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There are a plethora of Content Management Systems available to educators and educational institutions, so finding the one that seems the right fit takes extensive research. Factors such as flexibility in presentation styles and materials, user-friendliness, accessibility, cost, engaging visuals, and import / export capabilities are all important considerations when selecting the CMS that is compatible with educators and / or online learning institutions. Following are three tools that may be used to aggregate and present learning material:

Blackboard:

This LMS has been my top pick since we first began researching LMSs. They have recently merged with Angel Learning, which we used in my face-to-face classroom. With a user-friendly and engaging platform, which allows for easy creation of synchronous and asynchronous sessions, Blackboard is an invaluable tool for both educators and students. Schoolwires, a hosting and content management system, has also recently merged with Blackboard to create a K-12 portfolio that is an "unmatched communications and community engagement solution set. They have also partnered with CK-12, Discovery Education, Softchalk, and several other major online companies. While it is not free, it is definitely worth it if online learning communities are able to pay for it.

Edmodo:

This site is the global leader in K-12 social learning communities, and allows teachers, students, and parents to connect safely and securely. It is a student favorite due to is compatibility with social media. A free account may be created, which allows educators to quickly create groups, assign homework, scheduled quizzes, and manage progress with unlimited storage. "Snapshot," a key feature which aligns work with Common Core, allows teachers to regularly gauge student progress, but not with a data-overload--it only shows whether or not the students need help. Having mobile capabilities, it is the perfect fit for the educator and student. Edmodo is free to users.

Schoology:

Schoology is also an interesting LMS platform. It has mobile capabilities for students and teachers, a built-in CMS, a communications hub which allows for smoother communications between educators, administrators, and students. This site allows educators to create courses, post materials, host discussion boards, give assessments, and has a dropbox for learning objects. It has a global collaboration feature for educators, curricular consistency, and an easy-to-use environment which is engaging to students. They also partnered with Turnitin.com, my favorite resource to check for plagiarism in essays. They also advertise that they are compatible with Blackboard Collaborate and Moodle. Schoology allows educators to sign up for free.

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Create 4.1.2--Principles of Building Portable Learning Objects

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Create 4.1.2--Principles of Building Portable Learning Objects

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Portable Learning Objects are learning tools used by educators and students to create games, assignments, lesson plans, newsletters, videos, assessments, and any type of informational template to better engage students and encourage retention of course material.

I used Smore to house both online learning objects, as Padlet will only allow one image per blog entry.

GlogsterEDU Study Board for The Crucible, Act I:

I created the first learning object using GlogsterEDU, which allows users to create learning boards from pre-existing templates, or by uploading your own images and video. Students can't help enjoying study time with this engaging tool . Teachers may create study boards, or students may create projects. The "Glogopedia" I created represents the basic literary devices and characters associated with The Crucible, Act I, for which students will be responsible on an upcoming quiz. See the Smore attachment, below:

Kahoot! Quiz, The Crucible, Act I:

The second learning object was a quiz I created using Kahoot! Kahoot! is a highly engaging study format for students, and allows them to become competitive. Students may use this site at home with their smart phones, and then link to the game on the teacher's website by plugging in Kahoot.it, then the game code. My fifth grader uses this game in her class as review before quizzes and tests, and the entire class becomes competitive, yet has fun simultaneously. Students may use the study board, above, as one of their review items in order to study for this quiz, which is given upon completion of The Crucible, Act I. Click on the Smore attachment, below:

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Create 4.1.2 - Building (2) Portable Learning Objects by Kristin Wolff | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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Create 4.1.1--Define and Explain Learning Object Authoring Tools

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Create 4.1.1--Define and Explain Learning Object Authoring Tools

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Learning object authoring tools are found on websites that may be used independently, or may be incorporated, either for a monthly or annual fee, or free, with LMSs. These sites may be used by educators and students to create lesson plans, units, entire course curricula, assessments, presentations, educational games, or videos. These tools enable educators to make online learning educational, meaningful, and engaging for all stakeholders. Following are a few of the best online learning tools, some free, some for a fee, which I have enjoyed using or exploring:

Three Free Learning Object Authoring Tools:

Collaborate Classroom:

This free site touts itself as the provider of the 21st century skills students need in order to be competitive in college and the workplace. This site provides teachers with structure and variety for their online classrooms, making them more dynamic and effective. Educators create discussion boards / forums which are great outlets for synchronous and asynchronous learning, and have the ability to embed multimedia, video, pictures, and PDFs. Collaborate Classroom shifts the teaching paradigm to a more student-centered approach, because every student becomes a valued contributor, with teachers providing their expertise and guidance. When the discussion board has closed, this site allows educators to publish the results of students' responses in a graphical format to share with the class. Educators may also create and hold webinars.

