National Archives Digital Vaults Project

..."browse through the hundreds of photographs, documents, and film clips and discover the connection between some of the National Archives' most treasured records.” Excellent way to obtain primary source documents for social studies classes. This Flash-based site (also available in HTML) allows you to collect assets, track your path, search, and create a poster, movie, or your own pathway.

Readability

Readability is a simple tool for your computer at home that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you're reading. You can select from a variety of font styles, sizes and margins. Just install Readability in your Web browser at home. This will make reading from the web free of advertisements or frames with other data from the webpage. Play the tutorial video on the website to see how to install on your own computer.

Download Online Video for Classroom Use

Have you ever wanted to convert files without the need to download software? ZamZar will convert the file and alert you via e-mail how to download the file to your computer

Daniusoft Video Converter Free


Daniusoft Video Converter Free is an easy-to-use and intuitive free Video Converter that can handles all video audio even HD videos in batch conversion mode, this great Video Converter can not only convert video/HD Video to AVI, WMV, MPEG, MOV, FLV, MP4 easily and quickly. but also can extract audio from video to MP3, WAV, WMA.

Thus, With this free Video Converter Software, you can convert video to YouTube compatible video formats FLV to share your movie on internet, make your video files editable as wmv, avi so you could load them on Windows Movie Maker, or convert video for portable media players like iPod, PSP, Zune, mobile phone, etc.

In addition, this best free video converter allows you to DIY your video with video editing options: cropping video, trimming video length, merging two or more video clips, adjusting video effect etc.

 
Other sites you can use to download YouTube videos for use on your local hard drive.

Catch YouTube is a free tool for converting and downloading YouTube videos. Catch YouTube offers eight formats for video conversion. The video conversions are fairly quick depending on the length of the video.

Convert My Tube is a free service that allows you to convert a video to your choice of eight different formats for use on your local hard drive. To use Convert My Tube, simply enter the url of the video you want converted, select your desired format, and then download the video.

YouTube Snips is another good tool for downloading YouTube videos for use offline. To use YouTube Snips simply enter the the url of your chosen video and download the video in your preferred format. YouTube Snips gives you the choice of three formats, MP4, 3GP, and FLV. In my test of YouTube Snips the download was very quick.

http://mediaconverter.org/

Additonal video resources for teachers provided by Richard Byrne a high school social studies teacher from his blog http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

http://snagfilms.com/
http://schooltube.com/
http://dotsub.com/
http://teachertube.com/
http://ted.com/
http://history.com/
http://bigthink.com/
http://fora.tv/
http://current.tv/

Earth Day Resources

Brought to you in partnership by Waste Management and Discovery Education, it's your complete source for exploring the 4 R's of environmental education - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover. This Earth Day, it couldn't be easier to turn over a new leaf. Whether you're looking for quick Earth Day project ideas or year-round resources, ThinkGreen.com/classroom is the answer. Visit today to access nearly 100 K-12 lesson plans, videos, activities and interactive tools. That leaf, and the tree you found it on, will thank you.
What you'll find:
New Earth Day project ideas for K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12
Lesson Plans, Videos and ActivitiesK-5: Teachers and students discover different properties of various recyclable materials and learn surprising new uses for old things.
6-8: Students consider the environmental impact of too much waste, and take action to design solutions for the problem.
9-12: Students explore the process of recovering energy from waste.
Supporting videos, interactives, virtual labs, worksheets, and more

Connect with the Microsoft Office community

There are many great ways to get help from Microsoft experts and other Office users. Office Answers is a community-based support site where you can ask and answer questions, or just browse other's answers. Check out the different forums on Microsoft Office. The Office blog has the latest information from Microsoft Office experts including free clip art, templates, media, video, training and news. You can also follow Microsoft Office on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Top Resources on this site are:
Get up to speed with Microsoft Office Word by taking our free, self-paced training courses.
Free training
Video demonstrations of many of the top tasks in Microsoft Office Word.
Video demos
Updated solutions and information for your Microsoft Office Word Questions.
Solution Center
Microsoft Office Word 2007 Top Issues, Most Read, Most Searched, and Usage Help for features.
Help and How-To
Office Online includes a variety of Templates, Downloads, Clip Art and more to help you create professional looking documents.
Templates & Downloads

The American Association of School Librarians Top 25 Web sites for Teaching and Learning

AASL Announce Top 25 Web sites for Teaching and Learning The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announces a new resource for school library media specialists and their teacher colleagues. The Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, a list honoring the top twenty-five Internet sites for enhancing learning and curriculum development, is considered the "best of the best" by AASL. The Top 25 Web sites for Teaching and Learning were named so because they foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation and collaboration. All sites are free, web-based sites that are user-friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. They also provide a foundation to support AASL's Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. Valuable information on each site, including tips for effective classroom use are available at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/bestlist/bestwebsites.cfm

The Library of Congress now offers a free resource for educators

• The Library of Congress has designed this new resource to facilitate the process of integrating primary sources into classroom teaching. This online resource includes professional development modules and classroom lessons and primary sources from the Library of Congress arranged thematically. It is designed to teach both content knowledge and critical thinking skills.
  
  Created by teachers for teachers, these ready-to-use materials provide easy ways to incorporate the Library’s unparalleled primary sources into instruction. Teacher-created lesson plans using Library of Congress primary sources.
  
• Themed Resources: One-stop access to the Library’s best exhibitions, activities, primary sources, and lesson plans on popular curricular themes.
• Primary Source Sets: Sets of selected primary sources on specific topics, available as easy-to-print PDFs. Also, background information, teaching ideas, and tools to guide student analysis.
• Presentations & Activities: Presentations and activities offer media-rich historical context or interactive opportunities for exploration to both teachers and students.
• Collection Connections: Historical context and ideas for teaching with specific Library of Congress primary source collections.