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Follow the links below to some of the best places we've discovered on the Net. If you know of a great site that doesn't appear in our list, send us a message and tell us about it!
Links for Teachers Overview
Educational Products and Services
Hotlists of Other Web Resources
- Breaking the Glass Ceiling Early On: How to Empower Girls in STEM — This article from Georgia Tech is full of practical information addressing an important issue: "Women in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce face major obstacles — not only are they underrepresented and underpaid, but they also sometimes lack the confidence to assert their knowledge. The numbers are even more staggering for women of color in each distinct field."
- Teacher.org — This site provides information for individuals who are considering a career in teaching, including state certification and licensing requirements, various degree programs, and salary and job outlooks. Individuals currently teaching will find lesson plans, as well as information about teaching scholarships, grants, and teacher discounts.
- Smithsonian Learning Lab — Here you'll find a wealth of resources from the Smithsonian's vast holdings. Besides offering millions of images, recordings, and more—many of which are organized in teachable collections—the site allows you to gather your own collections, share them with the learning community, and sharpen your skills with news and teaching tips.
- The GLOBE Program — Students conduct an array of measurements and observations at their schools and share their data with other students and scientists around the world to detail an environmental picture of the globe. Teachers receive training and support materials. Students submit their data using a mobile app, desktop forms, email, or other tools at the site. GLOBE is supported by NASA, NSF, NOAA, and the Department of State.
- Variable Star Astronomy — This site features a flexible set of hands-on educational materials, activities, and investigations, based on an electronic database of variable star measurements. These materials, originally available for purchase but now free to download, allow students to "experience the excitement of doing real science with real data."
- Federal Resources for Educational Excellence — The FREE website was maintained from 1998 to 2015 to direct educators to digital resources provided by the federal government. There remains an archive of holiday-related and seasonal resources, organized by month, as well as a few links to other useful sites for teachers.
- LD Online: The Educators' Guide to Learning Disabilities and ADHD — This guide for parents and teachers includes general information, news articles, first-person accounts, artwork, links to other resources, and newsletters.
- WNET Education — This public media outlet provides "free preK-12 media resources for classroom and home." Areas include media literacy, early childhood education, English language arts, math, science, social studies, arts, social emotional learning, and professional development (both in the New York area and in online courses). There's also a collection of family resources.
- National Geographic: Education — This site, provided by the National Geographic Society, includes a resource library with encyclopedia articles on a wide range of topics; an interactive tool that allows you to create customized maps and print them out (note that the maps were last reviewed in 2011 and may not be completely up-to-date); professional development resources; student experiences; and a blog.
- Band-Aides and Blackboards — A project designed to sensitize people to what it's like growing up with medical problems. The site includes many stories by children and teens who are dealing with chronic illnesses and other health problems. These young people describe the physical aspects of their medical conditions as well as the social rejection and teasing that they sometimes face. Although the site was last updated in 2009, the content is a valuable archive.
- OneWorld Classrooms — OneWorld's mission is to increase cultural understanding between classrooms through the arts and technology. Programs for students include the K-12 Global Art Exchange and Classroom Conversations with the World. The website also has a blog and provides other educational resources.
- Colonial Williamsburg for Teachers — The mission of this living history museum is "to feed the human spirit by sharing America's enduring story." The site features Online Exhibits, a Resource Library, interactive games and puzzles, Classroom-Tested Lesson Plans, and more.
- PedagoNet — This site has a nice database of resources, including instructional videos and worksheets. Much of the material focuses on math, but there is also a section on physical education, a collection of study guides for many standardized tests, and videos that show how to perform card tricks and complete other activities.
- History: Famous Speeches & Audio — A large and well-organized archive of speeches from throughout history. You can browse by speaker or by topic.
- NASA: For Educators — NASA provides some excellent resources for STEM teachers at this site. Browse by topic (humans in space, moon to Mars, etc.) or by mission, or check out the image and video galleries. There's lots to explore here.
- Global SchoolNet — Created by teachers, this nonprofit organization facilitates collaborative learning projects online. Check out their programs, which include an International Cyberfair, Online Expeditions, and Doors to Diplomacy. Go to Collaborate Now to connect with other teachers, classrooms, and projects.
- Newton's Apple — This PBS family science show is no longer producing new episodes, but you can still watch video content online. Browse by category: animals and plants, Earth and space, health and medicine, chemistry and food, technology and invention, or physics and sports. You can also access related teacher guides and science activities and get ideas for science fair projects.
- ERIC Institute of Education Sciences — The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) is a federally funded national information system that provides a variety of services and products on a broad range of education-related issues. Search the collection to find the information you're looking for; the advanced search tips provide some good guidance to get you started.
- Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site — This site offers "a collection of reviews of great books for kids, ideas of ways to use them in the classroom, and collections of books and activities about particular subjects, curriculum areas, themes, and professional topics."
- Teachnet.com — This archive of newsletters has loads of ideas for activities, management strategies, and more.