Kahoot:

This free, game-based blended learning platform allows both educators and students to research, create, collaborate, and share knowledge. Students are given a voice in the virtual classroom, and educators are able to engage and focus their students through play and creativity. Kahoot's current service will remain free, but will offer added value services in the future. Kahoot is a great resource for teachers, because it allows them to either make their own games, or perform searches for thousands of Kahoots that have been shared with members for students to play globally. In order to protect students, this company has a built-in feature for students 16 or under which prevents them from accessing publicly-created content by other users, and from creating public content as well. For example, the following link take users to a pre-made quiz for The Crucible, Act I:

https://create.kahoot.it/#quiz/e374113d-1654-4b71-8089-e778b0b1b119

Goanimate.com:

The site has a user-friendly layout which has three controls on the bottom for adding video, audio, and additional background music. Multiple layers of each may be added in scenes, in additional to typing your own text, and choosing your own props, characters, templates, and emotions. I used this site in a previous quest to create a short video as a reminder of an upcoming project due date. I used a spiraling, Twilight Zone-ish orange backdrop, with a cute cartoonish witch in a purple costume, since the current unit is Dark Romanticism, which we study in October / Halloween month.

Two Fee / Subcription-Based Learning Object Authoring Tools:

Smore.com:

This site provides users with a free trial period, followed by a 30-day, money back guarantee. The regular annual price is $230 per year, but Smore provides educators with a special pricing of only $59 per year. It allows users to design flyers that are mini websites educators may use to create news alerts, and flyers for lessons or units. I have already used Smore to create five newsletters for the TOOL quests, and have found them easy to use, with engaging graphics and layouts. Users may embed URLs, videos, and images to enhance their message. The versatility of this site provides users with a plethora of creative uses. I have truly enjoyed using this site--it is incredibly user-friendly, and providers users with templates, and allows them to use their own images, or to upload them from the internet or their computers.

Glogsteredu.com:

This site offers a free 7-day trial; pricing for secondary education is $95 for one year, with multi-year licensing options available. Glogster allows users to create "Glogipedias," which are boards created from pre-existing templates, or from your own media. This online learning tool is an invaluable resource for educators and students: educators are able to create assignments, games and activities, lesson plans, school Wikis and webpages, templates, and training / planning and development resources. This last feature would be an excellent tool for educators to create Netiquette and Digital Citizenship training templates, and embed selected videos as well. Educators and students are also able to create and use book reports, as well as ESL, grammar, journalism, literature, reading comprehension, oral communication, writers' biographies, and writing resources. Following is a writer's bio of Edgar Allan Poe created by a student, which also contains an embedded animated video of "The Fall of the House of Usher":

http://angusp.edu.glogster.com/edgar-allan-poe/?=glogpedia-source

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Educators must abide by Fair Use and / or the TEACH Act. One easy way to ensure we do is to add the filter "creative commons" to the word or phrase we search, to ensure we don't deviate from these laws. While this limits our search, most likely there will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of images and links remaining with which to complete our projects and lessons.

When investigating the sources listed, I previously had never noticed any mention of Creative Commons at end of resources, only the basic copyright information. At the bottom of the "Factoring" page of the algebra textbook, it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution. When I viewed the butterfly image on flickr, under the date the image was taken, it states "No known copyright restrictions." When I clicked "Show More" on the "MLA Style" You Tube video, its Creative Commons Attribution license is cited, which I've never noticed before.

Image for "The Crucible" Protected under Creative Commons:

My search for "The Crucible Creative Commons image" brought me to a Wikipedia link, which had the official film poster for the 1996 film version of The Crucible. At the bottom of the Wikipedia page, it clearly states the image and information are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License. Never noticed that before.

