Seven e-Learning and Teaching Resources
While the down economy continues to hurt funding to our schools, more and more teachers are looking to web-based services to help educate their students. Whether it's through open resource projects like CK-12, virtual classrooms like those in Second Life, or through the repurposing of tools like Twitter, millions of teachers are finding innovative resources to engage their students. If you're a teacher, here are seven great tools to get you started.
1. Scitable: Geared towards advanced high school and college science students, Nature Education launched Scitable to provide free online access to more than 180 overviews of key scientific and genetics concepts. The tool consists of a 220-article content library (often cited from members of the Nature Publishing group, more than 200 virtual classrooms set up by teachers across the globe, and a mentor network of experts poised to answer student questions. Educators and students can upload their own content for exploration and discussion, while the content library provides a number of articles accepted as valid sources at the university level.
2. Edutopia: The George Lucas Educational Foundation launched Edutopia in the hopes of creating educational best practices for multimedia in the classroom. The site includes online polls, curated blogs, assessment tools and a dedicated magazine for educators at the K-12 levels. The 2009 Webby Award winning site's best content is in its library of high-production videos for teachers and educators.
3. LearnHub: LearnHub is a network where members can create their own communities, share lessons, chat, create tests and tutor each other online at no cost. Schools create their own virtual classrooms where students complete assignments, play games and share photos and text. One of the great features of this site is that the site's report generator allows teachers to track users' progress. While the content is not as in-depth as Scitable's, this is a good site for standardized test preparation and basic K-12 education exercises. For more examples of test preparation sites, see our RWW list of resources.
4. Moodle: Moodle is a free open-source course management platform designed to help teachers create better online resources. Microsoft Education Labs recently announced a new Live@edu plug-in for Moodle. Now in addition to providing lesson plan, assignment and quiz-making tools for teachers, schools also gain access to Outlook Live for e-mail, Office Live Workspace for document sharing, Windows Messenger for chat and Windows Live SkyDrive for 25 GB of storage. This tool is slightly more advanced than some of the others in the industry, but it does offer a number of scalable solutions.
5. Edmodo: Edmodo is a private micro-blogging service for schools that allows teachers to edit privacy options within their virtual classrooms. Educators generate a join code and students log-in to chat, link to files, share notes and check their collective calendars for upcoming exams, quizzes and Pro-D days. While some of the other tools we've presented offer an open-access learning environment, this invite-only service offers students the chance to utilize web-based multimedia tools while allowing teachers to control an online discussion's security.
6. YouTube Edu: YouTube Edu allows students and educators to access lectures from leading educators across the country. For example, Yale and Brandeis University professors upload their lessons for public enjoyment. One of the most popular Channels is the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning - a collaboration launched by the Indian Institutes of Technology and Science in Bangalore.
7. ESL Video: ESL Video allows language educators to create quizzes from virtually any video on the internet. From here they can embed their quizzes into their classroom sites or redirect students to the ESL Video domain. Teachers tailor their video quizzes to specific learning units or create simple vocabulary quizzes like the one I made below using YouTube videos. While this tool may not be as sophisticated as some of the above services, its merit comes from the fact that teachers can incorporate pop culture products into their lesson plans with very little effort. Judging by the fact that the below Miley Cyrus video has more than 92 million YouTube views, teachers may be able to harness this tool to ignite a love of learning.
Let's be honest here, you're the educators! If you've got your own favorite resources, add them in the comments below.
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Great list of resources for educators. There has been a number of innovative ideas popping up in this space over the past couple of years.
We've noticed a surge in "online training" (elearning in the business world) over the past couple of years but particularly in the last 6 months.
Many businesses during the down turn are having to lay off employees and also reduce costs related to training i.e. travel. Online training offers businesses a cost effective way to up-skill employees and ultimately improve productivity.
The Saas model lends well to this industry as it allows companies with little expertise in online training to quickly deploy an effective training solution at minimal cost.
For more information about how to quickly implement an easy to use online training program in your organisation see http://www.litmos.com
Regards,
Rich
Just wanted to say thanks for including Edmodo in your list of 7 e-learning and teaching resources.
