Other Useful Information

Here are some useful resources, guidelines, and other information that will help you through the lesson design process.

State Standards Database

• Align to Achieve
  This is a searchable Standards Database of the latest K-12 content standards and benchmarks from states, national organizations, and selected countries. You may search by state, content area, and grade level.

Responsible Use of Online Resources...

• Educators' Guides to Ethical Issues
  Students in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, developed seven Web sites that address ethical issues teachers need to deal with, especially with regard to new technologies in the classroom. Topics include access, Web evaluation and credibility, free speech vs. censorship, privacy, commercialism, intellectual property rights and plagiarism, and computer crime and technology misues.
• Guidelines for Accessible Software and Web Sites
  "Making Educational Sortware and Web Sites Accessible: Design Guidelines Including Math and Science Solutions," produced by CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media, is available free of charge at this fully accessible Web site.
• Plagarisim
  Many teachers have asked about plagiarism detection software. Some vendors of plagiarism detection software include Turnitin.com and Eve 2. There are also several Web sites with information about detecting/avoiding plagiarism, including The Plagiarism Resource Center at the University of Virginia, How to Detect and Combat Plagiarism, and Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers. For more ideas and strategies about how to combat plagiarism, please see the Teachers' Internet Use Guide section on Plagiarism.
• Center for Safe and Responsible Internret Use
  "The Responsible Netizen Institute" is a site designed by Nancy Willard. Its purpose is to present effective strategies to assist young people in acquiring knowledge, decision-making skills, motivation, and self-control to behave in a safe, responsible, and legal manner when using the Internet and other information technologies.

Professional Development...

• Teachers Network
  This site contains a searchable database of lesson plans and curriculum ideas for a large variety of academic content areas and grade levels. This site was just given top honors at the Association for Educational Publishers Annual Distinguished Achievement Awards at the National Press Club.
• Catalyst
  Catalyst is a site designed to teach educators about how to use a variety of technology tools. You can learn how to create a PowerPoint presentation, convert a document to a .pdf file, build a class Web site, and more. The site is maintained by the University of Washington and has teaching strategies and how-to guides that step instructors through using new teaching tools.
• Criteria for Authentic Project-Based Learning
  Nancy Kraft, formerly of RMC Research Corporation, developed a set of guidelines for evaluating the effectiveness of project-based learning. You'll find this useful as your students begin to develop and critique online products.
• Educator's Guide to Evaluating the Use of Technology in the Classroom
  A useful publication from the U.S. Department of Education.
• Eisenhower National Clearinghouse Digital Dozen
  This site is updated monthly with award-winning activities for the classroom.
• Factors Influencing the Effective Use of Technology for Teaching and Learning
  Lessons learned from a group of resource-poor SEIR*TEC Intensive Site Schools throughout the southeastern U.S. Accompanying each lesson are suggested steps that educators might take in order to move their technology programs forward.
• From Now On
  The Educational Technology Journal, edited by Jamie McKenzie, is an excellent source of current articles and research-based strategies for using educational technology in the classroom.
• Help! I Just Got My First Computer!
  Okay, so you just read the material from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and realized your own computer skills are below those expected for students in Pre-K through Grade 2. Don't panic. Eisenhower National Clearinghouse's Associate Director of Publishing offers advice to novices.
• Information Literacy and the Net
  This eight hour staff development course emphasizes student investigations as vehicles to explore the information available over the Internet. Module 1 begins with an activity defining information literacy and other forms of literacy. These lessons may be copied by non-profit, public learning institutions only for use with their own staff.
• Integrating the Web
  This is an excellent WebQuest for teachers. This WebQuest will help you sort out the fact from the fiction when it comes to weaving the Web into your K-12 curriculum. You'll think about issues involved with learning online and figure out ways to deal with them. You'll also discover a bunch of tools that will help you effectively integrate the Web into your K-12 curriculum.
• Just In Time Training
  Ken Cardwell's "Online Tutorials" site for educators who wish to improve their technology skills, whether it be software, hardware, or technology integration. Includes many on-line tutorials.
• Merlot
  MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments.
• Professional Development Through Collaborative Networks
  Leah Poynting from Eisenhower National Clearinghouse notes that Teachers who use technology for their own professional development quickly find ways to use their learning for the benefit of students in their classrooms. This article contains a list of good places to find online professional development.
• TCET: Technology Applications - Center for Educator Development
  This Texas resource contains information about professional development, program development, assessment, information and rubrics to identify promising practices, and much more.
• Teacher Tap
  The Teacher Tap is a free, online professional develoment resource that helps educators address common technology integration questions by providing practical, Web-based resources and activities. Each project page focuses on an interesting topic and provides common questions, background information, useful Web sites, and hands-on activities.
• Technology Connections for School Improvement
  Contains downloadable documents for technology planning from NCREL.
• World Wide Web Workbook
  from the Franklin Institute Science Museum. This interactive online tutorial introduces you to the basics of the World Wide Web.

