit- and non-profit making organisations)

Site offers very useful posts like:

• The FINAL Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 List
• 30 Ways to use Social Media to Work Smarter
• 100+ Free Websites to find out about Anything and Everything

'100+ Free Websites to find out about Anything and Everything' is an alphabetical list of websites which provide information and/or instruction about a wide range of subjects. The websites cover a wide range of informational and educational topics and include general reference resources, how-to guides, wikis, how-to videos, podcasts, courses, lessons, tutorials (including open courseware), e-books as well as other reference resources and places to ask questions both online and on your mobile.

The resources are suitable for learners of all ages: students as well as workplace learners and lifelong learners - as well as teachers, educators and trainers.

Link: 100+ Free Websites to find out about Anything and Everything

Check 'resources' tab to discover more stuff.

A blog for mothers of preschoolers with tips and resources

I love to share the resources I find during my browsing the net. It is a pleasure for me to discover good stuff, good blogs with useful tips, and resources. Being an educator at a primary school and dealing with reception stage children (4 years to 5 year old), I am in need of more ideas and tips to adopt for my own classroom. I prefer to bookmark blogs which are created with personal touch and experience. 'Preschool mama' is one of those blogs which I have subscribed to get updates of next articles.

'Preschool mama'  is a wonderful blog sharing resources for mothers of preschoolers. The blog is created by a former Montessori preschool teacher and mother of a kid.

What you can find at the blog?

• Blog has a lot of stuff to help you give your child an edge, enhance his learning and reading skills, and boost self esteem.
• You can find resources, easy tips and how tos for fun activities and crafts projects. 
• Get advice on dealing with common preschooler health and nutrition issues.
• Simple and easy ideas for arts and crafts that combine creativity with a great bonding experience for you and your child.
• Resources to help with potty training and bed wetting issues, ways to enhance socials skills and encourage independent thinking, and a lot more.

The blogger says:
'You’ll find all the stuff that’s worked for me, the well meaning tips that didn’t, and the tricks I wish I’d known when I was raising my son.
You’ll also find advice, inspiration and motivation for you, the PreSchool Mama, without who this blog wouldn’t exist.'

Start seaching the sites from 'Best of preschool mama' page where you can find posts covering all the topics essentail for the skill or persoanlity development of your child.

Note: Unfortunately blog is not being updated since two years, but still there is good stuff at the blog.

Explore the Web for valuable research information.

I love to score the web for valuable information. During this search I came across many online resources which are difficult to find our with normal search. This post offers useful and valuable links for educators, students, librarian's, families, businesses and every person who love to browse the net. 

* 'LibrarySpot.com'  is a resource for online research by offering library and reference sites. 

More about the site (In their own words)

'Sites featured on LibrarySpot.com are hand-selected and reviewed by our editorial team for their exceptional quality, content and utility. Published by StartSpot Mediaworks, Inc. in the Northwestern University/Evanston Research Park in Evanston, Ill., LibrarySpot.com is the first in a family of vertical information portals designed to make finding the best topical information on the Internet a quick, easy and enjoyable experience. 

To date, LibrarySpot.com has received more than 30 awards and honors. 

Most recently, Forbes.com selected LibrarySpot.com as a "Forbes Favorite" site, the best in the reference category, and PC Magazine named it one of the Top 100 Web Sites. LibrarySpot.com has been featured on CNN, Good Morning America, CNBC and in many other media outlets.'

-  'HomeworkSpot.com' is a sister site of 'LibrarySpot' and is a valuable source for students, parents and educator.

It offers free homework information portal that features the very best K-12 homework-related sites together with engaging editorial in one high-utility, educational spot. With the help of students, parents and teachers, their team of educators, librarians and journalists has scoured the Web to bring you the best resources for English, math, science, history, art, music, technology, foreign language, college prep, health, life skills, extracurricular activities and much more. For your convenience, we have made every effort to organize these resources into grade-appropriate categories for elementary, middle and high school.

