Free Internet Resources

On this Site

Teacher Resources

Archives, Newspapers, Records, Libraries, Textbooks, Images

get worksheets
just for K-6
from teachers at
Worksheet Library

Articles and Lessons >> Teaching Resources>> Freebies >> Freebies from VCCTI

Links to Sites of Interest to Teachers
and to Free Software for Classroom Use

Go to Other Stuff for some free programs that allow satellite and NASA views of the earth and the universe, directory of free videos and books, and more. Each are awesome.

NEW! Read RSS feeds on education and ed. tech news --get more links.

A community of teachers and educators can be found at TappedIn, a free network sponsored by Sun. The community maintains links to fantastic information and teaching sites through the postings of its curricular groups. Another free network for everyone that also has many of the same features as TappedIn is Ning. Both have public and private networks and groups. Blogs and forums are part of the Ning package. Facebook offers personal webpages very similar to TappedIn, whereas Ning personal webpages are organized as member pages within a community--and individuals can join many communities. One thing about the Ning and Facebook networks is that your member page can be styled so that it becomes a free webpage.

If you join a Ning community, you get a blog, however you cannot monetize. However, Blogspot, once called Blogger, does allow one to run affiliate ads. It is part of the Google family of free products online. Members of LiveJournal have the advantage of a free blog and discussion groups. Zimbio allows members free access to ezines. In Zimbio, a member places ones blog posts into ezines created by oneself or other members.

There are also fan fiction sites where members upload their short stories written about their favorite "universe" -- many are for science fiction. To write for these sites, one must know that some authors do not like the idea and consider the fan fiction to be copyright infringements. However, many allow it. Star Trek seems to be a favorite Universe within which to write. To assist in imaginative fancies, Galaxia offers simulated planets in the simulated universe itself. Members choose a planet, locate it on a star map, get its descriptive data and write about it. Members can join with groups to tell stories about the planets create scenarios. These are all free.

Free eBooks and eBook Readers

Discover the World's largest E-Book Store! Save big on bestsellers!

On the subject of science fiction, Baen offers some of its past publications for free download in its Free eBook Library. Fictionwise and Barnes & Noble also offers some ebooks for free.

Minipocket Reader is a free reader for e-bookets that can be used with PDA’s. Of course, there is the free *Adobe Acrobat reader for .pdf files. Many ebooks are written in .html and can be read in an internet browser, even though a special .html compiler is required to write the ebook.

Search the Web for more of these free offers. They abound. There are ways that each can be used in teaching with a little thought and preparation, including a plan to insure kid safety on the net.

Free Images

Need images for creating a worksheet or a presentation? Pics for learning offers free images to teachers and students for educational use only.

*Fotolia has a set of free images available for non-commercial use. You can also get additional clip art images from Microsoft.com.

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 or one with Answers.com.

Classroom ClipArt 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.

*We offer free stuff, too. If you have a freebie to add, please visit and/or join the network forum and add your information to the list. Or email me.

Online Tools for Various Communications

SurveyMonkey allows 100 responses to a survey for free. Teachers, survey students and parents online about events, plans, whatever. Get the responses emailed to you. The basic membership is free for the small survey is free.

Feedburner offers rss feeds, tracking, and widgets for your blog. Technorati catalogs blogs and offers another medium for recruiting visitors to your blog.

"Classtools.net allows you to create free educational games, activities and diagrams in a Flash! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!" quoted from site. I didn't try it, but it looks great.

Teacher Sites and Resources especially for eLearning

Sue LeBeau has made a collection of free classroom tools from numerous sources. She has listed teacher organizations and special teacher resources. Enjoy.

*Google for Educators offers free Google apps, sites, and online cooperative working tools especially chosen for classroom use. There is a directory of lessons and items such as Google Earth and SketchUp available for classroom use. Most lessons are based on using Google tools as important technologies for implementing the lesson. There are 8.5x11 inch printable posters that explain how to use particular Google tools, including one tht teaches kids how to search the internet. There is even a teacher discussion group. The sites seem to be network sites and have classroom, project, and administration levels. Google calendars can be incorporated into the sites.

Classroom Runner rents online classroom services by the month. There is a free basic (limited) service, though, that you can use to put one class online to try it out.

Then there are the Wikis for educators: today there are so many, that I invite you to visit the List of Wikis. Wiki now offers school networks/sites that allow collaborative activities. Wikispaces claims (see sidebar) , "We provide the world's easiest to use wikis. We have a large and active education community with over 230,000 educational wikis and over 1,200,000 teachers and students." A fabulous example of what can be done on Wikispaces is the ELF site. Just exploring this Sidney University wikispace will teach you about teaching online!

4teachers.org has information on technology education, games for students that foster critical thinking, and videos on YouTube screened for classroom use. Of course, there is more.

Hot Chalk claims this about their learning management system: "The HotChalk Learning Environment is the online teaching resource you have been looking for. Designed to make your life easier, HotChalk provides a free online learning management system (MyClasses), a robust library of free and premium digital content (MyLibrary), and a portal into the today’s educational landscape with innovative articles and the latest news (MyDesk)." quoted from here. I linked to the what is page in the name, where the sales pitch is this: basic service is free and premium service comes with a subscription.

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.

