Web Browsers:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.asp - Internet Explorer
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/downlaod.jsp - Netscape Navigator
http://www.mozilla.org – Mozilla Firefox
Search Engines:
http://www.google.com/ - Google (Try Google Toolbar)
http://www.altavista.com/ – Alta Vista (Try BabelFish translation)
http://www.yahoo.com – Yahoo (Try MyYahoo and MyWeb)
http://www.ask.com – Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves)
http://www.webcrawler.com – Webcrawler
http://www.askforkids.com – Ask for Kids
Web Site Evaluation Tools:
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/pdf/weval.pdf - Kathy Schrock’s The ABC’s of Web Site Evaluation.
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/bluewebn/rubric.html - Blue Web ‘n Site Evaluation Rubric
http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/edu/rubric3.htm - Tammy Payton’s Web Evaluation for Secondary Grades.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/webcrit.html - Five criteria for evaluating Web pages from Cornell University.
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html - Berkeley site. Questions to ask when evaluating web sites.
Citing Sources of Information:
http://www.classroom.com/community/connection/howto/citeresources.jhtml - Developed by Classroom Connect to help cite Internet sources as accessed through Internet browsers. Also includes information specifying how to cite the graphics, sounds, and video clips retrieved.
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/92chap1.html#121 – Copyright Law Online.
Protecting Your Computer:
http://www.mcafee.com/ - Free tools to scan for the presence of viruses.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ - Free download of Ad-Aware Personal. Scans your pc for data miners.
http://www.safer-networking.org/ - Free download of Spybot Search and Destroy, spyware detection software.
http://zonelabs.com – Free download of a firewall.
Teacher Resources:
http://www.teach-nology.com/ - Offers teachers free access to 19,000 lesson plans, 5,600 printable worksheets, over 200,000 reviewed websites, rubrics, educational games, teaching tips, advice from expert teachers, current education news, teacher downloads, web quests, and teacher tools for creating exciting classroom instruction.
http://internet4classrooms.com/ - Good site; information is provided for teachers to help them integrate technology into their classroom curriculum. This information is intended to help teachers utilize computers effectively with all their students and especially to aid them in delivering accessible content to their students with disabilities. Lots of links to other sites; internet activities are based on standard in all 4 core areas. Contains a test on internet use.
http://www.fctd.info/ – The Family Center on Technology and Disabilities offers a resource library, newsletter, links to other resources, professional training, and reviews of disability resources in print or online.
http://www.abledata.com - Searchable database for information on any AT device or adaptive equipment.
http://www.teachers.net/4blocks/ - Four blocks literacy center. Includes a chatboard.
http://www.toread.com/ - Information about scientifically based reading instruction.
htt://www.free.ed.gov - Federal Resources for Education Excellence.
http://www.loc.gov/nls/ - National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Impaired.
http://www.ldresources.org/index.php - Richard Wanderman’s site. An ever changing site, check it frequently. Includes tips, low tech solutions for students with learning disabilities.
http://reading.uoregon.edu/curricula/ - Information on effective, research-based reading programs.
http://www.cast.org – CAST website. Tools and Resources.
http://www.closingthegap.com – Closing the Gap. Forums on various topics. They have an online, searchable version of their Resource Directory for computer-related products for people with special needs. They also have an online archive of articles from the Gap newsletter
http://trace.wisc.edu – Take the link to “computers.” This site provides the accessibility options available in operating systems along with an extensive listing of available Freeware/Shareware for all platforms. Good information on computer access issues.
http://www.cec.sped.org/ - Council for Exceptional Children.
http://ldonline.org – Learning Disabilities virtual community.
http://www2.edc.org/NCIP/ - The National Center to Improve Practice (NCIP), is an organization that promotes the effective use of technology to enhance educational outcomes for students with sensory, cognitive, physical, and social/emotional disabilities.
http://www.schwablearning.org – This website offers a number of useful materials including an AT Guide that is free.
Academic Resources:
http://www.ihmc.us/- If you work with concept-mapping software you might be interested in a free resource from the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC). The concept-mapping software is called Cmap Tools. NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense paid for most of the research to develop the software.
http://www.starfall.com – This site offers over twenty free interactive stories with a variety of tasks for the emergent reader. It is phonics based and required the child to be able to click and drag.
http://www.priorywoods.middlesbrough.sch.uk/ - Good site for online games and downloads of teacher tools.
http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/english/resources/calculators/ – Interactive calculators.
