Reading

AgentSheets :A versatile simulation-authoring tool designed to allow a wide range of people to explore, comprehend, and communicate complex ideas through interactive simulations.

Building Perspective :A game designed to help students in grades four and up develop their spatial perception and visual reasoning skills.

The Factory/The Factory Deluxe :A program designed to help students build reasoning and problem-solving skills by working backwards, analyzing processes, recognizing patterns and sequences, and predicting outcomes, as they combine machines on an assembly line to create geometric products. The newer version of the program, Factory Deluxe, challenges students to think strategically and visually through activities that cover shapes, rotation, angle measurement, recognition of geometric attributes, area formulas, and number computation.

IMMEX (Interactive Multimedia Exercises) A problem-solving, assessment software that tracks each of the actions that students make and records these actions for the teacher to view and analyze. One activity for high school students is available: “Island Survival.”

JASON Project The JASON Project (for which educational materials are offered through this Web site) provides teachers and students with a year-long, multidisciplinary program exploring science, math, and technology. Each year a new project is selected; past projects have ranged from the Great Lakes to the Peruvian Rain Forest.

Kids Domain A Web site providing access to online educational games, articles, graphics, and downloads for elementary and middle school age students. All materials are designed to be "child safe", and all provide children with engaged learning experiences that develop high-order thinking skills.

Logo Web Site This Web site helps users understand and learn the programming language Logo, which can be used for a variety of education applications, including the development of simulations and the creation of multimedia presentations. The site also presents resources, publications, and products pertaining to Logo.

Middle School Math through Applications Project: MMAP A two-year series of project-based units that offers the most technology-intensive middle school curriculum reviewed in this document. MMAP is unique in that its software environments are simplified versions of software used by professionals.

SimCalc MathWorlds The program, designed to make ideas central to calculus accessible to the majority of students at an early age, displays animated worlds in which the movement of the objects and characters is governed by graphs. When edited using the computer mouse, the graphs exhibit dynamic links that reveal mathematical relationships.

Thinkin' Things All Around Frippletown A logical and reasoning skills building program geared for students aged 4-8. It consists of four activities meant to help students solve problems, reason deductively, read and navigate maps, test hypotheses, work through number patterns and sequences, predict outcomes, discriminate rules, and use visual creativity.

Multidisciplinary

Classroom Connect This is a comprehensive Web site that includes spotlights, live quests, hot links, and other resources and products for mostly K-8 students. It also contains lesson plans and Web quests for teachers. The lesson plans, Web quests, hot links, and spotlights are linked to national and state standards through NCREL.

IMMEX (Interactive Multimedia Exercises) A problem-solving, assessment software that tracks each of the actions that students make and records these actions for the teacher to view and analyze. One activity for high school students is available: “Island Survival.”

JASON Project The JASON Project (for which educational materials are offered through this Web site) provides teachers and students with a year-long, multidisciplinary program exploring science, math, and technology. Each year a new project is selected; past projects have ranged from the Great Lakes to the Peruvian Rain Forest.

Kids Domain A Web site providing access to online educational games, articles, graphics, and downloads for elementary and middle school age students. All materials are designed to be "child safe", and all provide children with engaged learning experiences that develop high-order thinking skills.

Logo Web Site This Web site helps users understand and learn the programming language Logo, which can be used for a variety of education applications, including the development of simulations and the creation of multimedia presentations. The site also presents resources, publications, and products pertaining to Logo.

Mathematics

The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury A series of 12 video disc-based problem-solving scenarios that aims to improve basic and higher order mathematics learning in grades five and up through the use of complex real world problems.

Carnegie Learning—Algebra and Geometry Tutors Cognitive Tutor Algebra I is a full year Algebra 1 course with sophisticated software (the Cognitive Tutor) that tracks students' knowledge and learning, gives hints, and provides an interface that links text, graphs, equations, and tables.

Connected Mathematics A complete curriculum for grades 6–8 that offers important mathematical ideas in the context of interesting problems.

Fathom Software designed to support students' understanding of statistical concepts. When students select data in one representation, Fathom automatically selects the same data in all representations, affording students the opportunity to see the connections among the various representations.

The Geometer's Sketchpad A program for students in grades five through college that was developed for exploring and modeling in geometry but is also used for algebra, trigonometry, calculus, art, and science. Sketchpad allows students to draw an object and explore its mathematical properties.

IMMEX (Interactive Multimedia Exercises) A problem-solving, assessment software that tracks each of the actions that students make and records these actions for the teacher to view and analyze. One activity for high school students is available: “Island Survival.”

