Kids Past has put together an easy-to-read World History “textbook” for kids. Kids Past also offers five history games to which students can apply the knowledge the find in the textbook. The textbook and games correspond to each other.

Applications for Education
The Kids Past World History textbook could be a nice supplement to a classroom textbook or lesson. A teacher could use the games as a review activity for students. With the congruence between the textbook and the games a student could have two browser tabs or windows open and refer back to the textbook when they get stuck on a question. Educational games like those offered on Kids Past can be super opportunities to assess a student’s learning in an informal environment that they enjoy. Educational games are also a method of allowing students to progress at a self-determined pace.

Neok12.com is a website that lists educational videos by subject. All videos can be viewed directly on sites such as Youtube as well, but Neok12 makes it much easier to find them. The videos illustrate a wide array of subjects including math, social studies and science.

Visit NeoK12

One of the first lessons I learned as a kid was not to look at the sun. As lessons go, it was a pretty easy one to learn, since ignoring it kinda hurts. Extreme astronomer Gary Palmer wants you to disregard that advice and take a good long look into that burning ball of hellfire via the safety of your computer monitor at his site,The Sun in Motion….. Read the entire article here.

I found a fabulous interactive website that lets students explore our solar system to get a much clearer understanding about planet orbits, size, and relative position to one another.

The site is simply calledPlanets and it’s a fantastic resource for the SMART Board interactive whiteboard.

The site allows the teacher or student to control how they are viewing the solar system. Users can touch and drag to move things around and they have a complete set of controls to change scale, speed of orbits (passing of time), or planetary object to follow. For example, if you follow the Sun, the Sun is stationary and it shows the other planets orbiting the Sun. If you  follow the Earth, then it shows the other planetary objects with a stationary Earth.

For you Pluto lovers, this resource shows Pluto as being the farthest “planet” away from the Sun. )

I hope you enjoy this incredible resource for the SMART Board. Please share it with your fellow teachers.

Sharing Is Caring!

Once again, Open Culture has discovered a real gem for education. Khan Academy has a YouTube Channel on which they have posted hundreds of mathematics and science tutorial videos. The videos range in length from five minutes to 20+ minutes. The videos that I previewed had clear spoken commentary as well as clear visual aids….. Read the rest of the article at Free Technology for Teachers

You can use several tools to download and convert the You Tube videos for use in the classroom.

1. YouTube Downloader is free and available from CNET a trusted site.
2. KeepVid is a site based on the web which allows easy access to download YouTube videos.

Manga High is a new site offering free mathematics games for K-12 students. There are four games and a quiz program that offer graduated activities. Students earn gold, silver, and bronze “coins” to track their progress. While the games and quiz program are free, the rest of Manga High is a fee-based service.

Applications for Education
Manga High, like a lot of mathematics games sites, provides an intuitive and engaging platform for students to use to practice their mathematics skills. One of the benefits of Manga High is that it doesn’t have the intrusive advertising that some mathematics game sites have.

Read the rest of the article here @ Free Technology for Teachers

If you’re a teacher looking for a good online resource for studying vocabulary, you might want to review the WordAhead Vocabulary Videos and Flash Cards site. One of the reasons I like this site is it allows students to take a greater role in their own education, whether they’re studying for the SAT or the ACT or whether they are using the site as an ESL resource.

The WordAhead site allows you to choose from hundreds of words to review in video format. Each video uses graphics, text, and audio to describe the word, give it’s definition, and present the word in various contextual situations to provide a deeper understanding of the word. You can also view the videos in fullscreen which is great for displaying on the SMARTBoard.

Read the rest of the article here.