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/mhm/ - Students in grades 1-6 can take math tests online at no charge. They will get a “grade” and an evaluation of their mistakes. This site also includes test-taking tips and a “brain-teaser” section.
http://www.doyourmath.com/all_tests.asp - Students of all ages can test their math abilities at all levels including calculus. Online testing is free and students receive an evaluation of their score.
http://www.4tests.com – High school students and adults preparing for college exams can take practice tests including ACT, SAT, and IT tests for certification.
http://www.kidpad.org – Children’s authoring software is offered as a free download for teachers and parents.
http://janbrett.com- This website offers printable literacy activities and classroom helpers including alphabet, math, seasonal, recipes, and calendars.
http://www.do2learn.com/ - Find information on autism, ADD, LD, & other disabilities, family advocacy resources, and teacher tips. Site map indexes all information and print material. Has downloadable picture activities and premade BoardMaker boards.
http://www.bry-backmanor.org – Picture recipes, 270 primary level activity pages to print, online Mac games and more.
http://www.kidzone.ws/ - Custom tracer pages (handwriting) under “Language Arts,” math, science, geography, etc. Multiple levels, free printable worksheets.
http://www.cdlponline.org – Adult Learning Activities – the purpose of this site is to
improve adult basic skills using real-life stories on topics of interest. Each story is accompanied by a variety of learning activities to reinforce and assess learning.
http://www.awesomestories.com/index2.htm - AwesomeStories is comprised of stories behind famous events, legends, people, heroes and movies that help learners examine primary source materials.
http://thebeehive.org/money - The Behive. Plain English information includes managing case and credit, paying bills and taxes, saving and investing, and budget basics.
http://www.gedsocialstudies.com
Contemporary, a publisher of adult education books, has a free set of Web pages which may be used independently or with Contemporary text books. They have online GED instruction, chapter outlines, chapter reviews, GED questions, and GED Practice Tests. Students can study independently at home, work or in the classroom using the Student and Instructor Centers. No password or e-mail address is needed.
http://www.thewclc.ca/edge - The Learning Edge is a project of the Wellington County Learning Centre in Arthur, Ontario, Canada, in partnership with AlphaPlus/AlphaRoute. The site offers adult life skills content with excellent audio support.
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm - Sheppard Software is a website for people who want to learn about (or just quiz your knowledge of) the states of the USA. In State Clues, you pick the state that goes with the clue, by region. State Capitals requires you to enter the first four letters of each state capital. Place the State asks you to drag each state to its exact location on the map.
http://www.tv411.org – a series of award winning videos that focus on basic skills for adult learners. The TV411 website offers interactive exercises that are correlated to the video programs.
http://www.visualfractions.com – An interactive website that helps a learner to identify, add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions using number lines and pie charts.
http://www.wisc-online.com/index.htm - This site includes a variety of GED writing and grammar lessons. It also includes 30 math lessons and many focus specifically on math and calculator skills needed for the GED.
http://www.aaamath.com/ - Math support including basic addition to geometry, ratios, and statistics. Hundreds of pages of Basic Math Skills. Interactive Practice on each page. An explanation of the math topic on each page. Several Challenge Games on every page.
http://www.calculator.org/ - Calculator home page for Windows high functioning calculator. Free download of Calc98, an engineering, scientific and financial calculator for Windows with functions for statistics, use of different number bases, metric units conversions, and physical properties and constants. The program also offers financial functions including investment, loan and savings calculations, time functions and a stopwatch feature. This program can be used 90 days and then registered for continued use.
http://www.news-2-you.com – A weekly publication for students with special needs with simple text and symbols.
http://www.convert-me.com/en/ - Interactive online units and measurements conversion. Online calculators for quick and easy metric conversion, etc.
http://www.bcps.k12.md.us/boardmaker/adapted_library.asp - This website, created by the AT Team at Baltimore City Public Schools, has symbols and boards to be used to adapt 723 children’s books. Titles are arranged alphabetically and there is also a search engine.
http://www.scholastic.com/clifford/flash.htm - Scholastic sponsors this site which has stories about Clifford that include buttons to have lines of text read and the ability to select words to add to the story.
http://www.marcopolo-education.org/home.aspx - Marco Polo provides a wide variety of resources including text adapted for a wide range of reading levels on a variety of topics.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ - This site from British Broadcasting Company has several interactive opportunities. Audio/video; has a Learning English section.
http://www.factmonster.com/ - Atlas, almanac, dictionary, encyclopedia on-line.
http://www.randomhouse.com/kids - Provides activities and author information as well as a teacher’s site and guide. Also has a “Classroom Club.”
