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Here are Lily and Libby's Favorite Homework Help Sites: About.com (formerly "The Mining Company") - A directory which utilizes "guides," who are employed to assemble websites covering a myriad of content areas. Each "guide" is responsible for collecting and maintaining sites in her specific area. About.com can be used as a directory by going through prearranged categories or utilized as a search engine by entering keywords at http://home.about.com/
American Memory - The online resource compiled by the Library of Congress National Digital Library Program. The program provides a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. Over one million items from our historical collections are currently available online. Of special interest is the Learning Page, which includes excellent lesson plans and activities. For younger children, don't miss the America's Story from America's Library. This component of the Library of Congress focuses on primary materials in the categories of Meet Amazing Americans, Jump Back in Time, Explore the States, Join America at Play, and See, Hear and Sing. at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html
- Ben's Guides (as in Ben Franklin) - It's a civics course at your fingertips. You pick the grade level: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 and the same topics are covered, just at different levels of complexity. Topics include: Our Nation, Historical Documents, Branches of Government, How Laws are Made, National v. State Government, Election Process, Citizenship, Symbols of U.S. Government, Games and Activities, and Glossary. There is also a U.S. Government Web Site for Kids, organized by subject, agency or alphabet, which includes U.S. Agency websites with sections especially appropriate for kids. The resource is at http://bensguide.gpo.gov/index.html
- CNN - Great source of current, authentic reading materials. In addition to current news stories,there are interactive news quizzes at http://www.cnn.com/
CNN S.F.News Stories - put together by the California Distance Learning Project. This very useful site provides the text from a CNN broadcast (full or simplified version) as well as an outline and an audio file. They also have six exercises that go along with each story: Vocabulary, Select a Word, Multiple Choice, Sequencing, Conclusions, and Show and Tell. A search engine also lets you look for articles that fit the content focus of your class at http://www.cnnsf.com/education/education.html
Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) - A searchable database of over 10,000 math and science resources, including Web pages. Searchable by subject, grade range, type of material and cost at http://www.enc.org
The Digital Dozen - Twelve outstanding lessons from the ENC collection are highlighted each month.
Eric (Education Resource Information Center - The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education, produces the world's premier database of journal and non-journal education literature. The new ERIC online system, released September 2004, provides the public with a centralized ERIC Web site for searching the ERIC bibliographic database of more than 1.1 million citations going back to 1966. More than 107,000 full-text non-journal documents (issued 1993-2004), previously available through fee-based services only, are now available for free at http://www.eric.ed.gov/
FREE (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence) - More than 30 federal agencies worked together to form this resource. It includes current materials from agencies as varied as the Department of Defense, CIA, Peace Corp, National Endowment for the Arts, EPA, etc. This is a great resource for students working on real-world issues who need access to up-to-date, accurate information. Another link on FREE's homepage is "More for Students," which connects to fifty, student oriented contemporary issues sites. All of this at http://www.ed.gov/free
History/Social Studies for K-12 Teachers - Dennis Boals has a huge collection on resources including categories such as Diversity, Geography, Economics, Government and more at http://home.comcast.net/~dboals1/boals.html
How Stuff Works - This fascinating site authored by a former university computer science prof. consists of straightforward, fairly short, illustrated articles explaining "how stuff works." For example, surely you (or your students) have, at some point in your life, wondered, "How does the air get cold in a refrigerator?" or "Why does a toilet flush?" or "What makes a Web page work?", etc., etc. An article a week is added to this site; each article includes links to information to extend research on the topic, and the site includes full text search capability. Categories covered include: Engines and Motors, Around the House, Electronics, Things You See in Public, Basic Technologies, Computers and the Internet, Understanding Digital Technology, Automotive, In the News, Food, Your Body, The Inside Series (inside household devices), Miscellaneous, and Question of the Day. Lends itself very well to students choosing an article, then presenting it in her own words with visual aids downloaded from the site. See http://www.howstuffworks.com
HyperHistory Online - "It is a timeline with an enormous number of links. You can see the famous people (politicians, musicians, painters, clergymen, etc.) who lived in the same period of time on the line and follow the links connected to them. You can also see interactive maps, with links again.
Kid's Click: Web Search for Kids by Librarians - Created by a group of librarians, Kid's Click was seen as a better alternative to filtering software. Rather than screen out "bad" sites, the librarians wanted to provide kids with "good" sites. Kid's Click is a searchable directory divided into 15 categories.
Kiosk-Journal of Geopolitics - This is one-stop shopping-for "country" research projects. Click on the name of a country; you'll get a map and basic background information (like in an encyclopedia). However, there is much more. You'll find links organized into groupings such as: News and Current Events, History and Culture, Government and Politics, Economics and Development, In-Country Information, and Travel and Tour. Even if you are not doing a research project, this makes for fascinating and educational reading!
http://www.bay.k12.fl.us/pdk/kiosk/index.html
Marco Polo by WorldCom, Inc. - This is a shining example of an Internet resource that will enhance teaching and learning. A comprehensive site, Marco Polo is multidimensional. There are Web resources and lesson plans, based on national content standards, in the areas of economics, geography, humanities, mathematics, science and the arts (links on right side of page). There is also a flexible search engine (Marco Polo Search) at the top of the page, allowing searches by content and grade level. Marco Polo offers training to teachers on incorporating the Internet into teaching, with extensive materials available for download. All this is provided free of charge at
http://marcopolo.worldcom.com/index.shtml
Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR., Selected Web Sites - A well-chosen selection of sites including categories such as Arts, Business, Government, Health/Medicine, History, Law, Music, Religion, Relocation, Science, and more. Of special interest is a Kids Page which includes the Homework Center with an excellent variety of research materials for K-12 at http://www.multnomah.lib.or.us/lib/homework/
NASA- National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Content-rich and chock full of multimedia resources. Don't miss the "Popular Topics" and "Multimedia" sections (great great gallery of images there) at http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html
National Geographic Online - Contains NGS online Atlas (excellent maps and map activities), lesson plans (some linked to articles) and a site search engine at http://www. nationalgeographic.com.
