New discoveries

Found these while surfing the net...

K-2 Interactives
http://www.uen.org/k-2interactives/my_world.shtml

3-6 Interactives
http://www.uen.org/3-6interactives/social_studies.shtml

7-12 Interactives
http://www.uen.org/3-6interactives/social_studies.shtml

Periodic Table of the Internet

I love it!

Librarian 2.0 - Keep Informed

I have been following a blog called "School Library Media Activities Monthly" since we started looking at blogs. As I have been exploring previous posts I have discovered some great links to sites I would never had the time to find otherwise. Activities like the one found at National Geographic where kids (or adults!) can make their own wildlife film. (http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/filmmaker.html )

You can find the blog at:
http://blog.schoollibrarymedia.com

Read Books Online

Where can I send the kids to read books online? This is one of my biggest requests from teachers and I usually have the old stanby's like tumblebooks.com and lookybooks (which just closed up shop), but today I have found a new one called Big Universe. It can be found at http://www.biguniverse.com/

It has both paid and free membership access. They have many current fiction and non-fiction books online that you can access with both memberships, but the free access limits you to about 3/4 of the book. Not ideal if reading fiction, but I found some really great non-fiction titles that I was able to read almost all of. Another great feature that is accessible with the free membership is the ability to create your own books online. They also have a library of the books created by other members, some of which are very good!

Another great site for primary students is Storyline Online(www.storylineonline.net) which is put together by the Screen Actors Guild. Here children can see the pictures and listen to some quite famous actors read the story to them. I have always had great feedback about this site.

Be The Change - Webquests

This year our school has become extremely envolved in the "Me to We" campaign started by Craig Kielburger's Free the Children organization. As part of that we are looking for ways to educate the students of our school on the issues surrounding this important cause. OSLA has started its own educational organization called "Be the Change" and has included a number of great webquests.

They can be found at:
http://www.accessola.com/osla/bethechange/webquests.html

What's the big deal about blogs??

More webquests!

After a couple of weeks struggling to recover from the worst flu I've ever experienced... I am finally back online exploring the world of webquests. I came across this site that posts links to webquests under four different headings: ages 5-8, 9-12, 13-15, and 15-18. There are some great ones here! One that peaked my interest first was a Halloween Safety webquest. In the culminating task students are required to create a powerpoint point to be shown to other students. What a great idea!
Here is the link:
http://www.nelliemuller.com/WebQuests_Up_to_Grade_three.htm