Text for "The Crucible" Protected under Creative Commons:

The text I choose was a "Character Wheel" writing assignment, which I found with the search "The Crucible Lesson Plan Creative Commons." It was posted by a teacher named Mr. Burkland on his Weebly.com teacher blog.
Multimedia Online Learning Activity for "The Crucible" Protected under Creative Commons:
National Geographic has an interactive website which is an engaging pre-reading activity for students. I have taught this on day one for my Crucible unit for years, and it never gets old. Students are put on the spot, finding out about the history of Salem, Massachusetts, the Salem Witch Trials, and some of the actual people who were on trial, who are also featured in Miller's play. But at the end, students must make a decision--guilty, or not guilty? It leaves students in a moral quandary, which is always good for the soul.

Following is a link to my Smore Newsletter, "Locating Resources," which includes examples of the above Creative Commons-worthy teaching tools:

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Create 3.1.3--Locating Resources - Creative Commons Licensing, Fair Use, and the TEACH Act by Kristin Wolff | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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Create 3.1.2--Fair Use and the TEACH Act

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Create 3.1.2--Fair Use and the TEACH Act

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As an educator who has utilized online resources for almost twenty years, all I can say is thank goodness for Fair Use and the TEACH act. If teachers were not allowed access to copyrighted materials, we probably wouldn't get much sleep. But online educators must take extra precautions to seek out OER and CC-protected resources, first, so they avoid Fair Use and copyright issues. The digital community has the ability to multiply the use of images exponentially, so educators must take care in following these laws. Teaching students these issues the first week of school, and abiding by them, ourselves, is an effective way to model good behavior.

How Does an Understanding of Fair Use Affect One's Role As an Online Instructor?

Educators, especially those online, always must be aware of the material they gather and use for instruction. In my face-to-face school, we were always reminded to follow copyright laws. In the classroom, however, there is less of a violation than online, where one share leads to another share, leads to another share, etc. North Carolina State University has compiled a succinct checklist for educators regarding the resources protected for use by educators and nonprofit organizations under the TEACH Act, including:

The resources are used only for our students

Only our students will have access to them

The materials directly apply to a lesson

No unnecessary copies will be made

The resources used are the specific type and amount authorized by these laws for: 1) entire performances of nondramatic literary and musical works; 2) reasonable and limited parts of a dramatic literary, musical, or audiovisual work; 3) displays of texts similar to their use in the face-to-face classroom

How Do Fair Use and the TEACH Act Correlate to the Delivery of Reliable Content?

Online learning companies and nonprofit, accredited, educational institutions, and government agencies must decide if they want to exercise their new exemption rights under TEACH, based on the technological capabilities of their network. These institutions must have policies in place regarding copyrighted materials, and must provide updated information to faculty, students, and staff regarding these laws. Additionally, the LMS must not interfere with the technological controls within the materials used.

Teach does not allow for / extend to:

Conversion of materials from analog to digital formats, unless that transmission is authorized, and when a digital form is unavailable

Textbooks / digital content on license from the author, publisher, etc.

Delivery of commercial documents

ILLs (Interlibrary loans), coursepacks, or electronic reserves

Following is an image which I found online, which took me to GaVL's blog site, which was taken from Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which is the cover of a comic book they produced to help teach Copyright and Fair Use laws in an entertaining way--the "which" clauses are all sort of symbolic of the chain of Fair Use going on here. This comic book is an engaging explanation of the different forms of media protected under Fair Use and Copyright Laws. This would be an excellent pedagogical tool to share with students to better help them understand these rights:
https://kineticed.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/gavl-fair-use-teach/

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Create 3.1.1--Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons

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Create 3.1.1--Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons

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As internet users and creatives of engaging online educational resources, it is important to consider the original of the images we use. A nonprofit organization, Creative Commons, was formed to assist internet users in always having access to an abundance of material from "the commons," the "body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing" (wiki.creativecommons.org).

Following are the key terms used by Creative Commons with which educators must be familiar as we peruse the internet in our quest to create engaging, interactive online instruction:

For this blog entry, I'm calling the creator of any internet resources the "author."

