Review: "What is"- An internet and computer information site!

From beginners to professional level, everyone can learn and master new concepts, technologies, skills and a lot more at the site. This site provides FREE content.

"WhatIs.com" is a knowledge exploration and self-education tool about information technology, especially about the Internet and computers.

It contains over 4,500 individual encyclopedic definition/topics, a number of "Fast Reference" pages and learning tools. The topics contain about 12,000 hyperlinked cross-references between definition-topics and to other sites for further information.

When it was Launched in September 1996, it contained 350 alphabetized words about computers and the Internet. But by late 1998, WhatIs.com's audience grew rapidly, reaching one million page views a month.

In 1999, PC Magazine editors voted WhatIs.com one of the five best sites about information technology.
By September 2003, WhatIs.com was being visited over a million times a month, serving over 50,000 visitors each business day, and delivering five million page views a month.

learning tools:
There is a series of fast education 10-step "Learn IT" pages that explain, summarize, cross-refer, and test the reader about a complex subject.

Fast Guides:
For doing specific tasks, quizzes, a series of Learning Paths in which you can learn by reading definitions in sequence, and a number of popular Fast References, including Every File Format in the World, Mathematical Symbols, and The Speed of...(a table comparing data rates).

Awards and recognitions:
link page
Site link: What is.com

Few resources providing FREE tutorials "To learn Drawing "

I am a drawing and art lover and from my childhood I was among few students who were interested in drawing, art and crafts, and their work was always appreciated. Even now I am taking art, crafts and drawing classes at my school. I still search for art and drawing links at the net, and now it's time to share those links with other teachers and students who love to draw. Most of the given links are FREE.

1- Drawing tutorial at "South wind" by "Rebekah Lynn"
Includes:

* Basic drawing steps
* The tools
* Understanding the art of shading

You may subscribe to their newsletter if you want to be informed of new art from SouthWind!

2- Kinder art.com is the largest collection of free art lessons on the internet. It started in 1997, providing an opportunity for parents, educators, artists, students to have fun while exchanging ideas, finding information and learning.

Mission of the site is to make art lessons and educational information accessible to all. They offer printable activity pages, the art kitchen, educational links and articles, early childhood education resources and much more.

JANTJE SAYS:
"Let children try. Let children fail. Let children succeed. Give them the freedom and they will create."

* art lessons
* drawing
* Articles on art education and profiles of young artists. Includes ways to cultivate creativity in children, over 200 things you can do with an art degree, Tips for Teachers and Children & Their Art at: Art speack
* Recipes galore so you can make your own art materials and/or some yummy treats to fuel your creativity: art kitchen
* Tips for teaching ECE: Tips

3- "Artists Helping Children" is a Children's site dedicated to comforting children by empowering artists and others to donate artwork, donated murals, donated art supplies, donated toys and a lot of love to sick and needy children. Artists Helping Children also helps artists by giving them information on how they can help the sick and poor children by volunteering to paint murals and other art for hospitals, shelters, clinics, etc.
We also have filled this site with free coloring pages & coloring printouts for children to color with as well as 1000s of free arts and crafts projects for kids to use when they need some crafts ideas.

4- Drawing curriculum, art lessons

5- Creativity portal provides lot of resources.

6- Drawing coach Learn how to draw and improve your skill in no time with the help of an online coach. Whether you're an art teacher, art student, or just a hobbyist artist you will find the step by step education that will give you the ability to bring those images in your mind into paper reality.
monthly newsletter, Just Draw It. It's delivered at the end of each month and will inform you about new info that has been added to the site. It's a great way to keep up with the latest an greatest drawing tutorials from the coach.
- drawing techniques
- Subscibe to their blog

7- Study sphere

8- draw

9- Free drawing lessons

10- Drawing techniques

12- Drawspace is the largest and fastest growing recreational art education website in the world. The site owner, Brenda Hoddinott, is a world renowned artist and art educator, and is the author of two internationally published books on drawing.Free lessons

13- Back in the mid-1980s, a young man named Mark Kistler took up a cause. He envisioned that every child would be able to expand their imaginations by using art. He believed that the key to understanding art was to teach children how to record their art on paper in a meaningful way, which in his mind meant learning how to draw three dimensional pictures. Mark's teaching methods found their way into the world of public television. His "The Draw Squad" series of 44 video lessons is the highest quality TV production Mark has ever done. It includes Mark's standard 7 Seven Magic Words of Drawing format AND high tech set design with backgrounds and animated characters flying around while he enthusiastically teaches kids how to draw.
Link to the site:
- draw squad

