Valerie Coskrey's Classroom Tools and Ideas

A note from Valerie:

These links in the center column are some that I have discovered, not necessarily links that have an arrangement with me to advertise on this site.

If you wish to advertise on this site, please contact me and arrangements can be made to swap links or place you in a desirable location on the site.

Teachers and Students, I prefer identifying those links that have requested advertising and link swaps unless I feel that they are items that I would have placed here upon discovery anyway.

Criteria for placement on this page"s center column are as follows.

1. It is free or a very good deal, as judged by me.

2. I liked it myself.

3. I wanted to share it with others.

4. I was asked to place it on this page and agreed to the request, marking the item somehow. Say by printing the information in a different color, or placing some symbol like this >> before the item.

Do you know a student or homeschooler who needs some assistance or enrichment in science? Ask them to contact me and I will design a class for them through Global E-School. Other teachers there can assist with other subjects, including writing a website.

Teachers, sign up there yourself to teach on-line classes.

Teachers. get your own free virus listing from TrendMicro.

Students will especially like the free virus tracker. It follows virus outbreaks as each spreads across the international web space. The map is below. I will place another on the Student Reports page. Go to map.

The button for the free virus check takes you and your pc to Trend Micro for a free virus check-up. Try it out. Then tell others about it.

Sponsors

Note: For more links to science sites, go to the Student Reports page.

E-learning Software & Info

Note: I have included information about LMS in the software store. There are sites of interest to freelance writers that contain links to free software like thesaurus and things of interest to writers. Check out these pages for more freebies.

With this you get a software package for a server written in php, a community of users to chat with, and documentation. Php code manual and software www.php.net Download a free php design software from the c-net.com site. The software is called Php Designer 2005. Its window looks a bit like the Dreamweaver window or the open-source flash designer window.

Also try www.us2.php.net/manual Try also, http:/www.moodle.com , an educator's lesson maker software package written in php. More open-source and ed technology info is in the Software Store and the Items of Interest pages.

You get a similar service at Talking Communities, which uses moodle and java. This link takes you to the home page of the administrator of Talking Communities, and several other web sites that are useful. Link from there to the one that you want to use. Talking Communities makes a chat room using Java and whiteboard and forums available to community groups. The URL is http://www.cottagemicro.com

For educational use, chatting, and networking, go to Tapped In. Here anyone interested in education can register free and get a page that is called an office where there is a forum, a whiteboard, a message board and email capabilities and an audio chat capability using Java. These services are similar to Talking Communities, but for educationally-oriented users. Check them both out.

Computer classroom management software www.netsupport.com free trial period download. If you want to own your own home copy, get the NetSupport School product bundled within the NetSupport Manager. The NS School is strictly for purchase at a 15 or more user-lisence quantity, but the trial period download works for one person. You can also download sample programs of both types from the site below. I tried this out and realized immediately that the program in a classroom would give a teacher complete control over what students did on their computers in a lab or even an individual computer in a subject area classroom. Billed as a lesson planner, it is actually a lesson scheduler and computer lab management tool. It sequences access to specified sites, teacher input, computers on and off, internet open and closed, free acccess to internet times, access only to specified sites times, and loads of other management decisions. It allows management to individuals and to groups or a combination. It allows teachers to send comments and assignments to the teacher and vice versa. I was so impressed that I wanted to sell this myself. That decision is still in the works, so for now just contact the company directly. They offer inservices/training on its use. If you want me tell you more, contact me. I will gladly write a sample lesson that uses the program for you. My First Sample is Free. If you contact NetSupport, please mention me to them and let me know what you think. Your comments will help me make up my mind if I want to actually sell their software or not.

Go to www.cnet.com for lots of free downloads of all kinds of stuff, including NetSupport School and other Net Su pport products, WinZip and hundreds of other trial and freeware programs. An alternative URL for this site is http://www.download.com

Dreamweaver www.macromedia.com  Offers a 30 day trial use of a website developer software.

Did you know this? Microsoft offers free versions of Windows Media Player, PowerPoint Viewer, hundreds of templates and tons of assistance and other free software at www.microsoft.com . If you have PowerPoint, you can get a free download of Presenter, a more advanced presentation maker that combines a timed sequence, video, audio, some other file types, and .ppt slides into one seamless presentation file.