OERs, or Open Ended Resources:

There is a "three-layer" design to Creative Commons' public copyright licenses: Legal Code, Human Readable, and Machine Readable":

Legal Code:

This is the traditional legal tool in legal jargon, their typical language and text format.

THE THREE LAYERS OF LICENSES:

Human Readable, a.k.a. Commons Deed:

This is not a license: this user-friendly format of the Legal Code is in layman's terms, not legalese, so that most people using internet resources, such as creators, educators, and scientists, may use this as a reference tool, and will better understand important terms and conditions. This would be a sort of "Creative Commons for Dummies."

Machine Readable:

This is a summary of the freedoms and limitations of the author's work, which is converted to a format readable by software systems, search engines, and other technology. This language was dubbed "CC Rights Expression Language," or (CC REL), by the CC. A few sites that cater to CC REL to minimize copyright infringement by students and educators are: Google for Creative Commons content, Flickr for pictures, Jamendo for albums, and spinxpress for general media. Wikimedia Commons also filters through the CC REL language.

THE CC LICENSES:

Attribution (CC BY):
These resources are available for use to anyone to distribute, remix, tweak, and build-upon, even commercially, as long as the original author is credited. This is the most hassle-free of all licensing offered.
Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND):

Resources under this licensing allow for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long it is shared in its original state, giving credit to the author

Atrribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike (CC BY-NC-SA):

This license allows others to remix, tweak, and add to an author's original work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited, and new creations are licensed under the original terms.

Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA):

"Share and share, alike":Others are allowed to remix, tweak, and add on to the author's original work, even for commercial purposes, as long as the original author is credited, and new creations are licensed under their original terms. Similar to "copyleft" free / open-source software licenses. This is the license Wikipedia uses.

Attribution-Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC):

These resources are available for remixing, tweaking, and building-upon the author's work non-commercially. New works must acknowledge the original author, but they don't have to license their new creations using the same licensing terms.

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works (CC BY-NC-ND):

This license allows the least freedom for users: these resources may be downloaded and shared as long as the original author's credit remains, but they may not be changed in any way, and may not be used commercially.

Following is an online poster made by Creative Commons, which identifies key issues and statistics regarding using other's online works. Some of the statistics make it easy to see why were at times feel limitless in creative online pedagogical possibilities: for example, 227,230,423 CC photos are available for use online without limitations--hundreds of millions of images:

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Create 2.1.3--Using Web 2.0 Tools to Differentiate Student Assessment

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Create 2.1.3--Using Web 2.0 Tools to Differentiate Student Assessment

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Web 2.0 tools are an important part of differentiating student assessments. For this quest, we have been asked to identify one Web2.0 Tool which best exemplifies an alignment with differentiation in student assessment in that it is a highly creative, thoroughly engaging tool for alternative assessment in the online classroom. I really enjoyed trying out Storybird, GoAnimate, PowToon, Pixton, and Piktochart, but, for me, one stood out above the rest.And the winner is...

Kahoot!

This tool is probably the best thing I've seen to come along for educators and students, ever. It is fun, interactive, engaging, and an entire lecture hall of students may use this tool simultaneously for the same game. Using any mobile device, students use these simple directions to join in the fun:

log in to kahoot.it

Enter the pin displayed on the screen at the front of the room / computer

Enter a nickname, which will then appear on the screen

Use your device to answer each question by clicking on the shape / color which corresponds to the correct answer

The aim is to get as many points as possible and get to the top of the leaderboard

The quiz master then downloads the quiz results; the class is able to view the score each person received in the room, the answers the gave, and how quickly

Susan Lahey, in the March 24, 2015 article of Silicon Hills e-newsletter, interviewed Stephanie Castle, a science teacher at the United Nations International School, on the merits of using this virtual game as an instructional tool: Castle "said she's an early adopter [of this tool] and had tried a number of different tools to create engagement; but 'Kahoot! pretty much wiped them all away.'" Lahey also notes that the founders and creators of this Norwegian-based company "researched and incorporated a lot of elements of human behavior science in developing Kahoot!: Social behavior, emotional engagement, neurochemical reward systems and reinforcing learning."

