Alternative to Wordle

Word it Out is a good alternative to Wordle. It has a bit more customization features and seems to have a bit of a censor built into what is displayed. Wordle is not really as kid friendly.
http://worditout.com/

KS2 Bitesize Science

This is a great site. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/ This BBC site has lots of science, English and math interactive pieces that can be embedded in your webpages or just used on a computer. You do need to have Flash installed on your computer. I have found that even if I have Flash installed, sometimes a few of the interactives don't work right away. I really recommend that you spend some time looking at this site.

Field Trip - Virtual Forest

This is a beautiful website that allows students to "walk" through a virtual forest in Finland. As you go on this trip, you learn about how to keep forests sustainable. You will hear the sounds and see a lot of information about forests. I recommend it highly.
UPM Forest Life For those of you that are reading this in email, the address is http://w3.upm-kymmene.com/upm/forestlife/index.html

Math Snacks - Videos to teach Math Concepts

This great site from NM State has videos that can be seen online or games that can be downloaded to the students' Ipods.
"Math Snacks are short animations and mini–games designed to help learners "get it". Each snack presents a mathematical concept, particularly those addressed in grades 6, 7 and 8. Ideal for use in a classroom or on your own, they can even be placed on mobile devices for "homework". The accompanying print materials can assist learners in applying their conceptual understanding to math problems." The website is http://www.mathsnacks.org/
The site shows how to do ratios, scale and proportions and equality. I think that the for some students, this would be a very cool way to learn a new math concept. 

Classroom Blogs

I haven't set this up yet, but it appears to be a great place for students to blog without having to have email addresses. If anyone at my school is interested, I would set up a blog for their students for them. It certainly appears to be an easy setup and the price is right. There aren't any ads and teachers can require that posts be approved before they are posted. I would certainly recommend that you put that feature on if you are using it with students. The name of the site is http://kidblog.org/.
Let me know if you decide to try this.

The Prince's Rainforest Project for Schools

England has a beautiful website that is all about the rainforest. It has videos, a book, games and all sorts of resources for a great rainforest curriculum. It is aimed at the 3 - 16 year old student according to the website, but I found lots of great resources for anyone!
I recommend that you spend time on this site, even if you aren't teaching the rainforest!
http://www.rainforestsos.org

Writing Prompts - Cartooning

If you are looking for a fun way to teach other ways to write, I recommend you spend some time looking at Make Beliefs Comix.  This web site has the cartoons already drawn. You can print or email your creations when you are done. If you want to save the cartoon, you will have to use a screen grab to do that, but this is an easy thing to accomplish. There are also good one panel cartoons that can be printed out as writing prompts. They have a cute cartoon and then a writing prompt and space for the student to write their response. You find this at the printables page.
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

iNudge - Make your own kind of music

This site is really fun to play with sounds and rhythms. I did find that it did not work in my Safari browser, but worked fine on the Firefox browser. http://www.inudge.net/
YOu can then share your sound with others by email or embed it in your web site.

Teaching Internet Literacy

Having a discussion with our librarian, Mrs. C. today, I told her I was working to  teach students how to evaulate web sites. I have been collecting sites with my LiveBinder account, Internet Literacy  and Deb had another link to add to mine. I just loved the site that she uses to teach students about Internet Use and Explorers at the same time.   The site she has found is called. All About Explorers. This site is to teach students how to search better on the internet. It is fantastic as the information on the first pages is obviously NOT accurate, but the pages look wonderful. The students will figure out quickly that it is not a good source for information. If they dig deeper in the information, they will find links to Reliable Resources on their explorer. There are lesson plans connected to this site. It is really a fun place on the web and very appropriate for beginning researchers.

Life Magazine Photo Archives

http://www.life.com/ I read an article about this in the latest Edutopia and had to go and see it. There is a huge archive of photos from the Life magazines. There are a lot of very meaningful pictures on this site. I found the Real or Fake pages fascinating and thought there were so many possibilities for this resource. Whether you are looking for a great picture for a writing prompt, a way to start a discussion about a time in America's past this is worth looking at. There are so many photos that it is important for students using it to have good search skills.