Tag Archives: standards

AASL Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning

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This is a little late seeing as the list was released months ago, but here are the Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning per the American Association of School Librarians.  Please be sure to visit the direct link to view how each resource supports the AASL Standards for 21st Century Learning as well as ideas on how to incorporate them into your curriculum.  For my teachers convenience, I’ve indicated which sites are open or blocked by our district.

Animoto (open) – turn your photos into music videos.

Classroom 2.0Classroom 2.0 (blocked) – “… the social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education.”

Curriki (open) – a collaborative lesson plan sharing community.

Diigo (blocked) – access, organize, and share your bookmarks without being tied to a specific computer!  Mine can be found under hloy22, but I haven’t make the conversion to Diigo – I still use Delicious (blocked), also as hloy22.

Edublogs (open) – free blogging platform for teachers and students – and the one I’m using now!

Facebook (blocked) – do I really need to try and explain what Facebook is to you guys?  A popular social networking site to communicate and connect with your friends and family.

Good Reads (open) – a social network for bibliophiles.

Google Reader (blocked) – tired of visiting your favorite websites only to see they haven’t been updated in a while?  Why not use Google Reader to visit those sites for you and gather the data in one place.

MindMeisterMindmeister for middle/high school students or Bubble.us for elementary students (both open) – online mind mapping tools.

Ning (blocked) – you can create your own online social networking site and/or join others already created.  For example, Classroom 2.0 is a Ning.

Our Story (blocked) – “Save stories, photos, and videos on a collaborative timeline.”

Partnership for 21st Century Skills (open) – “The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a national organization that advocates for the integration of skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and communication into the teaching of core academic subjects such as mathematics, reading, science and history.”

Polleverywhere (open) – online survey maker.

Primary Access (open) – “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.”

RezED (blocked) – “… the online hub for practitioners using virtual worlds, offering access to the highest quality resources and research in the field to establish a strong network of those using virtual worlds for learning.”

Second LifeSecond Life (blocked) – an extremely popular online virtual world.

Simply Box (blocked) – not familiar with this one, but apparently you “capture” websites or portions of websites and organize them visually.  You can share them with others, too!

Skype (blocked) – “Can you hear me? Skype is a basic and easy-to-use service that offers free voice, video calls, conference calls, instant messaging and group instant messaging. Download the software; connect to the Internet and you’re good to go.”  My Skype username is also hloy22.

SOS for Information Literacy (open) – “… a dynamic web-based multimedia resource that includes lesson plans, handouts, presentations, videos and other resources to enhance the teaching of information literacy.”

Teacher Tube (open) – school appropriate YouTube alternative with educational videos.

TwitterTwitter (blocked) – a social networking site where you communicate with your friends and family in 140 characters or less.  Allows for quick updates and/or sharing of ideas/resources.  My Twitter id is @heatherloy.

VoiceThread (open) – think, interactive PowerPoint.

Wikispaces (blocked) – collaborative sharing space/community.

Wordle (open) – create word clouds from text and see what words/phrases are used more frequently.  You can also create custom word clouds.

Zoho (open) – “Zoho offers an all-in-one online collaborative package; it provides online tools from mail and presentations to notebooks and wikis, with many tools in between.”

Disclaimer – the sites I’ve indicated as “open” in my district only apply to the first page of the site.  Any site that requires a login has the potential of being blocked when you dig deeper into the site (ex: Zoho individual resources are probably going to be blocked.)

Free the Standards

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The AASL (American Association of School Librarians) has come out with NEW standards for school librarians – Standards for the 21st-Century Learner – that we are supposed to be using to educate our students.  If you go to the standards website you can download copies of these standards.  However, before you do so, I recommend you follow the link “Rights and permission on the use of the learning standards.”  When you do, the first paragraph states that you can use the standards for your own personal or educational use; however, if you read down further you find that in order to use these standards you have to request permission and possibly PURCHASE the rights to use them.  WHAT!

In addition,

  • we cannot LINK to the documents without obtaining permission, which is why I didn’t link to it above.  If you want to read them, Google AASL and “Standards for the 21st-Century Learner” yourself as I don’t want to be in violation of the copyright.
  • we cannot list standards on curriculum maps, lesson plans, or other educational documentation unless we obtain permission – which may have a price tag.
  • we cannot train other educators using these standards in training handouts, PowerPoint/SlideShare or other mediums without obtaining permission – which may have a price tag.

Now, I’m not always the brightest bulb in the pack, but what is the point of having taken the time to compile a set of standards and then restrict their implementation by making us have to request permission EVERY TIME WE NEED TO USE THEM!  Bureaucracy in action folks!

Come on AASL.  Get with the program.  Free the Standards by making them available under a Creative Commons license.

To read more about the issue, check out Joyce Valenza’s NeverEndingSearch blog posts “#FreeTheStandards” and “#FreeTheStandards — David’s Take” as they are more eloquent stated than my own ranting.