Check out Schoolhouse Station and CourseRoads for school web sites with student, teacher, and parent forums, whiteboards, messenger services, grade books, calendar and a host of goodies built-in. It is not free to the school, but is free to all students, parents, teachers and administrators once the school or school district purchases a site. With its password system, only the members of the school have access, so there is a built-in level of safety and privacy. One is for elementary school systems, one for secondary. Both are offered by the same company. www.schoolhousestation.com and www.courseroads.com

Want to teach (or take inexpensive mini-courses) on-line? Go to Global E-School. Teachers design their own courses and set their own prices at this not-yet-certified on-line school. Read more about it. Read more about it.

The eLearning Magazine has a site for elearning professionals that offers a directory of elearning resources that is phenomenal in its coverage of information, software and technology in the field. http://www.elearningguild.com/

http://www.learningcircuits.org/fundamentals.html articles on elearning from the eLearning 1.0, Learning Circuits archive of articles.

Computer Protection

Spybot S & D www.pcworld.com/downloads Free or free trial period anti-spyware, includes updates

Zone Alarm www.zonelabs.com Free trial period for free version of firewall protection, includes updates

AVG Anti-virus www.grisoft.com Free trial period or free version of anti-virus software, includes updates

Trend Micro www.trendmicro.com offers white papers on viruses and other computer infections, as well as the Virus protection, maps and info on their site. I have examples on this site. Read about them. Go to http://www.trendmicro.com/en/security/white-papers/overview.htm for the papers. Trend Micro virus list, virus checker and virus map can be seen on this pages of my site.

Readers and E-mail

Eudora www.eudora.com and at mail.lycos.com e-mail software FREE

PowerPoint Producer www.microsoft.com/downloads allows you to combine text, slides, images, video and audio into one show and publish it to a website, local network, or a single computer. Uses Windows Media Player on Microsoft Internet Explorer to play the show. While your are getting Producer, get Windows Media Player . Both FREE.

Also, PowerPoint Viewer www.microsoft.com/downloads Allows you to see and print presentations, but not edit them. FREE

Minipocket Reader www.minipocket.com A reader for e-bookets. Can be used with PDA’s. FREE

Adobe Reader www.adobe.com/products/acrobat or just www.adobe.com

A reader for many e-books and downloaded files. FREE Also has a reader for the visually impaired.

Go to Java for the Java chat plug-in and to QuickTime for the Quick Time plug-in . Many sites use these so I did not include the links since you will usually be prompted to get a download of the plug-ins when you visit the sites that use them.

Go to http://www.mozilla.org to get downloads and plug-ins for the free Firefox browser.

Other Stuff

Google Earth shows an actual satellite picture of the earth and then zooms in on a requested location to show a view of the area around your home or whatever. Download this from http://www.google.com and then go to Other Services. It is free. We actually saw the ponds behind our neighbor's house and the roads of our neighborhood our house in the satellite view.

Celestia uses NASA images to show pictures of our solar system and galaxy. Download it from http://www.shatters.net/celestia http://www.shatters.net/celestia. You can get more information about this program by doing a Google search with Answers.

Google now has a new free software. Sketch-up 5. The new version has additions available for download. This is a 3-d modeling program taht is offered to anyone. It has a tutorial page with videos that are must-see. Kids are encouragaed to post their sketches in a kids image database and adults to post theirs in an adult site---all free. Check it out. Some of the kid's work is phenomenal. The programs compares to the CAD programs for mechanical and archetectural drawings. Start at this page and mine the site: http://sketchup.google.com/ There are jewels of info on each page.

Go to Tapped In for lists of links to sites by subject matter. There are dozens of links to science sites, for example, that have simulations, web quests and other activities for K-12 science. Since I am a science teacher, I have not examined the lists for social studies and English, but I know that they exist.

WinZip trial version www.download.com look for WinZip evaluation copy.

SyntapTimestamp www.syntap.com/products A timer that works from a toolbar on your computer. FREE

Cool Ruler www.fabsoft.com/products/ruler An on-screen ruler, t-square for desktop publishing and other layouts. FREE

  Lots of desktop goodies http://widgets.yahoo.com Local weather report is one of dozens of items to float on your desktop; widgets; many suitable for students to enjoy and manipulate. Computer enthusiasts will love this site. There are hundreds of shareware widgets available, including picture frames for photos on the desktop, a to-do list, a weather radar screen that shows the weather whenever you are on-line, a pair of dice to roll for statistics studies; lots more. (Is a random number generator or computer program capable of obtaining the same frequency of sixes as pure chance of manually thrown dice? Good for hands-on experimenting.)

