Web Sitings: 70 Top Web Sites
Here are lively, lesson-planning
links packed with tips, activities, great reproducibles
and much, much more!
By Emily Beck
LANGUAGE ARTS
Dave's ESL Café
www.pacificnet.net/~sperling/eslcafe.html
Professor Dave Sperling claims his collection of ESL links
is the best around, and we agree! This comprehensive site
also includes a chat room, discussion boards, mailings
lists, links, and more.
Carol Hurst's Children's
Literature Newsletter
www.carolhurst.com/index.html
Master Teacher Carol Hurst and Webmaster Rebecca Otis
have done a masterful job of creating this amazing children's
literature Web site. Search for children's literature
by subject, theme, curriculum, series, and more.
Online Writing Lab
http://owl.english.purdue.edu
The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL), receives
a staggering 1,000,000 hits a week with good reason. Most
of the excellent resources, including handouts, tutorials,
workshops, and links, are free for all.
SOCIAL STUDIES
The History Place
www.historyplace.com/index.html
The History Place is a must-bookmark site for all history
and social studies teachers. There are a variety of featured
exhibits on topics ranging from Abraham Lincoln to the
Irish Potato Famine.
Biographical Dictionary
www.s9.com/biography
This massive biographical dictionary contains entries
for more than 27,000 people and is searchable by name,
birth or death year, position or profession, literary
or artistic works, miscellaneous achievements, or other
keywords. Entries are clear, concise, and well written.
History/Social Studies
Web Resources
my.execpc.com/~dboals/boals.html
This exhaustive site contains thousands of links in 32
categories for K–12 history teachers. One distinction
between this site and others with similar missions is
the range and variety of materials available. In addition
to lesson plans and curricula, there are links to topical
lecture notes, magazines, radio programs, and more.
American Cultural History:
The 20th Century
http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decades.html
This site is both educational and extremely entertaining.
For each decade, there is information about art, books,
fashion, historical events, music, theater, and more,
along with a fascinating assortment of basic facts.
GEOGRAPHY
The Greatest Places Online
www.smm.org/greatestplaces
The Greatest Places Online is the companion Web site to
the OmniMax film of the same name. For this breathtaking
movie the crew visited the Amazon, Greenland, Iguazu,
Madagascar, Namib, Okavango, and Tibet. Each locale has
its own page containing photos, maps, trivia, recipes,
audio and video clips of local wildlife, quotes from scientists,
and more.
Terraquest
www.terraquest.com
Terraquest was nominated in 1999 for a Webby Award in
the Best Travel Site on the Web category. After participating
in one of their virtual online exhibits you'll understand
why. Experience Terraquest's award-winning travelogues
as you visit Antarctica, the Galapagos, or a history-making
climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
National Geographic
www.nationalgeographic.com
The National Geographic site contains outstanding and
constantly-changing interactive exhibits. Each section
of the site includes educational components such as lesson
plans and teacher resources. For kids, there's also the
World magazine site and award-winning interactive Xpedition
Hall.
SCIENCE
Particle Adventure
www.particleadventure.org
The Particle Adventure is a super-cool award-winning site
which allows even the most scientifically challenged to
explore the world of particle physics through interactive
tours of quarks, neutrinos, antimatter, and other intriguing
particles.
Robert Krampf's Experiment
of the Week
www.krampf.com/news.html
Scientist Robert Krampf has spent his career sharing his
love of science with young people, crisscrossing the country
with his traveling show. Join 80,000 subscribers worldwide
and experience Mr. Krampf's safe, dramatic, cheap, and
fun experiments.
Enature
www.enature.com
What's the difference between the Yellow Mud Turtle and
its cousin the Common Mud Turtle? Find the answer at Enature,
your online guide to more than 4,800 North American plants
and animals.
Windows to the Universe
www.windows.ucar.edu
Sponsored by NASA and operated by the University Corporation
for Atmospheric Research, this site covers absolutely
everything you could possibly want to know about the earth
and space sciences.