International Mathematics Program A comprehensive, problem-based curriculum for grades 9–12 that integrates traditional content, such as algebra and geometry, with less traditional content, such as statistics and probability, and includes long-term, open-ended investigations.

Investigations in Number, Data, and Space A mathematics curriculum for grades K-5 that uses activities designed to help students think creatively, develop their own problem-solving strategies, and work cooperatively while using manipulatives, calculators, and computers.

JASON Project The JASON Project provides teachers and students with a year-long, multidisciplinary program exploring science, math, and technology. Each year a new project is selected; past projects have ranged from the Great Lakes to the Peruvian Rain Forest.

Kids Domain A Web site providing access to online educational games, articles, graphics, and downloads for elementary and middle school age students. All materials are designed to be "child safe", and all provide children with engaged learning experiences that develop high-order thinking skills.

Logical Journey of the Zoombinis A math game for students aged 9-14, in which players lead the Zoombinis—small blue creatures—to their new homeland. To get them to Zoombiniville, players must overcome a series of obstacles by solving 12 puzzles that require mathematics skills such as sorting, organizing and analyzing data, hypothesis formation, set theory, logical reasoning, pattern finding, attribute comparison, and algebraic thinking.

Logo Web Site This Web site helps users understand and learn the programming language Logo, which can be used for a variety of education applications, including the development of simulations and the creation of multimedia presentations. The site also presents resources, publications, and products pertaining to Logo.

The Math Forum An "online math education community center" for people with an interest in math and math education.

Millie's Math House Seven activities for children aged 2-5 that encourage them to identify and compare sizes, learn the names of shapes, match shapes, create and complete patterns, recognize and read numerals 0-30, hear the numbers 1-30 counted, recognize and read number sentences, and practice addition and subtraction facts.

National Council of Teacher of Mathematics i-Math Investigations The i-Math Investigations are two parts of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Illuminations Web site, which contains lessons for pre-kindergarten through high school, activities designed to encourage thinking about mathematics, lesson plans, and links to resources.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Web Resources A Web site that contains lessons for pre-kindergarten through high school, activities designed to encourage thinking about mathematics, lesson plans, and links to resources.

NCTM e-Examples (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics A Web site that contains interactive, technology-based activities keyed to passages in the NCTM's Principles and Standards of School Mathematics (PSSM), which describes 10 standards for mathematics in pre-kindergarten to grade 12.

PBS TeacherSource This data source offers more than 2,500 student and teacher activities for a variety of core competencies. It also has an excellent section of videoclips for teaching in the classroom. There are several Shockwave simulations at this site which are quite effective and promote higher-level thinking.

SimCalc MathWorlds The program, designed to make ideas central to calculus accessible to the majority of students at an early age, displays animated worlds in which the movement of the objects and characters is governed by graphs. When edited using the computer mouse, the graphs exhibit dynamic links that reveal mathematical relationships.

Social Studies

IMMEX (Interactive Multimedia Exercises) A problem-solving, assessment software that tracks each of the actions that students make and records these actions for the teacher to view and analyze. One activity for high school students is available: “Island Survival.”

JASON Project The JASON Project provides teachers and students with a year-long, multidisciplinary program exploring science, math, and technology. Each year a new project is selected; past projects have ranged from the Great Lakes to the Peruvian Rain Forest.

Kids Domain A Web site providing access to online educational games, articles, graphics, and downloads for elementary and middle school age students. All materials are designed to be "child safe", and all provide children with engaged learning experiences that develop high-order thinking skills.

The Library of Congress's American Memory Archive The National Digital Library, a project of the Library of Congress, established American Memory as the official repository of America digital resources. America Memory is the most extensive collection of social studies related digital resources available. Their holdings include more the 3 million documents in over 70 collections. In additions, the National Digital Library makes maintains an extensive educational outreach program. The education division of the National Digital Library conducts online workshops and makes

Logo Web Site This Web site helps users understand and learn the programming language Logo, which can be used for a variety of education applications, including the development of simulations and the creation of multimedia presentations. The site also presents resources, publications, and products pertaining to Logo.

PBS TeacherSource This data source offers more than 2,500 student and teacher activities for a variety of core competencies. It also has an excellent section of videoclips for teaching in the classroom. There are several Shockwave simulations at this site which are quite effective and promote higher-level thinking.