* 'Digital Librarian'  is an online resource from Margaret Vail Anderson, a librarian in Cortland, New York, offering best of the web sites around the net. Home page shows topics which takes you to another page with lots of more useful links and resources. 

* 'The British Library'  offers 14 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles, 58 million patents, 3 million sound recordings, and so much more.

* 'Awesome Library' organizes the Web with 37,000 carefully reviewed resources, including the top 5 percent in education.

* 'Virtual Learning Resource Center'

thousands of the best academic information websites, selected by teachers and library professionals worldwide, in order to provide to students and teachers current, valid information for school and university academic projects!

The Virtual LRC is both a dedicated index of over 10,000 web pages maintained by a real human being, as well as a meta-search engine that includes in its results information gleaned from many of the best research portals and university and public library Internet subject guides recommended by teachers and librarians.

The VLRC includes selected sites in a growing list of subject/information areas including: full-text magazines, newspapers, electronic text archives, art history, biography, biology, career information, psychology, history, government information, literature, medical information, social sciences, legal information, American Civil War, Art, Careers, Crime, Directories, Economics, Education, English Language, Electronic Texts, Foreign Languages, Geography, Genealogy, Government Information,Health/Medical, History, Legal Information, Lesson Plans, Literature, Mathematics, Music, Reference, Science, Technology, Tutorials on the Web, and Writing Style Guides. 

* 'Access my library'  offers free access to premium content you can trust. Browse and read over 30 million articles for business, education, and general research needs – absolutely free! 

Their goal (In their own words)

Our goal is to help you access information from credible sources while making the offerings of local libraries more accessible. We do this by using our technology to help people find this content, which search engines usually cannot access. 

AccessMyLibrary also includes articles from HighBeam Research, which is a part of the Gale family. HighBeam offers even more research content, including access to archives from more than 6,500 publications.

* 'Resource yourself' 

is a blog with resources of interest to information professionals, educators and journalists. It is a blog so unlike other sites you need to start search from 'categories' links.

Story telling session with Shamim Azad

Last month a 3 day session of training with poet and story teller Mrs. Shamim Azad was held at our school. I really enjoyed the session at Play and Nursery class as it was really interactive and very useful for teachers as well. After that session I realized that 'Good storytelling can be powerful, transporting, and magical'. It was a live performance as she was not reading from a book A session with early year teachers was also very helpful and full of interactive tips/ideas.

I remember the time when my grandmother use to tell stories at bed time. I was a book worm from the very early age but I should admit that story listening was more attractive and more effective than reading from books.

Story telling:

"It is entertainment, a way of passing on a culture's history, or a way of teaching to both the young and the old. It is something that must be experienced and tried before you can fully understand it. More than anything else, storytelling is an art. An art that anyone can participate in. We all are storytellers, whether we realize it or not."

More about Shamim Azad:

She has published 7 books including novels, collections of short stories, essays and poems in Bangla. Sheffield’s Off the Shelf Festival of writing and reading 2003 described Azad as " one of Britain's best-known Bangladeshi writers in Britain".

Her profile as a poet at:  'Priyo People'
Her storytelling samples are embed at her blog at: 'My Space'

Why learning of story telling skill is useful for classrooms?

There are many good and strong reasons to learn the art of storytelling for a better classroom and few of those reasons are:

* It is empowering for a child to be able to express his or her thoughts and feelings articulately through oral language.

* The art of storytelling can be an enjoyable tool for practicing both listening skills and verbal expression.

* Teachers can effectively model interesting, expressive language for students to emulate.

* New vocabulary can be introduced and easily comprehended within a story's context.

* Diverse ways in which language is used can be depicted in folktales, including instructions, recipes, secrets, riddles, warnings, questions, and explanations.

* People learn new skills when they are interested in the topic or when it is useful to them. Finding folktales to tell can stimulate reading and research interest. Folktale collections can be found in the 398.2 section of library.

* Storytelling is a way to emphasize the uniqueness of each person's imagination.

* Imagination can generate language.

