Tech Resources for Teachers

"Quiet I'm Thinking" by Grant MacDonald (via flickr)

I’ve posted on some great tech tools for teachers over the last year or so – Wordle, Animoto, Vista’s speech recognition software and others. What I haven’t posted until now is where I get my information, ideas, and tools. In a sense, you’ve been getting the product of my experiences and reflections, but not the process involved in reaching that product. In light of that thought, I thought I would share my top 3 technology resources – the places where I get many of my ideas and tools.

1. Probably my best resources and the one that has helped me the most is Instructify. Instructify is a blog that shares a wealth of technology tools with an education slant. Many of the resources I know about and use in my classroom I have discovered thanks to Instructify.
PROS: Nearly every post contains a great resources; slants toward tools that aid instruction; ideas for literally every content area
CONS: None of note - totally worth reading and subscribing to.

2. U Tech Tips is another great education-focused resource. Jeff Utecht is a Technology & Resource Coordinator at the International School Bangkok. He and other writers on the site post a bevy of wonderful tech resources for educators to use, most of which are immediately applicable.
PROS: focused on education-related tools; offers great resources;
CONS: not all resources applicable for all content areas

3. Though not focused solely on education, Webware is probably a good bet for all things technology, whether news, resources, or tools. I’ve found a lot of cool stuff through Webware’s posts. They spend a lot of time on various additional tools like mobile applications and web startups, which can be both good and bad depending on your needs.
PROS: wide range of tools; extensive coverage of news; constantly updated
CONS: several posts a day can clog up the ol’ feed reader; not a ton of posts that are applicable to teaching and learning

If you’re looking for some nifty tools to use yourself or some really great toys for your students to use, these three blogs are absolute must-reads.

Resources on the US Economic Crisis

Since my 9th grade English classes are researching the economy (trying to come up with a plan for spending that $700 Billion we have to spend on rescuing banks), I thought I’d share some of the great resources I’ve found on this topic so far. Maybe it can help somebody else, like the readers over at Weblogg-ed.

• Videos
  • What Brought the US Economy to the Brink? (MSNBC)
  • What Led to the Financial Crisis? (AP)
  • Behind the Bailout (PBS)
  • A Look at Wall Street’s Shadow Market (60 Minutes)
• Wikipedia Articles
  • 
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_crisis_of_2008
    
  • 
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
    
• News Articles
  • The U.S. Subprime Crisis in Graphics (BBC)
  • World Caught in Huge Cash Crisis (BBC)
  • The Crisis: A Timeline (CNN)
  • Bailout’s Impact on Economy: Will It Work (CNN)
  • Bailout 101: What New Law Says (CNN)
  • Eye on the Economy (CBS News)
  • Credit Crunch for Dummies (ABC News)

If you have other resources you’ve found helpful and/or want to share, drop them in the comments section and I’ll add them to this list.