Bridge
www.vims.edu/bridge
This truly amazing Web site has collected the best online
resources for marine science. Materials are organized
into the following categories: ocean science topics, resources,
data port, elementary grades, and communications. Each
section has tons of information.
How Stuff Works
www.howstuffworks.com
How Stuff Works was justifiably honored with a People's
Choice "Coolest Site of the Year Award" in 1998. In language
we can all understand, with clear diagrams to supplement
the text, this Web site explains both natural phenomena
and human inventions.
MATH
Measure 4 Measure
www.wolinskyweb.com/measure.htm
This diligently-maintained site boasts several hundred
measuring tools in the categories of science and math,
health, finance, and the all-encompassing "everything
else."
Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
www.enc.org
Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and
Science (ENC) staff search the Internet daily for unique
educational Web sites and each month feature 12 of the
best.
Math.com
www.math.com
This great site is easy to navigate, with a wealth of
math-related materials and resources. Kids can access
a range of mathematical tools; take advantage of the excellent
test prep, study tips, or homework help; or hone their
math skills with challenging puzzles, games, and one-minute
interactive drills.
LIBRARIES
ALA
www.ala.org
The American Library Association site is easy to navigate
and chock-full of wonderful links and information, including
the ALA's top 700 picks of the best Web sites for kids.
Organized by topic, the site includes a list of Spanish
language Web pages as well as sections with super recommendations
and references.
The Amazing Picture Machine
www.ncrtec.org/picture.htm
While there are many search engines designed to make surfing
safe for children, very few are able to filter out all
inappropriate images. That's why NCREL (the North Central
Region Education Library) created this massive collection
of kid-safe images on topics from aircraft to architecture
to animals.
MUSEUMS
Museum Computer Network
http://www.mcn.edu/resources/sitesonline.htm
This Museum Guide, prepared by the Natural History Museum
of Los Angeles County, offers thousands of excellent links
for both real and virtual destinations.
Exploratorium
www.exploratorium.edu
One visit to the Exploratorium Web site and you'll understand
why just about every educational list ranks this URL as
one of the best around. Exhibits and activities change
as the exhibits at the museum change. All are engaging,
fun, and challenging for children.
Metropolitan Museum of
Art Online Collections
www.metmuseum.org/collections/index.asp
The Met is an American cultural treasure, but did you
know that a large portion of its collection can be viewed
online? The Web site contains 3,500 images, including
50 highlights from each of the 20+ departments, plus the
entire collection of European paintings.
LESSON PLANS
edHelper.com
www.edhelper.com
This site boasts a collection of 10,728 lesson plans,
1,193 Web Quests, 679 file downloads, 8,641 additional
Web sites, 4,200 free worksheets, plus updated daily educational
news. With such a quantity of materials, you might think
the quality would suffer, but all of the materials we
tested were excellent.
Teachnet.com
www.teachnet.com
The Teachnet.com Web site is full of simple solutions
for the everyday classroom. Instead of simply giving you
lesson plans, this site gives you lesson plan ideas. Additional
features include terrific advice about everything from
decorating bulletin boards to increasing attendance to
great five-minute activities for transitional moments
during the day.
Smile Program Lesson Plans
www.iit.edu/~smile/index.html
The SMILE program, hosted by the Illinois Institute of
Technology, seeks to improve the quality of mathematics
and science instruction in grades K–12. Since 1986,
each participant in the SMILE summer program has created
a lesson plan. With over 800 lessons available in the
fields of biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics,
there's a wealth of valuable materials here.
Columbia Education Center
Lesson Plans
www.col-ed.org/cur
Each summer, the Columbia Education Center (CEC) in Portland,
Oregon hosts teachers from 14 western states for an intense
professional development experience. One byproduct of
the program is this library of outstanding lesson plans
organized by topic and grade level.
VARIOUS
Google.com
www.google.com
Among the favorite Web sites of the year 2000 of both
Time and Newsweek, Google is a fabulous search engine
with technological innovations that ensure the most relevant
results to any query.