14- It is one of the TV show which features art and craft projects. You may find some drawing techniques from the link below.
-Art attack

15- This is a free site for students who want to learn 'how to look' and teachers who require practical drawing and painting lesson notes. Cowdisley Lessons are currently being used by over 1000 US and international schools, colleges, universities and ateliers by teachers for their classroom lesson plans. We aim for a world of greatly improved visual 'literacy' and begin here with the basics.
- Drawing lessons

Amazing paper craft blogs

Paper craft is not only limited to the paper folding or origami. You would be amazed to see the work poeple do with simple papers, as I was astonished to see the artistic creation. It is simplt ab art
According to Wikipedia

"Origami (折り紙 origami?) (from ori meaning "folding", and kami meaning "paper") is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. The goal of this art is to create a given result using geometric folds and crease patterns preferably without the use of gluing or cutting the paper medium.

Origami only uses a small number of different folds, but they can be combined in a variety of ways to make intricate designs. In general, these designs begin with a square sheet of paper whose sides may be different colors. Contrary to most popular belief, traditional Japanese origami, which has been practiced since the Edo era (1603-1867), has often been less strict about these conventions, sometimes cutting the paper during the creation of the design. There are many different designs such as the traditional crane or the very confusing flower."

1-"Paper forest"
The name of the blog is "Paper forest" and it is for paper craft lovers. It might be surprising to know that origami or paper folding seems child's play, comparing to the craft shown at this blog.

Blogger "Jaime Zollars" is a painter and she loves making, constructiong paper mechanical toys or writes about them at blog. More about her at her blog: Jaime Zollars blog

Blog Paper Forest provides a lot of paper projects you may try to make yourself. There are other paper craft site links at the blog. There are lot of paper craft projects which are FREE to use, and every post or paper project is unique.

2- Peter Callesen.com

Peter Callesen is from Denmark, and he is a paper magician, becaue the craft he has created from flat piece of paper into a 3D form is unbelievable.

He uses the A4 blank sheet of paper, which in his opinion gives the paper sculptures a fragility which underlines the tragic and romantic theme of the works.

* Samples of his magic art work with A4 paper

3- Paper kraft.net is to guide people find the best FREE papercraft on the web promote the works of prominent and up-and-coming paper modelers.

Blog is created by Ron Rementilla.
Main focus of this site is on 3D (three-dimensional) paper models. Whenever you see the word "papercraft" it refers to "3D paper models". The types of genre included are anime, manga, video game, PC game, cartoon, and film. Also included are origami, paper automata, pop-up cards, and dioramas.

4- Paper craft world provides free paper models and papercraft goods.

5- Paper box world presents boxy paper toys, available for download free of charge.


6- SS42.com is directory of very talented paper model artists from all over the world that have created and offer free printable paper models, paper toys, cut-outs, paper dolls, printable paper crafts of cars, buildings, spacecraft, animals and more.
-Origami projects

7- Paper arts links at Craft pop.com

Learn origami at the internet!

There are many sites, which provide you step up step tutorials or lesson to learn origami which is called paper folding.

1- Origami club is a free site where you learn origami.

Origami club belongs to City plan.co.,Ltd and is a resource site to learn origami for FREE. There are lot of origami projects which can be made and even you can take a print out of those easy instruction based diagrams.
Few pages:

* fun origami
* fruits and vegetables
There are 2 ways to learn origami, first is animated way and second is diagram of step by step instructions.

These are few of the pages, you may find artwork for cloths, furniture,

Site is updated monthly and several new origami artworkds are produced, so better to keep checking for it.