Download free ebooks from Baen Publishers, mostly science fiction http://www.baen.com

Get more templates for Windows products: http://www.windowsmarketplace.com

Another site for templates to use with PowerPoint is TodayTemplate.com Templates - Free Science Powerpoint Templates Website Templates, Flash Templates, Web Stationary and Layouts

For information about lots of stuff, get the specific newsletter that covers your interests from About.com.

Teacher Sites

http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquest_collections.htm link collection to webquest directories

http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Organizations/ fairly comprehensive of organizations

http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/Programs/EROD contact info for educational questions and issues formerly www.ed.gov/Programs/EROD

www.ed.gov/about/contacts/gen/othersites/associations.html US govt. listing of teacher associations

www.theteachersguide.com/Educationassociations.html list most associations

You can also get listings of education sites, associations, and free lessons at most state department of education websites. Check with the associations for the latest in curriculum news.

http://education.zdnet.com/ News about technology education and products. For more technology sites, see the Software Store.

http://www.google.com/educators/index.html Google has lots of stuff for free, including youtube and gadgets.

http://www.java.com/en/desktop/education.jsp stuff from SunMicro with lots to do online.

This site offers royalty-free clip art and photos-- Thousands of beautiful images of hundreds of categories. Personal and school use is free, but commercial use requires an annual fee. http://classroomclipart.com/cgi-bin/kids/imageFolio.cgi

Send kids to this site for a grammar lesson--or hundred. http://www.lousywriter.com

http://www.archive.org a directory of free streaming videos, images, documentaries, texts, ebooks, and more collected in a collaborative effort to locate providers of these items on the net.

http://literacynews.com/readability/readability_analyses.php A site with an on-line readability analysis tool. The website itself offers articles on literacy and classroom reading strategies. This page is a Readability Analysis. Input your passage and get Flesch Reading Ease, Fog Scale Level, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and other scores.

http://webquest.sdsu.edu/designpatterns/index.htm design paattern for webquests

These sites link to hundreds of lesson plans and worksheets, subject matter information, and loads of teacher resources. There is a link to an index of teacher sites.

Mining these sites will take you to numerous sites of free lessons, etc.

or http://www.teachers.teach-nology.com http://www.sitesforteachers.com --please click button above for link--lists thousands of teacher sites screened for usefulness by the Teachnology or Sites for Teachers.com webmasters. Many of the sites below are also listed there.

http://dmoz.org/Science/Educational_Resources/ a directory of science and teacher resources site that is compiled in a wikipedia fashion.

  http://www.educatorsportal.com/

http://atozteacherstuff.com/

c-spanclassroom.org for video clips and social studies lessons

Teachnology, Inc.

Lots of free stuff; get and make worksheets; lots of lesson plans.

lots of teacher and student tools for doing work on the web.

http://www.presentationsforteachers.com

free and indexed.

Templates - Free Science Powerpoint Templates
Website Templates, Flash Templates, Web Stationary and Layouts

   http://www.internet4classrooms.com/on-line2.htm

  http://www.learningalive.co.uk/

Have your students try webquests.com

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ifi/

There are hundreds of links to student hands-on on-line sites provided by teachers and college professors at Tapped In

Check back, there will be more to come.>>Need classroom pet supplies?

  Ebooks for young adults are just some of the ebooks available at FictionWise. Readers available.

KBtoys.com: Top Learning Systems for All Ages!

  Magazines from Allzine.com for Back to School

Free Sheet Music Downloads!Save 10% on Digital Sheet Music All Year Long!

Jack Johnson Guitar Tab & Sheet Music

See Valerie's Choice of items from these sponsors--chosen with teaching in mind.

Visit Valerie's Memes at Cafepress.com for more.

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Site Map and Pages Sorted by Subject Matter with a list of All Valerie's Sites

Copyright 2005-2006 by Valerie Coskrey All rights reserved.

modified 12/26/06