FREE
www.ed.gov/free
FREE (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence) provides
links to all educational resources from the federal government.
Materials come from more than 50 agencies, including NASA,
Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Treasury, Defense,
and Labor, and the National Institute of Health.
PBS
www.pbs.org/teachersource/
Did you know that K–12 teachers can tape any PBS
program for use in the classroom, provided they erase
the tape within one year of the original national air
date? PBS encourages use of their programs for educational
purposes, and provides teaching guides and materials to
accompany most of them.
AT&T Learning Network
www.att.com/learningnetwork/index.html
AT&T Learning Network contains enough worthwhile information
to be your single source of Web-related materials for
the entire year. There are numerous listservs, tutorials,
lesson plans, reference materials, management tips, contests,
online projects, and more.
Education World
www.educationworld.com
Education World is a mammoth educational clearinghouse
with descriptions of and links to over 110,000 prescreened
Web pages. Check out their "best of" series.
Gateway to Educational
Materials
www.thegateway.org
The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) is a massive
clearinghouse for educational materials, sponsored by
the National Library of Education, that contains over
1,550 Internet resources from more than 15 different organizations,
including AskERIC and the U.S. Department of Education.
Crayola
www.crayola.com
This jam-packed art site has something for everyone. The
Kids' section has many fun and creative interactive activities.
For teachers there are excellent lesson plans, techniques,
product information, newsgroups, grants, and more.
Discovery Channel School
http://school.discovery.com/schoolhome.html
While some sites provide a little bit of everything, Discovery
Channel School offers a lot of everything. There are feature
articles, lesson plans, multiple discussion groups, mailing
lists, teleconferencing with experts, a software store,
an internal resource search engine, Cyber Surfaris, and
Kathy Shrock's Guide for Educators—quite possibly
the single best Web source of information, links, and
resources for K–12 teachers.
MORE NOTABLE SITES
A&E
http://www.aetv.com/class/
Alfy
www.alfy.com
Alvarado Cyber Explorers
www.nhusd.k12.ca.us/ALVE/ace/acehome.html
Ancient Egypt
www.ancientegypt.co.uk
Art Safari
http://www.moma.org/momalearning/artsafari/index.html
Big Chalk
www.bigchalk.com
Biomes of the World
http://mbgnet.mobot.org
Canada's School Net
www.schoolnet.ca
CanTeach
www.canteach.ca/
The Digital Classroom
http://www.archives.gov/index.html
Eduhound
www.eduhound.com
Elements
www.webelements.com
Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco
www.thinker.org
Fiskars
www.fiskars.com
Gander Academy's Theme-Related
Resources
www.stemnet.nf.ca/CITE/themes.html
Global Online Adventure
http://www.goals.com/Index.htm
Internet Public Library
www.ipl.org/youth
KidsClick!
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/
Library of Congress
www.loc.gov
National Wildlife Federation
www.nwf.org
Neuroscience for Kids
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/introb.html
NYTimes Learning Network
www.nytimes.com/learning/
Scholastic
http://teacher.scholastic.com
School Library Journal
Online
http://slj.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?publication=slj
SchoolPop!
www.schoolpop.com
The Smithsonian Institute
www.si.edu
Tech Museum Online Exhibits
www.thetech.org/exhibits/
ThinkQuest
www.thinkquest.org/library/index.html
Thursday's Classroom
www.thursdaysclassroom.com
USGS Learning Web
www.usgs.gov/education
The World Book Factbook
www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Yale-New Haven Teacher
Institute Units
www.cis.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units
After
teaching sixth grade, Emily Beck spent the last four years
writing about Web-based resources for teachers. The sites
reviewed here first appeared in her columns A+ Web Gallery,
Beyond the Web, and Lesson Plan Goldmines (Classroom
Connect Newsletter, 1998 to 2002). Visit www.classroom.com
for more great resources.