2- Various articles on different aspects of origami and related subjects Joseph Wu Origami

3- Folding paper toys that you can make yourself at: The toy maker

4- Learn about the history of origami, how it relates to math, and about Eric's work with origami; as well as, order books and learn to fold insects, dinosaurs, and other objects.
- Eric's Origami Page
- Diagrams on paper folding
- Origami organizations
- Personal origami pages

5- A site created by Melissa Johnson. These links provide information for the origami enthusiast or the beginner.Origami Sources on the Web
* This page provides links to web sites and pages dedicated
to using Origami in the classroom.
- Origami in the Classroom
6- Best Paper Airplanes .com is a free site that illustrates how to make unique folded Paper Planes that you'll find nowhere else - because these ten paper airpcraft models are original, copyrighted designs. Some are easy to bulid, some are flying origami as well as paperairplanes, but all are fun to fold and fly.
- Best airplanes.com
7- George Ho gives information about the benefits of origami.
- Origami & Mental Therapy

8- Formerly "Jasper's Guide to Paperfolding Instructions on the Web"
If you follow along with these handy guides, you can make your own beautiful models in just a few minutes
- Folds.net

9- You may find diagrams, puzzles, resources and news about origami.
- Origami-usa.org

Build your own web site!

Learning is really fun, as it is a creative process which should continue. When I started surfing the internet, I was really amazed to see that there is a lot to browse and learn. But I was still not sure that I can do something with creating my own site or blog, until after reading a lot of free stuff about web sites and blogs, I started my first web site and then blog. The journey continued, and I gradually but slowly kept on learning new and basic things about internet, browsing, web development, blogs, blogging etc. It has been more than 2 years when I started my first blog with a blogging network, who provided me basic guidelines to start and develop it. Few months passed, but I was not very much serious about it. Its one year ago, when I realized that I have learned enough to start my own blogs. About 8 months ago, I started my first "WordPress" blog Reviews and ramblings around the blogsphere! and as the response was appreciating, I started more blogs, which are getting good exposure.
I told you my own blogging story just to show that if you are also interented in web searching or developing your own site or blog, it can be a fun. Even though I learned from lot of mistakes, but now at this stage I can provied you enough useful stuff which can guide in making or creating your own web site.

Do it yourself web site
* Writing HTML
If you are facing problems while learning to build your web site:
Read the frequently asked question page

"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

Learn more about your computer!

Internet provides links to lot of useful FREE tutorials and lessons, to learn about computers. All the tutorials are free and start from basic learning skills.

* Learn about computers at BBC where 'Computer Tutor' teaches all the skills you need to use a computer. Computer Tutor is for people who don't know how to use a keyboard, mouse or computer screen.

If you're a friend, family member or tutor helping someone learn, all you need to do is choose your connection speed and press 'Start'.

- The BBC''s guide to using a computer"

* Build your own computer tips is a site providing lot of useful information about computers.
Robert Blackstone is the creator of this site.

Newsletter links takes you to the page, where you would be able to download 3 free computer building e-books.

The articles link provides link to many computer related articles.

* Download FREE e-book "A Guide To Using Your PC And The Web"
A Guide To Using Your PC And The Web is a 110-page e-book of computer tips, presented in an easy-to-read, step-by-step manner.

There is information on the basics of using your PC and Windows, tutorials for popular programs, online safety tips, and hundreds of links to useful web sites.

Because the e-book is a single small PDF file (less than 1 MB), it is easy to store or to e-mail to friends and relatives.

Downloading instructions: Once you have downloaded the e-book PDF file, you will need a PDF reader program to view it. PDF is a common type of file used for sharing documents on the Web.

The most popular PDF reader program is Adobe Reader which you can download for free.

Right-click the above link and select Save Target As or Save Link As to save the e-book to your PC.
- Downlaod FREE e-book

I would be updating this post, if I get more useful links. Suggestions from the visitors are also welcome.

"Wonder Korner"- where education meets fun

There are a lot of sites at the internet which provide educational plus interactive material at the same time. So the sites are fun to browse not only for parents or teachers but for children also. Today's site "Wonder Korner" is equally informative and useful for teachers, parents and kids.

Wonder Korner is for book reviews, answers to kids question, tools for writers, teacher's classroom projects, parenting articles, family friendly links and crafts ideas.

It started in 1995 as a homework helper siteTeacher Korner provides you fun kids' crafts, puzzles, games, classroom projects, practical teacher-to-teacher tips, bulletin board ideas, helpful site links and more.

* Parent's korner provides helpful articles; parenting news; inspiration & encouragement; book reviews; and family activities like crafts, puzzles, and fun recipes kids can help make.
* Family friendly links provides you a lot of links for web exploration.