UNICEF Voices of Youth: The Learning Place This multifaceted website facilitates content-driven interaction and discussion, promotes cultural literacy and global awareness, encourages collaboration and feedback between peers (student-to-student and teacher-to-teacher), and enhances communication about contemporary world issues. The Whole Picture, for example, encourages classroom discussion by first engaging students visually; they are shown a portion of a photo and given a small amount of background information, then are asked to thoughtfully determine what the missing piece might look like based on their content area and cultural knowledge. The project is also designed to enhance learning after the fact: students do not simply click on the picture to find out if they were right or wrong. Instead, a deeper level of learning centers around later reflection; students are asked to discuss follow-up questions such as: "How did you decide what might be missing from the first picture?" "Did you have any stereotypes in your mind when you guessed what was missing?" How does seeing only part of a picture change your idea of what is going on?" and "What questions would you need to ask to find out what's going on in this picture?"

WebQuests A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information learners interact with 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 thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The model was developed in early 1995 at San Diego State University by Bernie Dodge and Tom March, and was based on the research of R.J. Marzano (see, for example, Dimensions of Thinking, 1992)

YouthVoice.Net: The Civic Literacy Project at Indiana University Using the YouthVoice.Net website, teachers and students meet the challenges of creating a classroom project that ties curriculum standards to service learning and youth advocacy. The site is user friendly and allows educators and students to easily navigate a large variety of resources and tools, helping them build a knowledge base for making their voices heard on a variety of issues

Writing and Technology

Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) CPR is a Web-delivered software program designed by UCLA's Molecular Science Project. Students are given some form of learning assignment, such as exploring a simulation of scientific principles, reading a chapter from their text, or conducting a lab experiment. They then respond to an essay question about their learning task. After submitting their response, students "practice" evaluating writing samples using a set of guiding questions that provide them with explicit criteria by which to gauge the quality of the sample. Following this, they are given opportunities to see how their instructor might have evaluated the same samples using the same criteria (i.e. they "calibrate" their reviews to that of their instructor). In the final stages of this process, students evaluate the writing of peers in their class (or in other classes) and then evaluate their own original text submissions. The CPR program provides each student with their scores as a writer (based on peer reviews) and a reviewer (based on their responses to the calibration), as well as specific ratings by peers on evaluation criteria. Although CPR was developed in the context of teaching science, its developers stress that the program can be used across subjects and grade levels.

Clicker Clicker software allows teachers and students to construct grids of pictures or words that students then use to compose text. In lieu of typing words letter-by-letter, as one must in most word-processing programs, students click on words or pictures in the grid to compose their texts. The program circumvents the keyboarding and spelling difficulties with which beginning writers often grapple when they use traditional word-processing tools. As a result, students can focus their attention on content. Clicker also includes an audio feature that allows students to hear what they have written (or to hear words that are in their word grids), a feature that can further support students' efforts at learning to write.

CSILE — Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments CSILE scaffolds the writing process at the level of finding, organizing, and developing one's argument or message. Developed by researchers Scardamalia and Bereiter, CSILE allows students to collaboratively research and answer specific, high-level questions. Students collaboratively build an electronic database of information that is shared among all learners involved in a project; they also receive feedback from and provide feedback to their peers. CSILE software scaffolds students' thinking during this process by providing prompts that encourage reflection, goal setting and other thinking processes. CSILE can impact students' writing processes at three levels:

• By giving them opportunities to write, both as they build databases and as they respond to others within the database
• By providing students with opportunities to reflect on what they have written — sometimes as a result of comments and feedback they receive from their peers, and sometimes as a result of the prompts built into the program, and
• By helping students discover and expand upon content they know or need to know.

Convince Me The Echo Educational Project at the University of California at Berkeley developed Convince Me to help students evaluate and develop their arguments. While the program was designed in the context of helping students with their scientific argumentation skills, research suggests that improved performance on essay writing might be an additional benefit, since the program helps students develop and articulate their ideas about a topic.

Inspiration (or Kidspiration, for younger children) This is an example of software commonly used for concept mapping and brainstorming. The program can be used to electronically produce maps, diagrams, flow charts, etc., which be transformed into more traditional outlines. Because beginning writers do not plan as much experienced writers, this kind of software can help students organize their ideas before they begin writing.

Monsters, Mondrian, and Me This project, featured in The National Research Council's landmark book, How People Learn, asks students to invent and draw a monster, which they then describe over email to students in other classrooms. The purpose of the exercise is to describe, in writing, a monster clearly enough and with enough detail that the other class can re-produce it without seeing the original drawing. This process is then repeated with abstract art, as in the style of Mondrian, then again with self-portraits (hence the project title). After exchanging written descriptions, followed by exchanging drawings, students reflect on what aspects of their written descriptions might have been improved.

SimCalc MathWorlds The program, designed to make ideas central to calculus accessible to the majority of students at an early age, displays animated worlds in which the movement of the objects and characters is governed by graphs. When edited using the computer mouse, the graphs exhibit dynamic links that reveal mathematical relationships.