* Comprehension, or the ability to make sense of a story's plot, is facilitated by being able to mentally map the story's main events.

Online Story telling resources:

* A site from "Tim Sheppard" with articles, links and information about ancient art of story telling.

* 'Story Center.org'

Check more resources and information in my next post!

An ultimate resource for parents about child development and behavior

Internet is a rich source of information for teachers or parents in terms of guidance, tips, advice and expert suggestions. Every parent needs guidance on kid's development and behavior.

Your child is a site from University of Michigan Medical School and this site is especially designed for parents as a guide to internet iformation on kids development and behavior.

Mission/Vision:

"YourChild: Development and Behavior Resources is a Web site for parents. It is a clearinghouse for comprehensive information on children's development and behavior. We aim to help parents navigate the overwhelming amount of information available on the Internet and provide parents a means to link up with support groups, agencies, organizations, and other tools and resources. YourChild is a resource parents can trust, because University of Michigan experts have evaluated all our information and links."

What you can get from the site?

- Lots of parenting and child development and behavior resources:

- Information to help you better understand your child's development and behavior
Links to support groups so you can find other parents going through the same things as you

- Links to agencies and organizations that may be able to assist you
Recommended books

- Other helpful tools and resources

- Commentary from the YourChild team on controversial or important topics of the day

- Featured links to information about timely topics

- A guide to using the Internet to find the best and most reliable information about parenting and child development

Another source for parents:

* Center for effective parenting provides lot of information for parents and educators.

* A lot of printable PDF files on many topics:
parenting handouts

"Fema for kids"- teaching how to be prepared for disasters!

Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA is in charge of helping people before and after a disaster. FEMA is called in to help when the President declares a disaster. Disasters are "declared" after hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes or other similar events strike a community. The Governor of the state must ask for help from the President before FEMA can respond.

FEMA workers help disaster victims find a place to stay if their homes were damaged or destroyed.
FEMA also helps repair homes and works with city officials to fix public buildings that have been damaged.

FEMA helps people BEFORE a disaster so they will be ready. FEMA teaches people how to prepare for a disaster and how to make their homes as safe as possible. FEMA works with communities to help them build safer, stronger buildings that are less likely to be damaged. FEMA also trains firefighters and emergency workers, and runs a flood insurance program. FEMA is part of the EXECUTIVE BRANCH, which means it reports to the President of the United States.

Fema for kids teaches you to be prepared for disasters and prevent disaster damage.

You can also learn what causes disasters, play games, read stories and become a Disaster Action Kid.
Parents and teachers page has activities, curriculum and safety information you can use in the classroom or at home!

* Disaster web sites

"Team Nutrition" A resource for kids nutrition education

For teachers and school management this resource can provide lot of information and guidance relating to the health and nutrition of the school going kids. There is a lot to learn for parents who are concerned about their child's eating habits and nutrition education.

"Team nutrition" is from USDA 'United States Department of Agriculture' providing an integrated, behavior based, comprehensive plan for promoting the nutritional health of the Nation's children. This plan involves schools, parents, and the community in efforts to continuously improve school meals, and to promote the health and education of 50 million school children in more than 96,000 schools nationwide.

Mission:

To improve children's lifelong eating and physical activity habits through nutrition education based on the principles of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and MyPyramid.

How it works:
Team Nutrition uses three strategies to change behavior:

1. Training and Technical Assistance for Healthy School Meals:
- Planning and preparing healthy meals that appeal to ethnic and cultural taste preferences in all Child Nutrition Programs;
- Linking meals programs to other educational activities, such as learning in the classroom and developmental progress in child care;
- Providing nutrition expertise and awareness to the school or child care community; and
- Using sound business practices to assure the continued availability of healthy meals and the financial viability and accountability of school meal programs.

2. Nutrition Education:

Through fun, interactive nutrition education children are encouraged to:

- Eat a variety of foods
- Eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains
- Eat lower fat foods more often
- Get your calcium-rich foods
- Be physically active

3. School and Community Support:
School and community support for healthy eating and physical activity focuses on three behavior outcomes for school and community leaders:
- Adopting and implementing school policies that promote healthy eating and physical activity;
- Providing school resources adequate to achieve success; and
- Fostering school and community environments that support healthy eating and physical activity.