Following is a link to this this article:

http://www.siliconhillsnews.com/2015/03/24/oslos-kahoot-becomes-first-capital-factory-international-company/

When I taught in the face-to-face classroom, we were fortunate enough to have Promethean Boards in our rooms. A few years later, we began adding instructional tools to use with the PBs, such as "eggs." They were to the Promethean Board what mobile devices are to Kahoot!, now. Kids loved the "eggs," and we used them for quizzes after, for example, Act I of The Crucible, to check for characterization, basic plot, setting, literary devices, and other basic knowledge they should have retained after its completion. It worked well, and students were engaged, more so than a regular paper quiz. It also displayed students' answers and quiz results. But Kahoot! blows that out of the water. It is even more interactive and engaging, and allows for hundreds of users simultaneously, versus 32 max. The implications for this tool are staggering--teachers can have special interactive, live video-share courses with students from another country on the other side of the world, and compete against each other during their video chat.

In addition to educators using Kahoot! to quiz students, students may also use this site to create virtual projects for assessment. I can only imagine the entertaining quizzes and tests they would create with their knowledge of the internet and its tools.

This this link will take you to a real-life example of Kahoot! in action:

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A year 9 class at Ratton School in Eastbourne are playing Kahoot! The camera focuses on one of the players in the game answering a question (displayed on the screen at the front of the class) on his iPad.

He waits anxiously for his fellow classmates to all answer (or the timer to count down to zero) to see if he was correct. When he finds out he is, there is sheer joy in his face and body language. That is until he realizes that he still isn't in the top 5 scorers in the room and therefore his name isn't displayed on the scoreboard at the front of the class.

He's now motivated even further for the next question!

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A year 9 class at Ratton School in Eastbourne are playing Kahoot! The camera focuses on one of the players in the game answering a question (displayed on the screen at the front of the class) on his iPad.

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Create 2.1.2--Using Web 2.0 Tools to Differentiate Teacher Instruction

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Create 2.1.2--Using Web 2.0 Tools to Differentiate Teacher Instruction

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For this quest, I chose several Web 2.0 tools, mostly because there are so many choices, and they all have something different to offer for students of all learning styles. It was a lot of fun exploring the new tools, figuring out how they work, and completing the final instructional tool. I chose Smore to create a newsletter, and GoAnimate and ABCYa to create differentiated instructional tools.

Smore:

I chose to create a Smore Web. 2.0 Differentiated Teacher Instruction newsletter for this quest, because it is user-friendly, has engaging visuals, and lends itself to the uploading of a multitude of web tool creators using videos, images, URLs, etc. The newsletter contains my GoAnimate video short, which is a reminder of an upcoming due date, and all of the differentiated / virtual projects we use to study The Crucible throughout the year. I also used a Wordle-like program on ABCYa to create a picture with some literary devices and key words from The Crucible, to keep students thinking about these concepts.

GoAnimate:

I chose GoAnimate site instead of Voki, because it seemed a little more updated, was more user-friendly, and Voki seemed very much like talking Larry. I also like the choice of visuals. I chose to use The Crucible / Puritanism unit for the lessons on the flyer. There are so many great interactive web sites, videos / biographies, and WebQuests for differentiated instruction regarding The Crucible and the Salem Witch Trials, and students of every learning style enjoy using these tools. Some of them have been around for at least ten years, and still look impressive. I created a quick reminder video short regarding an upcoming Crucible final project due date. I just signed-up for a 14-day free trial, so the video won't last forever.

My newsletter, below, includes the GoAnimate video short--just click the red button saying "Click Me! Upcoming Project Due Date," and the GoAnimate website appears with the video:

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A Postmodern, Allegorical Play--Read during the Puritanism Literary Period?

Why? The Puritanism Literary Period is, frankly, a bit dry: amusing, at times, but definitely dry. So, where does this leave us? We will study a Postmodern play written in 1952, but set during our Puritanism Unit in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. Just to spice things up a bit. And you get to act. Right. Always good.

National Geographic's "Salem: Witchcraft Hysteria" Interactive WebQuest

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Why? The Puritanism Literary Period is, frankly, a bit dry: amusing, at times, but definitely dry. So, where does this leave us? We will study a Postmodern play written in 1952, but set during our Puritanism Unit in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. Just to spice things up a bit.