Storyspace Storyspace is a hypertext software that provides authors with "writing spaces" that can contain text (large amounts, if the writer desires), graphics, video, audio, etc. Writing spaces can be linked in many different ways (e.g., hierarchically) and links can be reorganized as the writer chooses.

Teaching Writing Through the iEARN Global Community Elementary school teacher Kristi Rennebohm Franz has integrated technology into many facets of her writing-process work with students. Franz, as part of her work within the iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) community, uses email, the Web, and video to work on writing in the context of teaching science, social studies, math, and other subjects.

Teachers can join a number of iEARN projects that address many different topics. These projects offer students opportunities to collaborate with peers in different cultures as they work on content that has real-world relevance. They also allow students to publish their work in some form. According to the project website, "All iEARN projects involve a final 'product' or exhibition of the learning that has taken place as part of the collaboration. These have included magazines, creative writing anthologies, websites, letter-writing campaigns, reports to government officials, arts exhibits, workshops, performances, charity fundraising, and many more examples of youth taking action as part of what they are learning in the classroom."

WIER — Writers In Electronic Residence WIER is a program based in Canada that allows students to share writing with and receive feedback from professional authors and other students.

Visual and Performing Arts

Kids Domain A Web site providing access to online educational games, articles, graphics, and downloads for elementary and middle school age students. All materials are designed to be "child safe", and all provide children with engaged learning experiences that develop high-order thinking skills.

Logo Web Site This Web site helps users understand and learn the programming language Logo, which can be used for a variety of education applications, including the development of simulations and the creation of multimedia presentations. The site also presents resources, publications, and products pertaining to Logo.

One Sky, Many Voices A program that engages a group of classes simultaneously to study aspects of weather. Classes around the world can follow the same weather pattern and discuss its progress.

Science

Global Lab Global Lab uses a telecommunications network to link schools as they perform interdisciplinary inquiry activities about the health of the planet, starting in grade 8. Students analyze a local site and pool their data with information from classes around the world.

IMMEX (Interactive Multimedia Exercises) A problem-solving, assessment software that tracks each of the actions that students make and records these actions for the teacher to view and analyze. One activity for high school students is available: “Island Survival.”

JASON Project The JASON Project (for which educational materials are offered through this Web site) provides teachers and students with a year-long, multidisciplinary program exploring science, math, and technology. Each year a new project is selected; past projects have ranged from the Great Lakes to the Peruvian Rain Forest.

Kids Domain A Web site providing access to online educational games, articles, graphics, and downloads for elementary and middle school age students. All materials are designed to be "child safe", and all provide children with engaged learning experiences that develop high-order thinking skills.

Logo Web Site This Web site helps users understand and learn the programming language Logo, which can be used for a variety of education applications, including the development of simulations and the creation of multimedia presentations. The site also presents resources, publications, and products pertaining to Logo.

Model-It Supports middle and high school students in building, testing, and evaluating dynamic models.

One Sky, Many Voices A program that engages a group of classes simultaneously to study aspects of weather. Classes around the world can follow the same weather pattern and discuss its progress.

Science Court A CD-ROM series intended for use in grades 4-6 that encourages cooperative group work, discussions, and content-based inquiry.

Science Education for Public Understanding Program: SEPUP
Yearlong curricular units on issues-oriented science topics. Students gather and weigh evidence for arguments about contemporary science concerns, using activity kits for their investigations. The middle school course focuses on Science and Life Issues.

SimCalc MathWorlds The program, designed to make ideas central to calculus accessible to the majority of students at an early age, displays animated worlds in which the movement of the objects and characters is governed by graphs. When edited using the computer mouse, the graphs exhibit dynamic links that reveal mathematical relationships.

Stagecast Creator Software that can be used to model a variety of scientific phenomena.

StarLOGO A modeling environment that enables students (and researchers) to explore decentralized systems—systems that do not have one central controller.

The Web-based Inquiry Science Environment: WISE A browser-based library of elementary, middle school, and high school level activities that enable students to critique real-world "evidence" from the Web, compare different scientific arguments, and design problem-solving approaches based on scientific principles.

Refdesk.com offers an unbelievable wealth of information. Believe it! Here, students will find a huge assortment of reference material gleaned from newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, and more than 260 search engines. If students have time to visit only one reference site, recommend this one. Because it provides such depth, it is probably best suited for older students.

Microsoft's online version of their CD-ROM Encarta Homework also provides students information on a truckload of topics. Included are study tips, a writers' workshop, and even a talking dictionary.