National Public Radio - Read the news and listen to audio files of the broadcasts at http://www.npr.org/
New York Times Learning Network Daily Lesson Plan - Provides an online article along with a full, very detailed lesson plan and a description of the content goals to be achieved. The times allotted to complete the plans are overly conservative. Ancillary websites are often provided as well as ideas for follow-up activities. There is also an archive of past lesson plans arranged by topic. This page is one component of the New York Times Learning Network at http://www.nytimes.com/learning/index.html
Nova Online - Not only excellent content, but also a "Teacher's Guide" section which includes lesson plans and pre/post activity sheets which can be downloaded. Search tool for the site also available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/nova/.
PBS Online - Contains the high-quality resources you would expect from the Public Broadcasting System. Several useful features. Link to Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer which has both the daily NewsHour stories as well as a subject matter index to past shows. For many features, you will find both RealAudio accompanied by text, which makes this accessible to many ESL learners. Use the TeacherSource to search by subject and grade level for lesson plans linked to PBS materials. For the very young, there is PBS Kids with materials linked to kids' favorite PBS shows plus a variety of learning activities. http://www.pbs.org/
Project Gutenberg - Provides free, reproducible electronic texts for downloading. There are three portions of the Project Gutenberg Library, which can basically be described as: Light Literature; such as Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, Peter Pan, Aesop's Fables, etc. Heavy Literature; such as the Bible or other religious documents, Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, etc. References; such as Roget's Thesaurus, almanacs, and a set of encyclopedia, dictionaries, etc. You won't find any recent texts here, as only those texts which have passed into the public domain (now at 50 years after the death of the author!) are available. Still, there is an incredible selection at http://promo.net/pg/pgframed_index.html
Science Gems - Created by Frank Potter at the UC Irvine, this site has lesson plans (all incorporating Web Resources which range K-16. According to the author, " Total selected resources number about 3100 out of more than 65,000 science-related resources on the 'Net." This site gets you quickly into plans you can use and is updated frequently at http://www.sciencegems.com
Science Learning Network - Perhaps the most powerful science resource on the Net. The Science Learning Network (SLN) is an online community of educators, students, schools, science museums and other institutions demonstrating a new model for inquiry science education. SLN originated as a three-year, $6.5M project funded by the National Science Foundation and Unisys Corporation. The project incorporates inquiry-based teaching approaches, telecomputing, collaboration among geographically dispersed teachers and classrooms, and Internet/World Wide Web content resources. The main parts of the site include: check our news and links, explore our resources, visit our museums, and connect with schools and educators at http://www.sln.org/
Scientific American Ask the Experts - This is one portion of the site from the well known science publication Scientific American. Questions submitted by readers have been answered with very well illustrated and well documented web pages. In addition to current questions, there are extensive archives separated into content areas of Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computers, Environment, Geology, Mathematics, Medicine, and Physics. Sure to pique student interest at http://www.sciam.com/askexpert/
(SCORE) Schools of California On-Line Resources for Education - SCORE History-Social Science is part of an exciting new network of Online Resource Centers in California linking quality resources from the World Wide Web to the California curriculum. All these resources have been chosen and graded by California educators. This link is to the tutorial which guides the user in choosing material either by grade level or by subject area at http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/
Smithsonian's Ocean Planet - Send groups of students to explore different rooms in this on-line exhibition. http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ocean_planet.html
SparkNotes - A free electronic version comparable to Cliffs Notes, these summaries of literary works have been written by Harvard University students. They cover an extensive list of literature (over 100 books) which you might use in ESL classes. Have a look and decide whether you would use them directly with students, or as an effective way to select literature (with which you might not be familiar) for inclusion into your curriculum. The site is searchable by title, author and keyword at http://www.sparknotes.com/
Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) This site "uses properties listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects . . .TwHP has created a variety of products and activities that show teachers how to bring historic places into their classrooms, including ready-to-use lesson plans, multifaceted education kits, and professional development materials and workshops." at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/
The Tech Museum of Innovation Online Exhibits - Shockwave enhanced exhibits on satellites, robotics, DNA, Mt. Everest, Medal of Technology, color, earthquakes, Hubble Telescope, and lasers. Very high quality, interactive, educational experiences. at http://www.thetech.org/exhibits_events/online/
The WebMuseum Network to view famous art collections on-line. Extremely popular site. Link to a mirror near you from the website at http://sunsite.unc.edu/louvre/
- The Why Files -National Science Foundation - The articles are classified into categories: biology, health and science, social science and so forth. Biology, for example, includes Forensic Science for the 21st Century. Articles are appropriately linked to further information at http://whyfiles.news.wisc.edu/index.html
- Virtual Smithsonian - The granddaddy of all museums has some of its best exhibits online. Many are viewable in 3-D and can be manipulated. Only folks with *very* fast connections should choose the "broadband" option at http://2k.si.edu/
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