Best Pre-made Educational Content Resources

When I was a classroom teacher, I recall many anxious afternoons and evenings spent scrambling to come up with quality content for a lesson I had to do the next day. Even when I was planning further ahead, it was a stressful, excruciating process to line up resources that I could use for various topics and standards. Now, more than ever before, an abundance of free resources exist that we can conveniently use the next day. In fact, so much exists that it is difficult to sift through it all. Here is a list of sites that I have found to offer quality materials. I wish I knew of them when I was teaching.

Assessment and Blogging

Many teachers have contemplated using blogs with their students, and many have started doing so. One difficult question most have is how to assess and manage all the posts.This will hopefully help people who are doing or about to be doing this in their classrooms.

*This is designed for teachers using Kidblog but could be applied to other blogs too.

Flipped Classroom: Examples and Testimonial

You have likely heard about a flipped classroom, the teaching approach in which instructors record all or part of a lesson for students to view before class. But have you seen some examples or heard from someone wh Watch these videos to see examples and hear from teachers who have started flipping:

Recording screencasts using Screencast-O-Matic

Getting Started

Several options exist for recording your screen while you narrate over it (aka- making a screencast). Some of you may have heard of and use Jing, and that is a decent choice; however, I have found that Screencast-O-matic is more user friendly, and you can do more with it. One big advantage is that you can record 15 minute videos as opposed to 5 minutes in Jing. Here are some steps to help you get started recording:

Podomatic for digital recordings

Watch this screencast to learn how to use podomatic.com for creating digital recordings. Use the Google form below the video to answer questions about the video, and think about how this could work in an educational setting.

Digital Recording

Digital recorders can be used in the classroom for many purposes. Some of the more common ones include providing audio for texts, practicing speaking, creating podcasts, recording conversations, delivering focus lessons, and more. This post features tools and ideas on what is needed to make digital recording happen for you.

Your computer is one option for digital recordings. You can record on a computer in a variety of ways, but which way is best depends on what you are trying to do. Here are some options for you:

Document Cameras

You have likely seen, used, or at least heard of document cameras. Typically, they are large, non-mobile devices that are attached to a "home" computer and used to project things to a screen for demonstration. Many teachers use them for lessons on reading, writing, experiments, and more. Most of the older models are costly, $500 and up! Recently, smaller, more portable, more useful, more affordable models have come out, like this one:

This is an Ipevo P2V (point to view). It is about the size of a water bottle and can perform all the functions that bigger, clunkier versions do while being easily transportable. This chapter will cover ways in which these handy tools can be used in teaching situations.

Here are some videos and quotes on how others use document cameras. Though these focus on the elementary level, you can do many of the same things with more advanced content in the upper levels.