Your Next Read - Book Recommendations

Your Next Read is a neat little site that provides you with a web of book recommendations based on the authors and books you already like. Here's how it works; type in the title of a book you like or author you like and Your Next Read will provide you with a web of books that might also enjoy. Click on any of the books appearing the web to create another new web.

Applications for Education: Your Next Read could be a great resource for teachers that are trying to locate fiction works that their students might enjoy. Rather than having to rely on your own list of books, you can have students name books they've enjoyed in the past and instantly find some other appealing titles.

School Clip Art - Hundreds of Free Files for Students

School Clip Art is, as the name implies, a resource for locating free school-safe clip art. School Clip Art's galleries contain hundreds of files that teachers and students can use in slideshows, videos, and other digital presentations. You'll find galleries for sports, seasons of the year, holidays, and other special occasions.

Applications for Education: If the standard clip art that comes with PowerPoint or Keynote doesn't have what you're students need, have them browse through the galleries of School Clip Art.

Free PDF to Word Converter

PDF to Word is a tool that extracts the text of your PDF document to your choice of a word document or rich text file (RTF). To use it simply upload your PDF document, choose Word or RTF conversion and enter your e-mail address. (don't forget to opt-out of markeing e-mails, unless you like spam). PDF to word will e-mail you when your file is ready for download.

Veezzle - Find Free Stock Photos

Veezzle is an image search engine that should bring some clarity to that process. An image search on Veezzle will yield results that contain only royalty-free, free stock images.
Applications for Education: Your students could use the advanced image search tools of Google and Yahoo, but those options aren't always easy for students (or teachers in some cases) to understand. Veezzle provides students with a simple way to find images that they can use in their digital presentations

THIRTEEN launches new Regents Exam test prep video collection with REGENTS REVIEW 2.0

THIRTEEN, one of the public broadcasting stations of New York, in collaboration with the New York Network, a service of SUNY, presents a newly launched collection of 50 short-segmented video resources on VITAL New York, an extensive library of free digital media resources produced by public television. These resources are designed to help students prepare for the Regents Exams. The videos, presented by New York State teachers, cover Chemistry, Earth Science, Living Environment, Physics, Global History & Geography, U.S. History & Government, Integrated Algebra, English Language Arts, French and Spanish.

Regents Review 2.0 on VITAL NY
Regents Review 2.0 Broadcast Schedule on WLIW21

Regents Review 2.0 Full Length Programs from NY Network

VITAL NY: http://vital.thirteen.org/

EduTecher offers links to hundreds of web tools and sites and provides concise information on how the tools may be useful in the classroom setting. On this site teachers can:
Explore valuable webtools and resources
Share links with colleagues and students
Contribute by sending in your favorite links
Narrow or expand your search by clicking on subjects and grades on the left of the links page.
The homepage also provides a “recently added links” panel on the right for up-to-date links.

The Comics Lab

The Comics Lab is a non-traditional (also called FUN) exercise in which students can develop and refine their creative writing skills, while learning how to develop storylines or plots. Comic strips contain similar attributes to short stories, with a beginning, middle and end. The Comics Lab aligns with the standards for the Language Arts. These standards can be found here.

There are 5 main components to the Comics Lab site:
The Interactive Comic Creator
Comic Strip Templates, where students can draw their own comic strips by hand
Video instructions on writing
Video art instruction
Written instructions

Most students tend to start out creating a comic strip without adequate preparation and let the plot develop in a haphazard manner. It is important for the instructor to have the child think through the plot development in a structured manner. Do you write the punch line first…and then backup two frames to make a creative statement? Some of these questions and techniques are covered in the instructional videos.