StudyWeb sites, now available only by subscription, link students of all ages to dictionaries, thesauri, calculators, currency converters, phone books, maps, and more. This site includes tons of downloadable and printable images.

Among the other great general resources out there, the AOL@school site, screened for quality, also sorts Web links by grade level. Fact Monster, Schoolwork.Ugh!, and the children's section of the America's Story, a Library of Congress Web site, are other fine resources. Homework Spot offers kids aid in different subject areas; it even takes them on virtual field trips!

Other excellent gateways to links appropriate for elementary and middle school students include KidsClick! and Kid Info. With no distracting commercials, these sites link quickly to some of the best cyber resources available. The sites include information on just about every subject from aardvark to zebra!

If your students need language help, have them try the Internet Public Library's A+ Research and Writing, Bartleby.com, which includes famous quotations and literary works, or Common Errors in English. All these sites are targeted for high school and college students.

If your students need foreign-language help, encourage them to check out the audio dictionary and French, German, and Spanish grammar exercises at eLanguage.

Middle school students with math problems could try Ask Dr. Math.

For social studies aid, have students check out Kids @ National Geographic or CIA's Homepage for Kids (really), a site that includes a plethora of information describing the government, religion, culture, and education of countries around the world.

For super science aid, steer students to BillNye.com (the science guy), EndangeredSpecie.com, Ranger Rick's Kids Zone (part of the National Wildlife Federation), The Nine Planets, MadSci Network, Science Fair Project Resource Guide, or the Educational Hotlist, part of the Franklin Institute Science Museum site.

Students can find homework help for art on the Web too! Suggest New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Washington D.C.'s National Gallery of Art, or the Web Museum, Paris for art from around the world.

SCHOOLNOTES.COM

SchoolNotes.com is a site that offers many possibilities for teachers and students. Teachers can post homework assignments, upcoming projects, newsletters, schedules, Web site links of interest, lecture notes, or even flashcards for study and review. All that and more can be accomplished with a simple fill-in-the-blank form.

FILAMENTALITY

Filamentality, developed by the Pacific Bell Fellows, has been around for a while but is still a godsend for the busy teacher or the Internet newbie. With its fill-in-the-blank format, teachers can create treasure hunts, subject samplers, scrapbooks, hotlists, and WebQuests. Those activities can even be hosted on the Pacific Bell site as long as they're updated regularly. Just register and choose a password to begin your activity. It doesn't have to be completed in one session; it can be worked on over a period of time. The site also includes excellent guides for teachers, students, librarians, and trainers. Six Paths to China is an outstanding example of how the Internet can support learning in the classroom. It includes an example of each of the Filamentality formats.

TRACKSTAR

TrackStar, a free service of the South Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium, helps educators easily create learning activities for their students. The created Track will guide the student through a set of URLs with annotations for exploration. You can make your own Track by completing the creation form. You can also edit and modify an existing track to make it fit your needs. If you'd like to browse what others have done, the Tracks are categorized by subject area, or you can search by keyword for Tracks on a specific subject. There is a complete Help section and a TrackStar Forum for sharing ideas about this tool with others. Browse through the following sites to see activities produced with TrackStar.

• Learning About Dinosaurs is an elementary Track with guiding questions for exploration of each URL listed.
• Amazing Rainforests directs students to use a journal to record information about the plants, animals, and people of tropical rain forests. A section on contrasting and comparing the weather conditions of the tropical and temperate rain forests is also included.
• Fun With Numbers involves students in some exciting ways to study math.
• Touring Paris is a secondary Track that requires students to make all the arrangements for a trip to Paris for a week and compute the total cost.
• The Holocaust focuses on the ramifications and lasting effects of the Holocaust. It uses photographs, articles, and quotes from survivors to provide students with an understanding of the Holocaust era.

ED TECH TOOLS

For interactive quizzes,Ed Tech Tools is the answer. If you answer a series of questions about the quiz design and enter certain information, the QuizCenter will generate your quiz. QuizCenter can score the quiz on-line, give your students feedback, and send you the results via e-mail. See how many of the dinosaurs you recognize in Dinosaur! The Quiz Menu provides a list of the QuizCenter topics available on-line.

THE QUIZ LAB

The Quiz Lab, at Funbrain.com, is another quiz tool available free to teachers who register. Its simple format makes it easy for teachers to provide practice and review for students of all ages. Students can even make up their own quizzes for other students to use. Quiz lab will grade quizzes automatically and e-mail the scores to the teacher. It will also gather useful data about a class and track student performance throughout the year. Students can access the quizzes on-line at any time to review skills.