Online Video Resources -
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/video.html - PBS-Nova
http://oralhistory.minds.tv/ - MINDS Oral History Project
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/channel - National Georgraphic
http://www.marcopolo-education.org - Marco Polo (links to resources)
http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/ - Apple Learning Interchange
NASA –
- http://connect.larc.nasa.gov - NASA Connect
- http://ksnn.larc.nasa.gov - NASA'S KSNN
- http://scifiles.larc.nasa.gov - NASA Sci Files
- http://live.larc.nasa.gov - NASA Live
- http://destination.larc.nasa.gov - NASA Destination Tomorrow
http://www.channelone.com - Channel One
http://www.glef.org/ - George Lucas Foundation
http://www.learner.org - Annenberg/CPG Learner.org
http://www.historychannel.com/classroom/classroom.html - History Channel
http://www.skylinesoft.com - Skyline Software Systems
Text-to-Speech:
http://www.readplease.com/ - Works in word processing programs and in e-mail.
http://www.speegle.co.uk – Talking web browser. Works like Google, but reads the screen in a British accent.
http://www.tex-edit.com/ - For Mac users. Text-Edit Plus is a scriptable, styled text editor that fills the gaps between Apple’s barebones SimpleText and a full-featured word processor. It’s fast, efficient, and has a clean, uncluttered interface.
http://www.speechmakers.org – Reads powerpoint. Won’t read scanned in text but will read text that is typed in.
English as a Second Language Resources:
http://a4esl.org – Over 1,000 activities including grammar and vocabulary quizzes, crossword puzzles, and quiz building tools.
http://www.eslcafe.com – ESL “stuff” for students, teachers, and everyone.
http://www.myefa.org – A multimedia system for low intermediate level adult learners. The system includes 20, 15 minute videos, CD-ROMs, and 400 pages of print materials. Requires a password.
http://www.englishlistening.com – Guided practice of listening comprehension with RealPlayer using recordings made for ESL learners.
http://www.englishpage.com – Free online English lessons and ESL resources.
http://www.esl-lab.com – Lots of great interactive lessons using RealPlayer.
http://www.esl-lounge.com – Hundreds of ESL lesson plans and materials that can be used for communicative lessons in the classroom. This site also has resources that allow you to craft your own lesson plans.
http://www.sla.purdue.edu/fll/JapanProj/FLClipart - Site with clip art pictures of nouns, verbs, etc. for ESL students.
Free 30 Day Demos:
http://www.rjcooper.com – Many demos of software for switch users and children with special needs.
http://www.inspiration.com – Full-feature demos of their graphic organizer programs.
http://www.wordq.com – Provides demo software, which is a writing tool, used along with standard Windows word processing software to provide spelling, English grammar and punctuation assistance. It uses advanced word prediction to suggest words for you to use and provides text-to-speech feedback.
http://www.ahf-net.com/reach.htm - An on-screen keyboard software that comes with a vast assortment of assistive technology tools. It was designed to help a person use a computer more easily and augment their speech if that is needed. Designed for people who have trouble using a standard hardware keyboard but can use a mouse or other pointer.
http://www.riverdeep.net/edmark/ - Free downloads on various topics.
http://www.synapseadaptive.com/demosite/demosite.htm - Free 30-day evaluations of speech recognition software including JAWS, ZoomText, OutSpoken, Dolphin, Inspiration, WiVik, OpenBook, and Connect OutLoud.
http://ivos.comunx.com – Free 30-day download of voice recognition software. Can be purchased as shareware for $50.
Online Books/E-Text:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/index.html The Online Books Page – developed by John Mark Ockerbloom.
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown – Children’s Literature Web Guide. Site categorizes internet resources related to books for children and young adults.
http://www.gutenberg.net/index.shtml - Project Gutenberg - began in 1971 by Michael Hart and is the first and largest single collection of free eBooks. The eventual goal of this project is to provide public domain eText editions a short time after the copyright has expired. There are m any treasures in this resource, including text editions as well as some human- and computer-narrated books. Project Gutenberg includes “light” literature, such as “Alice in Wonderland,” “Peter Pan,” and “Aesop’s Fables”; “heavy” literature, such as the Bible, Shakespeare, and “Moby Dick”; and reference works such as dictionaries, almanacs, and Roget’s Thesaurus.