-Jeff O'Hara
Co-Founder Edmodo.com
www.universitae.com
This is a good, general list. Unfortunately, as much as classroom teachers would like to be able to access YouTube, many, probably more than half, public schools in the US block YouTube access. Here are 30+ alternatives to YouTube for teachers http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/30-alternatives-to-youtube.html
Here's a new take on an older resource...tagging.
In response to LAUSD's cancellation of summer school, my students at USC are building: http://sosclassroom.org.
SOS Classroom is an online directory of free educational resources divided up by grade level and subject area.
However, beyond the site itself, we are trying to promote the systematic tagging of the very best free resources using del.icio.us and diigo.
While these tools have been around for a little while now, we feel that with a bit of crowdsourcing, we might be able to collect a summer's worth of online materials (for use throughout the year).
We're at 255 resources after just a few weeks. Check out the resources tagged with sosclassroom on Diigo and delicious.
The students are in charge of organizing and vetting the resources. We hope to expand to high school and into other subject areas beyond Math and Language Arts.
It only takes a second to bookmark a valuable site that kids can enjoy (and learn from) for hours!
Excellent advice, Dana!
I took an online course with DiploFoundation back in 2005 and it was a paradigm shifting experience from everything else I had experienced.
Previously, I also had online training at Ottawa University, Clifford Chance Academy, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, WIPO Academy, MIT and many others - including a storytelling course at BarnesandNoble.com University
What makes Diplo training so different is how the classroom of 20 participants is collaborative and has a lot of interaction, motivated by one tutor. I am not the best person to explain the methodology, but I can put you in touch with them via Twitter if you would like to know more.
As for me, I have been assisting with social media and community - only for the Internet governance capacity building programme there are more than 429 alumni all over the world: http://www.diplomacy.edu/ig/map/IG_CBP.html
Thanks for the listing, especially the last one which will come in handy as I'm involved in developing online materials for online language learning.
I've spent the last couple of years developing materials to help teachers use online resources in their language teaching.
You can see these on my fre blog at: Nik's Learning Technology Blog
Getting teachers to use more technology and use it wisely in a pedagogically sound way is an up hill battle but we are getting there and resources like these willcertainly help.
Best and thanks
Nik Peachey | Learning Technology Consultant, Writer, Trainer
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/NikPeachey
At Mashedge, we have taken a different tack. Instead of building another tool to create content, we help users make web guides by aggregating web links they think are most relevant for their topic and their audience. So, teachers can make custom web guides for their particular course or topic, and students use the web guide to navigate precisely. This increases productivity of teachers as well as students.
Try it out: http://www.mashedge.com
Kiran Achyutuni
Founder and CEO, Mashedge
Don't forget ClassMarker.com
The ClassMarker online testing website is a professional, easy to use online quiz maker that marks your tests and quizzes for you. You simply create your quizzes and your learners or business clients take them online.
You should add readthewords.com to this list. This text-to-speech service is a great tool for teaching English, reading, pronunciation, ESL and comprehension. Its being embraced by students, parents and teachers everywhere. check it out.
You might add DigitalChalk to this list. We now offer a free basic account. It's ideal as an online ebook or if you want to sell courses online.
These are all great thanks Dana.
Would like to add voicethread.com - particularly good for early childhood education.
Cheers
Donna
http://www.k-3teacherresources.com
One more -- Smarthistory.org is an ad-free multimedia art history textbook, for High School or College level.
Useful resources. We have been using Moodle but now I would like to try other resources.
Thank You
Thanks Dana
This is a fantastic list. Thanks for posting! As educators using e-learning tools to supplement and strengthen our classrooms, it's exciting to see so many opportunities to create engaging learning content online.
Another tool worth listing here which is gaining a lot of popularity with experts in various fields in the flash card based online collaborative learning at http://www.funnelbrain.com
Thanks for post. It’s really imformative stuff.
I really like to read.Hope to learn a lot and have a nice experience here! my best regards guys!
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