Title: Curriculum Tools & Resources
Course: Web Tools for Courses

Need content for your course? Games? Embedding more resources to current lessons? This is the place for you.

Course Content

MERLOT-Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching. Search for a wide range of content or post your own.
MoodleShare- Find content for the Moodle environment that users are willing to share and discuss. MoodleShare will post content on their site for you if you are unable to open your course from your school's site. MoodleShare on Facebook & Twitter.
iTunes U- "a powerful distribution system for everything from lectures to language lessons, films to labs, audiobooks to tours — is an innovative way to get educational content into the hands of students."
National Repository of Online Classes-"Free" resources for your students to access. Students can access the content, but only members can organize/customize. HippoCampus through the MNLC- Again, free to access and use, but this content can be linked to, but not embedded in your class.
TED- Ideas worth spreading. Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.
Discovery Education- Free lesson plans. Click here for an example of what one of these lesson plans can look like in Moodle.
Study Stack- Make your own flashcards.
Radio Diaries- People documenting their lives on NPR. Radio Diaries works with people to document their own lives for public radio: teenagers, seniors, prison inmates and others whose voices are rarely heard.
Webquest.org- Webquests; templates and webquest information
Free Online Courses: Carnegie Mellon; MIT; Yale. No strings attached- Licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows users to use/change/share with proper attribution

Lesson Planning Tools

Common Craft- Explanations in Plain English. Chances are you've seen at least one of these videos, but they are available for many topics and can be a great introduction into topics for your classes. There are many copycat videos out there as well.
Internet Archive- It's possible that as you provide links to content online that those links can break for various reasons (content is no longer hosted; change in web address with no referring link; has been replaced with other content; etc). There is a very good chance that you can still see it by entering the old web address into the Wayback Machine. Even when pages are removed there are multiple organizations crawling the web saving content. It's a great resource and a great warning: almost nothing you post online ever really goes away.

You can also use the Internet Archive to download audio/videos/text that is all in the public domain.
Lingro- Allows students to paste a URL that makes the text of that page clickable so they can see word definitions.
The Differentiator- provides an interactive method of planning lessons using Bloom's Taxonomy.
Jeopardy Labs-allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. You can browse other Jeopardy projects if you don't have time to make your own.
Smarthistory - a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the static Western art history textbook.
Creative Commons- Learn about the Creative Commons, and create licenses to share your content with others.
Accredited Online Colleges has a blog which provides numerous links that can help educators/students navigate online resources.
MnKnows- (for residents of MN only; Get your library barcode number ready. Requires library card number at some locations.)
MnLINK-get library materials.
Electronic Library of MN (ELM)- Search ELM for magazine, newspaper, and journal articles, eBooks, and information from reference sources—available to Minnesota residents at no charge!
Minnesota Reflections- Search images related to MN history.
AskMN- Get real-time answers from a librarian.
Research Project Calculator - Helps users plan out research projects step by step (includes handouts).

Videos/Interactive/Animated Content

Library of Congress Classroom Materials- Uses primary source materials.
Brightstorm- This is a link to the Math tutorials.
Khan Academy- No other description than there is a lot of stuff here for Science, Math and Economics. All licensed under the Creative Commons. This is an incredible resource! Khan Academy videos are now tied to activities. You'll need a Google or Facebook account to sign in.
Avalon Project- Documents in Law, History & Diplomacy. (Maintained by Yale Law School).
Museum of Online Museums- It sounds silly, but through the MoOM you can link to multiple online museums across the internets.
The Map as History- Animated maps for a better understanding of History.
Fancify your text in Moodle! You can use these resources to create text graphics and appealing labels to your units.
GraphicsFactory; FlamingText

Here's one tool that just keeps getting better and better. Your students will definitely want to know how to use this (so will you).

(Click above to see examples and try it for yourself.)

Intro to WolframAlpha
WolframAlpha is not a search engine. It is a computational knowledge engine. It takes data and organizes it by the searcher's specifications. It will give you information on specific dates; cities; it will even solve complex Mathematical problems for you (and show its work!). It does even more than that. Look up information about Physics, Chemistry, Weather, Health & Medicine, Food & Nutrition, Words & Linguistics, and the list goes on. This will be one of the most valuable tools in your toolbox.

GAMES!

Math

- XP Math- Math games
- Hot Math- 4 simple Math games to practice skills with graphing and factoring.
- Cut the Knot- Dozens of games for multiple areas of Mathematics & Logic
- Math & Puzzle Games

Social Studies

- Cyber Nations- Cyber Nation is a free online nation simulation game. Interact with other players while you build and defend your empire.
- Place Spotting- Map game where students have to find a specific location based on clues (users may create their own).
- Umapper- Answer question by clicking on the map (users may create their own).
- Statetris-Mixes Tetris with Geography.
- Historical Scene Investigation- Investigate historical events through primary source content.
- 3rd World Farmer- 3rd World Farmer lets players manage a small virtual farm in a developing country, and thus experience the hardships and dilemmas faced by the poor.
- Ayiti- Can you help the Guinard family to make ends meet and get ahead in their poverty-stricken homeland, Haiti?
- Oiligarchy- Now you can be the protagonist of the petroleum era: explore and drill around the world, corrupt politicians, stop alternative energies and increase the oil addiction. Be sure to have fun before the resources begin to deplete.
- Map Countries & Cities-
- Against All Odds-In “Against All Odds”, students follow a young person’s flight from oppression in his or her home country to exile in an asylum country.
- Our Courts-Games, lesson plans and more. Our Courts is a web-based education project designed to teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy. Our Courts is the vision of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is concerned that students are not getting the information and tools they need for civic participation, and that civics teachers need better materials and support.
- Open Congress- A non-profit; non-partisan public resource on senators, representatives, bills, money trails, etc.

Simulations
- Crisis at Ft. Sumter
- Flight to Freedom
- Revolutionary War
- C-Evo- Similar to Civilization II (runs on Windows)
- FreeCiv- Similar to Civilization (cross-platform)
- FreeCol- Similar to Colonization (runs on Windows & Linux)
- LinCity/LinCity-NG- Similar to Sim City (cross-platform)

Science

- Royal Society of Chemistry Games-
- Immune Attack-teaches immunology in a fun and engaging way that is different from the traditional classroom setting, making use of the “challenge and reward” paradigm found in most video games.
- SimScience-SimScience is a product of the NSF project Integration of Information Age Networking and Parallel Supercomputer Simulations into University General Science and K-12 Curricula.

Keyboarding

- PowerTyping- Simple keyboarding games

Miscellaneous

- PowerPoint Templates- Review Games created with PowerPoint
- The Problem Site- Games, puzzles, and problems
- Sharendipity- Make your own games!
- Free Rice- Choose a from a number of subject areas (not much of a game, but good for skills practice).

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