Surfing, Searching, and Researching...

• Getting What You Want from the WEB
  Eisenhower National Clearinghouse's Associate Director of Instructional Resources gives advice to teachers about how to use the World Wide Web. Much of her knowledge comes from her experiences introducing students to the Internet. Also see How the Internet is Indexed.
• Internet Public Library
  The University of Michigan School of Information's Internet Public Library is the first public library of the Internet. Reference librarians are available to help you with your search.
• The Internet Search Tool Quick Reference Guide
  Students need to be taught how to do searches using different strategies and different search engines. This guide, produced from the University of Central Florida's ITRC and SEIR*TEC, helps you determine which search engine to use, and how to use it to accomplish a variety of tasks. It also illustrates the various ways to search with Boolean terms, search for exact phrases, or perform complex searches. Some good search engine tips may also be found at Web Searching Tips.
• Kids Click
  This search engine, moderated by librarians, has the best search lesson for younger students. The gray boxes at the top of the home page list the search topics. It is also a wonderful site for searching the Web since it lists reading levels for the Web sites that have been included.
• NetDayCompass Research Desk
  Do you have a question related to technology use in education? Just click on "Ask a Question ," and their research experts will guide you to resources and information available online. NetDay Compass.org is a free, comprehensive, portal of educational technology resources supported and managed by NetDay (www.netday.org), a national educational technology nonprofit based in Irvine, California.
• Safe Searching for Children: Yahooligans
  "Yahooligans" is a child-safe search engine for young students. Check the Teachers Guide for information about Internet literacy and teaching resources.
• Selecting a Search Engine
  Jennifer Smolka of U. North Texas has compiled an annotated list of the major search engines and their most effective uses, with input from graduate students and K-12 teachers. This resource will help you compare the various search engines and select the one that is best suited for your own use.
• Yahoo!'s Education Directory
  This is a good starting point. It's not a search engine; it contains hierarchically organized educational resources by region, by culture, and by subject. Representative topics include early childhood education, distance learning, equity, disabilities, literacy, standards and testing, and much, much more.

Innovative Uses of the WWW...

• Green Map System
  The Green Map System (GMS) brings a locally adaptable framework into many hands. It invites design teams of all ages and backgrounds to create a Green Map by charting urban areas in a manner that illuminates the interconnections between the natural and designed environments. The resulting printed and digital Green Maps identify, promote and link eco and social resources. This interactive project has been used all over the world. Parts of the Web site are open only to participants, but other parts are open for public view, including webpages for Young Mapmakers and Introductions in Spanish and German, with more languages to come.
• The WEB Project
  The WEB Project started out as a U.S. Department of Education Technology Innovation Challenge Grant geared toward creating multimedia forms of evidence of student performance and has now become a nonprofit organization. Here is a wealth of information about online dialog and design conversations, creating electronic portfolios, and using critique and feedback to improve student works of music and art.
• The WEBQUEST Page
  This is a collection of imaginative, inquiry-based activities, created and maintained by Bernie Dodge of San Diego State University. A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The Technology Teacher Leaders Web page at the El Paso Partnership for Technology Integration has a database of WebQuests developed over the past five years by El Paso teachers.

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