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

And don't forget the state departments of education and the education sites of the US government. These each have objectives, frameworks, standards, lessons and education links.

http://www.java.com/en/desktop/education.jsp free stuff from SunMicro with lots to do online. Search for products for the physically challenged from SunMicro; not free but uniquely needed.

Send kids to this site for a grammar lesson--or hundred. View grammar rules at http://www.lousywriter.com; add the internet dictionary and thesaurus WordWeb to your desktop. While there take a look at the Crossword Compiler and more.

For a miscellany of items, try 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. Discontinued sites often place the site there to save it for future posterity.

The non-profit libertynewstv.com just placed their site and its library of content there when they went out of business. This was the strongly opinionated political opinion show on Free Speech TV that aired the most beautiful ballet performed by amputees during the last 10 minutes (probably 5, but do not miss it) of its final show. During the next to last episode they aired a handicapped girl doing a finger dance on a table. This pair of dances will move you and your students to see the handicapped as the beautiful people they are and will move the handicapped to see the beauty that their lives can still become despite the pain. Don't miss it! (Please encourage Ellen Degeneris and Oprah to do something for these dancers.) the link on the original LibertyNewsTV site for downloads of all shows is this for as long as the original site is up: http://www.libertynewstv.com/HTML%20FILES/mpeg2linksnew.htm

**Book Your Holiday Travel Now & Save Big on Flights at CheapOair.com.
Use Promo Code HOLIDAY10 to save $10.
Hurry, offer valid until Dec. 31st, 2009.

More Teacher Sites with Lessons

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. A great resource for budding writers, too.

http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquest_collections.htm: A directory and collection of webquests. Whild there look at the design templates, too: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/designpatterns/index.htm design pattern for webquests

http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Organizations/ fairly comprehensive list of educational 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. Most associations and non-profit organizations have free education resources and lessons. Some of these are listed here.

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.

These 2 **banners link to directory 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. ***How do I benefit? Clicking on the banner will add to my site's popularity. I do not tell you this to encourage you to click the banner, but in disclosure as required by the new FTC rulings.

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

For the above http://www.teachers.teach-nology.com & http://www.sitesforteachers.com ---please click button above for link-- These directories list 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. This site is listed on each directory, too. List your site there, it's free.

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

Visit http://www.educatorsportal.com and http://atozteacherstuff.com, too. Not all the sites are listed on all directories, even though at first these directories seem redundantly similar. They are distinct directories and are not identical; they are as unlike as Google and Yahoo search results.

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

Free classroom presentations and templates can be had from these sites: http://www.presentationsforteachers.com --free and indexed. Also, try Templates - Free Science Powerpoint Templates
--Website Templates, Flash Templates, Web Stationary and Layouts

Two elearning sites arehttp://www.internet4classrooms.com/on-line2.htm and http://www.learningalive.co.uk

Have your students try webquests.com and this exploratorium: http://www.exploratorium.edu/ifi

Discovery Channel and most other tv channels have free educational resouces, as do most non-profit and commercial organizations. Actually the list seems endless when you Google free classroom tools and free classroom ideas.

When I see something I like I try to add it here or write about it in the newsletter, which is now a blog on our network. You may read the newsletter post by visiting the site or you may get on the mailing list by joining the site and adding your name to the main blog's mailing list.

This cat is a Picket Fence Friend by Wendy Sterling. The design can be had on various products: Visit our store Picket Fence Friends at *CafePress.com

Free Software

If you can learn to program it yourself, there is Moodle, PHP bulletin boards, PHP-MySql databases and other related open source sites that you can use to do a classroom online for free. There are even flash script writer and php code writers available for free. Problem is, you have to be familiar enough with these languages to use these available open source tools. Hence Classroom Runner, whose student page demo image looks a lot like a well done Moodle classroom. Don't forget the open source software Open Office.

For free software, trial downloads, software descriptions and software critiques, including the ones listed in the paragraph above, and free music downloads visit c-net.com (or download.com), and zdnet.com for blogs on technology news and an education blog. Popular downloads include free Winzip, antivirus and antispyware programs. Look for programs listed as freeware.

A few of the computer protection programs available for free are these, also available from C-net. Usually the free versions are limited in scope, but provide good basic 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, current virus maps and other info on their site. I have examples on this site. Trend Micro virus list, virus checker and virus map can be seen on this pages of my site.

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. Ditto *Adobe for the Adobe Reader, the Flash reader and a few other programs. The ** Adobe Education Store for fantastic bargains on software sold to teachers and students. Check for liscenses for large group use, too. The best bargains for educators are the bundles, especially the **one below.

Visit the** .

Visit** Windows Marketplace. Hundreds of software titles available to download now.

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.

Free internet browsers are Mozilla's Firefox (or http://www.mozilla.org)and Googles Chrome. A free email account is Gmail for online mail and Mozilla's Thunderbird and the older, no longer being upgraded Eudora for a download service similar to Outlook. Google each name for the website that provides the free downloads and the apps, widgets and plug-ins available for each.

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, for desktop publishing and other layouts. FREE

***Items marked with * require this disclosure statement. Text Items marked ** are affiliate ads.

* Jessie's Flower ©2008 VCCTI Disclosure: I am an affiliate of many merchants. Some of these freebies might be associated with a merchant to which I am an affiliate. Even so, the opinions expressed are my own, and I do not speak for the merchant. Being an affiliate, however, does mean that the possibility of compensation does exist. --Valerie