Mor links about nutrition:

* The University of Illinois Extension Family Nutrition Program(FNP) Promotes safe and healthy eating for families on a budget.
- Provides nutrition programs for families.
- Education programs:
- Healthy eating
- Safe eating
- Food budgeting
- Monthly and seasonal topics

"What a site" -helping teachers locate web resources

Finding specific information at the world wide web is a time consuming matter and even after spending and lot of time and efforts, we are unable to find the relevant piece of information. As a blogger I could get in touch to many web resources, which helped me in starting this blog and I could organize my resources or links for other teachers or parents. But still if you are an IT teacher and for your students if you need to create a tutorial, then "What a site" can be a solution to your needs.
Even teachers can learn from this tutorial.

This site is created by "Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (mcli)" at the Maricopa Community Colleges, and provides support innovation in teaching and learning, promoting the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning.

What a site helps the teachers to learn finding, evaluating, and integrating useful content in your specialty area.

In their own words:

"The Web is a huge, vast resource of mostly disorganized information. We cannot do much about that.
But for advancing the process of learning, we as educators can do more than sending students out to a search site or just providing them a laundry list of hyperlinks. We can create activities that leverage the wealth of content "out there" while at the same time promoting higher order thinking skills or integration with activites we already know work well. All it takes is a bit of homework and some creative thinking on our part.

The purpose of "What a Site" is to help teachers locate, evaluate, and integrate web resources for their area of interest-- the subjects that they teach."

"What a site" has organized a tutorial where you will be able to locate examples of full web courses, course materials, web activities, and key reference/resource web sites in your subject area. You can then help your students in your teaching area by sharing your findings into a searchable web database.

*** Start your step by step tutorial here:
introduction

How things work?

I would be reviewing here some sites which may be interesting and useful for children and teachers as well, about "How things work?".


1-This link is for computer lovers:

This site provides you with computer hardware, computer software, internet and lots of other related stuff information. You may get all the necessary information you may require to know how things work?
Site link: How stuff works
You may get explainations about these topics at the site.
. Auto
• Business & Money
• Communication
• Computer
• Electronics
• Entertainment
• Food & Recipes
• Health
• Home & Garden
• People
• Science
• Travel

It's a good idea to sign up for their weekly newsletter, which is an easiest way to keep up with all the stuff going on in the world. You may select the topic you like to know about from a given list.

* Get newsletter
* Reference link takes you to the page, where you can get informations about: Geography, History, Humanities, Industry & Technology, Life Science, Physical Science & Math, Recreation, Social Science.


2- The MadSci Network is a site, where people can ask questions and learn more about the world around them. It has evolved into an interactive science teaching and community outreach tool, staffed and maintained by volunteer scientists and engineers from around the world.

The MadSci Network made its debut in September of 1995 as part of Washington University's, Young Scientist Program, a student-run organization dedicating to improving science literacy among K-12 students in St. Louis.
The MadSci Network fields questions in 26 different subjects, covering topics in astronomy, the biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, earth sciences, engineering, and physics. In 1999 alone, more than 900 scientists volunteered their time to answer more than 25,000 questions from K-12 students and the general public.

Main focus has been their free Ask-An-Expert service, which receives 90-150 questions a day from visitors in the U.S. or as far away as Malaysia, Chile and even Antarctica. The people asking questions are as young as 4 years to as old as 88 years of age. Nearly 800 scientists, also globally distributed, provide answers to your questions. The interactions with K-12 students work advantageously, both for the purposes of science education, and for the purpose of increasing their computer literacy.
More about the site: Introduction
The MadSci site has received notoriety from organizations including the U.S. Department of Education, Science magazine, New Scientist, and the BBC.
If you have an email address, access to the WWW and an interest in telling others about the wonders of science, then join the team.
Information and an online sign-up form live at: Join here

3- Ask Dr. Universe is a site where Dr. Universe tackles all questions, experts in just about everything. From global warming to neural networks. From Jane Austen to soil nematodes. From cow belching to quasars. You can ask questions at any topic, and search the site for many facts of life.