[Return to Links for Teachers Overview]
- School Planner — Could you or your students use some help with organization? This company offers customizable planners for elementary school, middle school, high school, and college students, as well as for teachers.
- TCI Science and Social Studies — This publisher seeks to bring learning alive for K-12 students by using a student-centered approach that engages students with diverse learning styles. The site has information about curriculum materials in science and social studies.
- Scripts for Schools — Devoted to Readers Theater for students of all ages, this site offers scripts at reasonable prices for classroom use.
- Taking the Bully by the Horns — At this site, you'll find books and workshops dedicated to helping children and young teens deal with bullying behavior and self-esteem issues.
- Passports — This company provides educational travel tours for high school and college students, their teachers and professors, and adults. Travel trips are scheduled year-round to Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, Australia, the Mediterranean, and the United States.
- The Hampstead Players — This children's theatrical touring company visits schools around the country, bringing a taste of Shakespeare and other drama to kids in grades K through 8. Study guides, lesson plans, and activities may be downloaded free of charge.
- Bilingual Books for Children — Books by the Bushel offers a good selection of bilingual books. Text appears in both English and Arabic, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Korean, Navajo, Ojibwe, Russian, Spanish, or Vietnamese.
[Return to Links for Teachers Overview]
- NGAkids Art Zone — The National Gallery of Art offers some excellent interactives that introduce kids to art and art history. The programs can be downloaded for use on a desktop computer or an iPad; you can also order free CDs.
- Typing Instructor — Students of all ages can learn keyboarding skills with this award-winning software.
- Owl & Mouse Educational Software — This site provides educational software and maps. Most of the interactive activities are online and don't require downloading.
- CNET: Educational Software — Scroll past the paid ads to see a list of software—much of it free—with CNET editor and user ratings.
[Return to Links for Teachers Overview]
- Homeschool.com — This extensive site provides a wide range of resources for homeschoolers, including informational articles, links to free materials, downloadable learning resources, and an online forum.
- ThoughtCo.: Homeschooling — This page links to many articles and other resources relevant to homeschooling.
- ThoughtCo.: Homeschool Classifieds — If you are interested in buying or selling homeschool materials, this article provides tips and links to sites that facilitate transactions.
[Return to Links for Teachers Overview]
- Surfnetkids: Surfing the Net with Kids — Each week, Barbara Feldman scours the Net looking for the best sites on a particular topic, such as Leonardo da Vinci, stock market simulations, the Berlin Wall, ghost stories, venomous snakes, riddles, ballet—just about anything you can imagine. This website is an archive of her well-researched reviews of the sites. You can also sign up to receive her weekly newsletter.
- Awesome Library — An extensive directory of K-12 education resources, organized into sections for teachers, kids, teens, parents, librarians, and college students. The site includes a search engine to facilitate location of resources. While not all the links are up-to-date, the archive is still a useful resource.
- Cornell University's Science & Arts Gateway for Education — As the name implies, this site is a gateway to other sites on a variety of topics. The scientific areas include astronomy, biology, computers, engineering, mathematics, physics, agriculture, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, health and medicine, and meteorology. Other categories include art, cultures, economics, foreign languages, government, history, language arts, and news.
[Return to Links for Teachers Overview]
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Lesson Plans — If you're looking to integrate art into your curriculum or need some fresh ideas, check out these lesson plans from the Met. Be sure to visit the Curriculum Resources page, too.
- CS First — Google provides this free curriculum for teaching kids computer science and coding.
- Lesson Plans at Education.com — Here you'll find an extensive collection of downloadable math, reading, writing, and science lessons created by teachers for PreK–5 students.
- Eduweb — "Eduweb develops award-winning digital learning games and interactives about art, history, science and technology." The link takes you to the Portfolio page, where you can browse interactives to find ones that may complement your own curriculum.
- Monarch Watch — This science site provides detailed information about monarch butterflies (including their biology and migration patterns) and research projects that students may join.
- Kinder Art — This site has free online art lessons for children and also offers reasonably priced art instruction packages.
- Acorn Naturalists — Lesson plans and materials encompassing topics for the trail and classroom are available to buy from Acorn Naturalists.
- Exploratorium: Tools for Teaching and Learning — This page is part of the Exploratorium, a San Francisco museum devoted to hands-on science. It provides a rich variety of support materials, from activity ideas to apps to instructions for creating your own science teaching box. Science teachers, be sure to bookmark this page!
- The Incredible Art Department — This interesting site includes detailed lesson plans for all ages, an art teacher toolkit, and more.
- Annenberg Learner — The Annenberg Foundation provides resources for teachers across the curriculum. The site has vast amounts of content, including lesson plans. Many videos are available to view online for no charge. See also the companion website to A Biography of America.
[Return to Links for Teachers Overview]
- DuckDuckGo ("The search engine that doesn't track you")
- Google Books
- Google Scholar
- Bing
- Dogpile
- Yahoo!
- Lycos
- WebCrawler
- The Real Yellow Pages
- Starting Point
- Excite