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Presentation Web Tools:

The following tools are a great way for teachers to present project assignments and rubrics that evaluate them to students, explain concepts to students, to evaluate any student work in discussion boards, etc. Well-designed web tools are fun and engaging for all stakeholders.

Prezi:

Press became popular because it was the first atypical slideshow format for online presentations. It's still entertaining, and allows users to embed URLs and video clips. Great for teachers as a presentation tool, and for students as a project tool.Presenters may skip to any part of the presentation easily. Prezi is free to users, barring any upgrades.

PowToon:

Voted the best free animated presentation software by tech blogger Jordan Pepper in 2013. This software allows users to easily create animated stories for presentations, or "explainer videos." Works great with voice-overs, and allows for integrated scripts with entertaining animated characters. Looking forward to using this site with students. This site is free as well.

Storyboard Web Tools:

Storybird:

I found this web tool during the Navigate quests, and I can't wait to use it for projects with my students. And my kids. It is adorable. It is an excellent tool to create engaging literature projects. Educators may also use it to create a quick positive feedback "story note." It even has teaching tools, such as a page describing the difference between criticism and critique, which is helpful for students if critiquing each other's work via discussion boards. The available art pages on this site are visually stunning. This site is free to users.

ToonDoo

This site will be fun for students to use to create literary projects, and educators can use this site to make positive feedback notes for students. This site is free to users.

Discussion Board Web Tools:

Padlet:

One of my friends recommended Padlet to me to use for my TOOL blogs. It was very easy to learn, has beautiful graphics, has a visually-appealing layout. Would be great for student discussion boards and projects, as well. This site is free to users.

Edublogs:

I really liked this site as well for educators and teachers, but I thought that Padlet had a bit more to offer as far as visuals and layout. Great for discussion boards and student projects, and free, barring any upgrades.

Following is a Web 2.0 image I found online that provides an organized explanation of how web tools are used, according to their function--bad chemistry pun, aside:

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Where Style and Substance Meet:

There are times when appearances do matter, especially in the virtual classroom. We don't "see" our students every day, so we need to incorporate instructional sites that are visually appealing and engaging, but also user-friendly and content-rich. When instructional sites are fun for educators to use, they are fun for students as well. Sites that incorporate forms of gaming, WebQuests, virtual field trips, and some for of interactive learning, have always had the greatest appeal to students, and have always seem to accomplish the goal of a deeper understanding of the text.

The key to designing an effective site is that you don't have to sacrifice style to make it educational. In CANnect's "Content Layout and Styling" article, they stress that content creators "separate structure of the content from presentation," so that content is not sacrificed in the name of style, and user-friendliness is maintained: the text is the most important aspect in the layout of a site; color contrast must be distinguishable for colorblind students, and to limit confusion; keep the appearance of content uniform, not distracting; and use white space to separate blocks of text.

In an online course, students identify engaging websites by the appearance / presentation of the content, but it also should remain accessible and comprehensible to all students.

Following are a few site that meet these standards, and a few that could use some tweaking in order to avoid the "Moonwalking Bear" syndrome (articulate.com)--unfortunately, looking back at the sites I most relied upon, the most content-rich sites were also the most visually unappealing:

5 Visually-Appealing, Content-Rich Instructional Sites--No Moonwalking Bears:

1. Blackboard:

Blackboard recently partnered with CK-12, below, but this is my favorite site. They have recently updated their plagiarism prevention tool, are continually updating the site's tools, and added an article to their blog, "Why Investment in Design Is the Only Way to 'Win' in Education." They understand.

2. CK-12:

CK-12 recently partnered with Blackboard, so this is sort of a cheat, but this site has all the right features for a producing online learning environment. A content-rich, visually clean and simplistic site. Dashboard makes it easy for user to find a specific course.

3. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.com

This site is clean, crisp, and easy to navigate. An unlimited supply of overviews of literary periods, reviews, connections and quizzes, authors, topic clusters, and timelines. Incredibly useful in teaching high school literature. This site makes me feel like I'm in an old library. In a good way.
4. TEDEd.com

Fairly nice layout, but contains a nice library of visually-appealing videos that teach literature, writing, linguistics, and speaking.