Ask Dr. Universe is brought to you by University Relations at Washington State University and is made possible through generous support from Microsoft Corporation.

4- Stanford University presents "Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing"(AIM) is a continuous learning community of industrial professionals, academics, and students passionate about the making of real things that improve people's lives. It is a cooperative venture among Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, School of Engineering, and member industrial firms.

"(AIM) Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing"has developed an introductory website for kids and adults showing how various items are made. It covers over 40 different products and manufacturing processes, and includes almost 4 hours of manufacturing video. It is targeted towards non-engineers and engineers alike. Think of it as your own private online factory tour, or a virtual factory tour, if you wish."

Includes products like candy, cars, airplanes, or bottles - or if you've been interested in manufacturing processes, like forging, casting, or injection molding, then this is the place to search.

AIM site link

Sign up for AIM e-mail list at the site home page.

5- How products are made? explains and details the manufacturing process of a wide variety of products, from daily household items to complicated electronic equipment and heavy machinery. The site provides step by step descriptions of the assembly and the manufacturing process (complemented with illustrations and diagrams) Each product also has related information such as the background, how the item works, who invented the product, raw materials that were used, product applications, by-products that are generated, possible future developments, quality control procedures, etc.

For example, you can find here descriptions of Air Bag, Air Conditioner, Artificial Snow, Automobile, Battery, Blue Jeans, Chewing Gum, Coin, Compact Disc, Credit Card, DVD Player, Fireworks, Hologram, Jet Engine, Laser Pointer, Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), Nuclear Submarine, Paint, Popcorn, Refrigerator, Telephone, Television, Temporary Tattoo, Vaccine, Vacuum Cleaner or Watch.

This searchable site is suited for a general audience and the descriptive language of this reference material is easy to understand and to follow. So go ahead we invite you to learn about How Products Are Made!
There is a list from A to Z catagory, but if you find it difficult to search for your product, there is a search box at the home page, where you can enter the product name and click "Go" to get the instant results. There are also some inventors biographies which might be interesting to read.

Site link: How products are made?

Ready Web-- A resource for parents and educators

A very impressive and easy to navigate site "
Ready Web" is an electronic collection of resources for early childhood and school rediness. So for parents and teachers this site is a valuable source of inforamation, research based studies, tips and advices.

Founded at: December 9, 2006

ReadyWeb provides a Virtual Library of the full text of documents and articles, and hyperlinks to documents and articles, on various topics related to school readiness.
"ReadyWeb" also provides bibliographies of documents and journal articles from the ERIC database.

Link to virtual library where you can find 4 catagories:
1-Tips for Parents

2-Research, Statistics, and Definitions

3-Getting Schools Ready for Children

4-Public Policy Issues and Initiatives

Virtual library
For parents: There is a long list of articles which take you to other sites or information sources.

Check here: Tips for Parents

I am giving here few article links, rest of the articles, or research reports are also a source of information.

** Tips to Help Children Adjust for both parents and teachers

** Preventing Reading Difficulties Before Kindergarten

ReadyWeb is a project of the Early Childhood and Parenting (ECAP) Collaborative, College of Education, at the University of Illinois.

It was originally funded, at least in part, with Federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.

Achievements:
* ReadyWeb has been awarded the Parenting Q&A Seal of Approval.
* ReadyWeb has received the LookSmart Editor's Choice award.
* ReadyWeb has been rated in the Top 5% of all Web sites by Lycos.
* ReadyWeb has received the
* "RECOGNIZED BY 4therapy.com AWARD" as a Web site that provides a useful public service to consumers and/or professionals seeking information on the Internet.
* ReadyWeb was featured in the July 20-September 20, 2004, issue of Parents' Source as a great resource for the whole family!