Haugen’s Tech Tips Blog

I think I mentioned VoiceThread before – the marvelous web site that lets you present a slide show and record comments, captions & doodles. The other innovation of VoiceThread is you can invite others to comment as well, creating a visually guided dialog about… well, anything.

One of my favorites:

See also Kenya Escape, the incredibly powerful story of one family’s experience in Kenya, during the election upsets of December 2007.

ArtThink is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s curriculum site, which provides theme-based activities in visual arts, language arts, history and social studies.

ArtThink includes a glossary, online lessons, special features, tools and games.
http://sfmoma.org/artthink/default.asp

Thinkfinity.org, formerly Marco Polo, is home to an amazing consortium of web resources for education:

• ArtsEdge – for arts integration, from the Kennedy Center
• EconEdLink – economics
• EdSiteMent – humanities, from the National Endowment for Humanities
• Illuminations – math, from NCTM
• Read-Write-Think – literacy from NCTE
• Science NetLinks – science
• XPeditions – geography, from National Geographic
• Smithsonian Museum of American History

These sites offer excellent reference information, as well as links to online activities and other reputable educational sites on the web.

Smithsonian Images offers an online catalog of its amazing photo collection, organized by topic, for personal and educational use.

• Browse or search through selected images from the Collections of the Office of Imaging and Photographic Services. Included are images from current exhibits, Smithsonian events and historic collections.
• Select and download screen resolution images for personal and educational use.
• Create your own portfolio of favorite Smithsonian image and send e-cards of your favorite images to family and friends.
• Purchase high quality prints and digital images through secure online ordering system.

Numerous topics from air and space, American history, animals, fireworks, minerals, technology, marine life and more… I can only imagine what a great addition this would be for students creating conventional or multimedia reports.

ASL Pro
is a web site that offers a free American Sign Language video dictionary and quiz tool for teachers and others who want to teach or learn sign language. Words and phrases are organized into a Main Dictionary, Religious Dictionary, Conversational Dictionary (including idioms), and ASL for Babies Dictionary. The quiz and learning tools include finger spelling quizzes and customizable quizzes.