ThingLink

 

"ThingLink is an interactive media platform that empowers publishers, educators, brands, and bloggers to create more engaging content by adding rich media links to photos and videos.

With 1.5M content creators, ThingLink has become the most popular cross-platform solution and creative community for interactive media."

ThingLink is a tool for creating interactive images online. Users can "tag" images with difference content, including text, links, other pictures, and audio clips. The site itself recognizes educational, and includes lots of different ideas for ways to use it.

A well-tagged image could serve as an alternate way to present information for the class, or provide a new way for students to present their own work. It can be a fresh alternative to a more standard PowerPoint-style presentation.

Read Theory

"Read Theory is a powerful educational tool that offers online reading activities for all ages and ability levels. Using custom web application software and carefully crafted and tested content created by our team, we provide students with a dynamic reading experience that adapts to their individual ability levels and presents them with a seemingly endless array of skill building exercises. What is more, as students continue to use the site and see their scores gradually improve, the system adapts to match their progress, and the materials presented get incrementally more advanced. Our quizzes span the full range, beginning with elementary school reading and ending with the most demanding SAT, ACT, and GRE level reading comprehension and verbal reasoning questions."

Read Theory is a tool for reading comprehension and critical thinking. On the site, students are shown passages in accordance with their "reading level" (which goes up and down based on performance) and quizzed on them. Teachers are able to add the student accounts to a virtual class, and are provided with metrics about how well their class is doing overall, as well as being able to zoom in on a specific student.

While it is in Beta at the moment, there is plenty of content already available, with very well thought out articles and detailed explanations for incorrect answers.

Digital Literacy and Citizenship – Scope & Sequence

Teachers looking for lesson ideas centered around Digital Literacy and Citizenship – especially with the upcoming curriculum changes – can use Common Sense Media's Scope and Sequence tool for some great suggestions. The list includes lessons for every grade level (K – 12).

"Use our Scope & Sequence tool to find the lessons that are just right for your classroom. These cross-curricular units spiral to address digital literacy and citizenship topics in an age-appropriate way. Browse by grade band or click a category to highlight the lessons that address that topic."

Ancient Civilizations - Online Resources

Here is a small collection of resources and links useful for researching Ancient Civilizations. These were chosen with a research project in mind:

Links:

http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/subjects/ancientcivilizations.htm

http://www.mrdowling.com/

Two sites with several “lessons” (articles) about different ancient civilizations designed for students.

http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history

Articles with accompanying videos for many of the commonly studied ancient civilizations from the “History channel” company. There are some games and other things also on the site that aren’t relevant, but the articles appear to be valuable.

http://history-world.org/mainmenu.htm

A collection of essays that cover nearly any ancient civilization, but the writing might be too dense for most intermediate grade students. It could still be useful for filling research gaps.

http://ancientweb.org/index.php/explore

Another collection of articles detailing ancient civilizations (navigate via sidebar), though some are marked by present day locations.

Ancient Rome - look under Italy

Aztecs - look under Mexico

Maya - look under both Mexico and Guatemala

Sumeria (Sumer), Babylon, Assyria - look under Iraq

http://www.ancient.eu/search/

An online encyclopedia with articles concerning many of the assigned ancient civilizations. There is some overlap with Wikipedia, but there are several original contributions as well.

http://www.ancient.eu/map/

An interactive ancient map on the same site that covers up to approximately 270 BCE. The pictures can’t be saved directly, but we could take a screen snapshot instead.

http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_regions.html

Details of ancient writing systems organized by region.

http://classroom.synonym.com/sitemap-2.html

The “school subject” site map from synonym has many articles on the subject. The site’s search doesn’t seem to work very well, but using “ctrl + F” on this list works pretty well.

http://www.roman-empire.net/children/history.html

An exhaustive history of many aspects of the Roman Empire. This site only has information about Rome, however!

Inkle Writer - Interactive Story Writing

Inkle Writer makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, similar to the classic "choose your own adventure"-style novels. At the end of each section, the reader is provided a choice of which "path" to take to continue your story, which as a writer presents ample opportunities for thinking creatively and writing in new ways.

Although tools provided can build sophisticated story paths, creating simple branching narratives is quite painless to set up and get started. From there, writers can get more complex if they choose to.

Inkle Writer also provides an alternative to the ever-present "need-an-email-address-to-sign-up" problem by allowing students to sign up with an @inklewriter address to save and share their work without an external email.

http://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter/education/

UPDATE: Here is the link to the example story, The Adventure of the Mustgrave Ritual.

Scale of Space

Although it has a slightly hyperbolic title, "209 Seconds That Will Make You Question Your Entire Existence" is a video by Buzzfeed that gives a quick overview of the scale of objects in our universe. By doing quick comparisons that show the vast sizes and distances that exist in space, the video does a decent job of showing how big things really are:

http://safeshare.tv/w/IvlynCtHQz

Unfortunately there are some small inaccuracies pointed out by Phil Pliat in this article, but it is great as a jumping off point for a discussion about space.

(Thanks Gordon)