5. Discovery Education

This site has improved in the past four years. They have great video resources for literature and history which are nice supplements to our class texts. The video biographies and backgrounds of Poe, Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, The Salem Witch Trials, Walden, and Huck Finn have always been a hit with students. This site also provides video instruction for grammar, reading, and writing skills.

5 Content-Rich Sites That Need Some Help:

1. WebQuest.org

This site offers thousands of WebQuests for all K-12 subjects. While this site is not the visually appealing in any way, it does offer the format for each quest, rubrics, and teacher notes. It would be great if any online educational company improved upon this site, or the concept of it.

2. Web English Teacher

This site is an unbelievable library of resources for teachers, but has no visual appeal whatsoever.

3. Purdue OWL

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab has been a resource I have used for almost 20 years. It has a plethora of grammar, reading, and writing tips for students, along with a complete MLA Style Guide. But it's layout is just sad.

4. Character.org

This site is an excellent resources for teachers, but the site is visually dry. It's not horrible, it's just not engaging. But they have a rock-star lesson plan for To Kill a Mockingbird.

5. GameAquarium.com

This site has the right idea, but uses dated graphics. Some fun games for students to help them learn literary and poetic devices, and figurative language.

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For the first five year of teaching, we were never asked to create a content map. At the beginning of the fifth year, however, all teachers in our school were asked to collaborate within our departments during Professional Learning days to create content maps for our courses. This seemed a difficult task at first, but we soon realized it was merely a chart of the best of everything we had taught, in the order we had been teaching it, by Quarter. Once completed, it was something we reworked each year during Professional Learning days. It was a great opportunity for collaboration and sharing best practices, and helped us all to become better educators, and, the ultimate goal, to make learning more interesting, engaging, and meaningful for our students.

Following is the Content Map from our Quarter 2 American Romanticism / Dark Romanticism / Transcendentalism / Realism Unit, which always fell at the beginning of Quarter 2, and a bit of which spilled into Q3:

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Time management is an integral part of successful online instruction.

Following are five online time management tools, some I have used, some I have just learned about in this quest, to help educators to organize, prioritize, ensure efficiency, and omit stress for online educators. We were asked to identify whether each relates to personal or professional use, or both, and, interestingly, they all in some way relate to both, as our professional and personal lives are inextricably linked:

1. Computer / Family Calendar:

Every member of our family has some form of digital technology, whether it be a smart phone or a tablet. Since we all syncs our phones and tablets with this computer, we all share the scheduled appointments on the family calendar. Every family member has their appointments on this calendar, so that we can all plan for each other without conflict. This is also a great way for our children to learn to plan ahead and prioritize. This tool also has a feature which allows users to set two alerts, plus an additional travel time alert if needed. It will allow users to send an appointment to friends and family via their e-mail address, so they may also add it to their digital devices / home computers.

2. One Note / Microsoft 2010:

I have not yet used this feature, but its ability to organize virtual folders and file notes seems like it would be of great value to educators and other professionals who compile a lot of research. Could be of personal value as well if researching genealogy, etc.

3. Symbaloo:

I was first introduced to this social bookmarking site in the Navigate skill, and I can't see myself being a teacher in the future without it. This site creates digital tiles to file useful teaching websites, which may also be color-coded to hyper-organize your files. It's a great time-management tool for teachers, because it cuts the time of having to access paper resources, and, as an added bonus, helps to omit paper / binder clutter. This may be also used for personal organization of files as well, such as creating a web mix of healthy eating websites, etc.

4. Toggl:

This is an interesting tool to assist users in tracking their total time on a project or task. It even allows you to best your score to improve personal efficiency in the completion of tasks. It digitally saves projects as well, and is accessible from all devices. For personal and professional use.

5. Evernote:

This app syncs to to all devices, so it's accessible anywhere. It categorizes your To Do list for you--any information from every aspect of your life is organized, and even has an index.

I am also interested in further exploring Paprika or RememberTheMilk to organize grocery lists and menus, and Wunderlist, which seems similar to Evernote, to organize all important upcoming events and due dates, both personal and professional. Lightroom is also an excellent digital tool for the digital organization of historical information.