http://www.bartleby.com/ebook/ – Great Books Online – claims to be “the most comprehensive reference publisher on the web, meeting the needs of students, educators, and the intellectually curious.” The section on free eBooks with options for using Microsoft eBook Reader for Windows, Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader for Windows or Macintosh and AportisDoc Mobile Edition for handheld devices.
http://childrensbooksonline.org – The Rosetta Project. A collection of nearly 2000 antique children’s books from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The pages of the books are jpegs and many are translated into different languages. Sound files are planned for the future.
http://icdlbooks.org/ - The University of Maryland’s International Children’s Digital Library – the site states that their goal is to “select, collect, digitize, and organize children’s materials in their original languages and to create appropriate technologies for access and use by children 3-13 years old.” The book pages are jpegs.
http://knowledgerush.com/ - Site has categories of literature; also contains an interactive discussion board about literature. Members can post original poetry to share with the group.
http://digitalbookindex.com – The Digital Book Index – provides links to more than 88,000 titles from commercial and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites. About 49,900 of these books, text, and documents are available free, while many others are available at a very modest cost.
(http://www.newslink.org/news.html) Newslink – includes links to over 4000 U.S. online newspapers as well as magazines
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/english.html - Electronic text center.
http://www.ala.org/parentspage/greatsites/lit.html - Literature and Language.
http://www.ipl.org/ - The Internet Public Library
http://www.blackmask.com/ - E-books online; one of the best sites since all books come in several different ways to download, depending on the e-book reader you have.
http://intersect.uoregon.edu/teacher/default.html - Digital books on the internet.
http://www.lil-fingers.com/ - Great interactive storybooks for young children.
http://www.starfall.com – This site offers over twenty free interactive stories with a variety of tasks for the emergent reader. It is phonics based and required the child to be able to click and drag.
http://www.umass.edu/aesop - Several of Aesop’s Fables are illustrated and retold by art students from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The students have created both traditional and modern versions of these stories with a lesson.
http://www.storybookonline.net/Default.aspx
http://www.kennedy-center.org/multimedia/storytimeonline/ - The Kennedy Center and RealNetworks put Children’s Books Online, including the author reading “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”
http://www.stockton.lib.ca.us/ebooks.htm#free – Free eBooks; lists other free eBook sites.
http://www.symbolworld.org – Online stories; does not read out loud; can print out stories.
Graphics:
http://www.google.com – Select the Image tab and type in your image search request. To copy just hold down the mouse on the graphic and there will be a little pull down menu that has Copy to Clipboard as an option. Select that and return to your document and select Paste. You can also select to download the image to a disk or your desktop and then insert picture from the pull down menu.
http://www.pics4learning.com/ - Includes “copyright friendly images for education” including American Sign Language. The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers.
http://www.altavista.com/ - Select “pictures” from the tab choices.
http://www.picsearch.com/ - Offensive material is filtered out so children can search in safety.
http://www.sla.purdue.edu/fll/JapanProj/FLClipart - Site with clip art pictures of nouns, verbs, etc. for ESL students.
AT Tutorials/Training Resources:
http://www.ataccess.org/resources/atk12/default.html - Alliance for Technology Access: AT Mini-Assessment.
http://www.atstar.org – ATSTAR Project, Austin, Texas. ATSTAR Assessment Module.
http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/technology/technology.html#techeval – LD On-line: AT Evaluation Guide for Students with Learning Disabilities.
http://www.cec.sped.org/law_res/doc/resources/topic.php – Aspire/Iliad IDEA Partnership Projects. Making Assessment Accommodations: A Toolkit for Educators.
Probably Too Much Info…
http://www.abcteach.com/ - Handwriting, reading comprehension, math – realistic coins/color and others, teacher extras, field trip checklists, etc.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html - Divided by themes/subjects and grade levels, this sight has a mind-boggling amount of information and printable stuff.
http://www.tinsnips.org – wide variety of activities/printables/sites. Most are under “themes” but the whole site is worth checking out.
http://kidsdomain.com/ - Children’s literacy site. Downloadable software, printables, good holiday section.
http://www.senteacher.org/ - Resources for teachers of special needs students – free printables.
http://funbrain.com/ - This site offers educational games to improve math, grammar, and writing skills. It also includes homework helpers and aids/activities for teachers.
http://sitesforteachers.com/index.html - A complete listing of educational websites for resources, ideas, and more –if you haven’t found it anywhere else, this is the place!