I recently spent an afternoon acquainting myself with the http://4teachers.org resource site. Sponsored by the Advanced Learning Technologies (ALTEC) Project through the University of Kansas, this site is designed to help teachers “locate and create ready-to-use web lessons, quizzes, rubrics, and other tools” for classroom use.
Links for professional development resources include:- Video channel for UTube and Teacher Tube.
- teachstrong.org - online professional learning community for educators which is a NING with various groups based on interest.
- Profiler Pro – is a tool that evaluates the knowledge, attitude and skills of members of a group to help determine the best way to divide human resources.
The “Family of Tools” on the home page has links to:
- QuizStar
- RubiStar
- Arcademic Skill Builders - educational on-line games that help develop basic skills.
- PersuadeStar – gives students the opportunity to produce on-line persuasive essays.
- Classroom Architect – allows students to create floor plans of the classroom.
- Equity Index – a database designed to locate resources and tools to help meet the needs of a diverse classroom including rubrics, educational links, and web links by various categories including assessment, assistive technology, disabilities, English language learners, gender, grants, legal issues, multicultural and religious, and special needs including a place to nominate sites.
- TrackStar – On-line lesson and activity collection that allows teachers to create or select already created interactive online lessons and units.
- Assign A Day – teacher created calendars to help manage classes and assignments.
- Casa Notes (in English and Spanish) – provides templates for notes that go home such as permission slips, homework, and student contracts.
- PBL Checklist
- Teacher Tackle Box – provides links to WebQuests, ThinkQuests, and TrackStars on select topics.
- WebPoster Wizard – on-line tool for school projects and reports that allows teachers to create a lesson, worksheet or class page and publish it on-line and students can then create their own reports on-line.
- NoteStar – is a resource to help students with their research skills for projects.
- ThinkTank – helps students develop a list of topics and subtopics for reports and projects.
- KidsVid – is a site to help students and teachers use video production in class to support project based learning with links for scripting, making video, video editing, and presentation.
The page/tab for Integrating Technology offers Spanish resources, success stories from teachers and students, and technology assessment that provides resources to assess technology planning.
The page/tab for educator resources includes: assessment, assistive technology, grants, bilingual, professional journals, technology planning, and tutorials. There is also a tab for http://4kids.org a similar technology based page for kids.
4teachers.org provides resources that teachers can use at several levels. I encourage you to visit if you are not already familiar with it. If you have visited this site, how would you rate it? What are your favorite features? Have you ever used any of the tools and if so, how was your experience?
Hi Stella. I enjoyed the website you focused on, 4teachers.org. The "family of tools" section was extensive. Some sites I have heard of, or used in the past such as QuizStar and Rubistar, but I was excited to see there are many more I could pass on to my colleagues. I'm anxious to take a look at Classroom Architect and KidsVid.
ReplyDeleteThe homepage for 4kids.org was very clean and neatly written. Very user friendly.
Sites with a wealth of information such as this one can be the basis of an entire workshop session. There are thousands of sites geared toward education, yet not enough time to visit them all (or use them all on a regular basis). This blog post will be a great resource for my teachers. You've done a nice job of explaining what was on the site. Thanks.
Stella, I had not seen 4teachers before and thank you for sharing it. I found myself working through many of the tools on the site. I wish Classroom Architect was around when I was in a self-contained classroom. I could never get a good plan for the items in the room, my desk, student desks, tables and all of the other stuff. The Teacher Toolbox was interesting. I worked through Think Tank on the subject of the Haymarket Riot. My 7th/8th grade social studies teacher will appreciate the help this site will provide for her studnets when research papers are to be done. 4teachers.org has been bookmarked. Thanks.
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