I know it’s been a while and I’ve got a bunch of links clogging my bookmarks to share with you guys.  Here are some for today:

Scholastic.com: Top 20 Teacher Blogs - I subscribed to a couple of these already and will give the others a try.  I’m passing it along because on of my good friends is highlighted on the lists: #14 Best for Media Specialists – TechnoTuesday. Way to go Cathy!

Center for History and New Media – “Providing free access to primary sources, building high-quality online teaching modules, and offering instruction on critical thinking skills.”

PrimaryAccess – “PrimaryAccess is a suite of free online tools that allows students and teachers to use primary source documents to complete meaningful and compelling learning activities with digital movies, storyboards, rebus stories and other online tools.”

Smithsonian American Art Museum – Classroom Activities – “These American Art Museum online features contain interactive or media-rich assets that can easily be used by educators in the classroom. Students can learn by viewing media or taking part in various online activities.”

Lastly, here are a couple of online graphic organizers:

• Lovely Charts - online diagramming program to create flowcharts, site maps, organizational charts, etc.
• Bubbl.us – great for mindmapping/brainstorming

Websites and news I’ve found interesting this week:

Flash Earth – Similar to Google Earth (in fact, uses some Google Earth images!) but nothing to download.

Yahoo News: 5th-grader finds mistake at Smithsonian

Timelines.tv – “Timelines.tv is a new and exciting on-line history resource provided free for the user. It offers a wealth of quality TV documentary, arranged on interactive historical timelines that put you in control of your journey through the past.” Currently the program begins with the Norman Invasion (1066) and ends with “The Death of Industry” (1984) in concise bits of history and commentary. For me, not only was the informational content interesting, but seeing the places where these events took place was a bonus.

SuperCook: The Intelligent Recipe Search Engine – enter the ingredients you have in your kitchen and SuperCook will find recipes for you to cook! Of course, since I don’t cook, not that I CAN’T mind you, just that I wont, this site isn’t that useful to me, but found it an interesting concept.

ABC News: When Teachers Become Like a Family – article and video on the growing U.S. dropout rate. You can also see the America’s Promise Alliance’s full report here. Click on the link under “Report: Cities in Crisis” to download/view the findings. The EPE Research Center has a Graduation Rates Map that shows rates for states, counties, and even individual schools.