NOTE: This collection is part of the GIFTED 360: Designing Personalized Learning Experiences course. For more information please visit https://www.gifted360.com/
While I do love exploring and presenting a wide range of apps at 60 in 60 sessions and at Speed Geeking events, I honestly love content resources the most. Maybe it’s because I remember growing up in a day and age when having a set of World Book Encyclopedias was about as good as it got. Now there is almost INFINITE CONTENT! Here are some current favorite resources and how you might use them in your learning environment to stimulate interest in your students.
There’s always more than one side to a story, and that is definitely true of the news. All Sides takes the top stories of the day and presents them from online news sources representing the Left, Right, and Center. This is an excellent way to discuss multiple perspectives and current events. Check out the Educator Resources available at https://allsidesforschools.org
Fast Company called this website the “Tate Modern of the Internet”. It is an international platform for contemporary art and visual expression that explores a vast range of creative disciplines with an archive of over 6,700 articles. I visit this site just about every day and almost always find something that is curious and intriguing.
Ok, this one is a pretty straight forward education resource that you probably already know about. Check out the BROWSE CONTENT section. Here you can find resources for teaching various literary devices or themes. My favorite feature is the companion texts.
From The National Archives comes this collection of thoughts of primary sources spanning the course of American History! Even better are the ACTIVITIES from various historical periods and focused on a variety of thinking skills. But the best is the ability to CREATE YOUR OWN Activities using their templates and primary source documents.
DocsTeach - National History Day Resources
If you are a teacher of Social Studies and History, then you are probably already aware of National History Day. Here the folks at DocsTeach have assembled a collection of resources for the 2023 National History Day Theme “Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas”. This fits in really well with our ongoing theme of Exploration.
This one could also fit in the Virtual Field Trip collection but it has a focus on animals and nature.
There’s quite a bit to explore in this one and the have added a lot of new content in the past few years. My favorite feature is THIS ONE! Be sure to click the PLAY button on the bottom left hand side of the chart and see the data come to life!
If you are ever teaching about inventions, then you definitely need to make use of this under utilized resource from Google. You can search by time period, inventor, invention, or even patent number. For more ideas read more ABOUT GOOGLE PATENTS.
I find myself on this site on a pretty regular basis. It is not necessarily designed for kids, but there is always something that I find interesting that causes me to learn something that I did not know before.
Imagineering in a Box / PIXAR in a Box
This set of lessons / activities comes from Disney and is part of Khan Academy. There’s short video content from Imagineers and PIXAR animators discussing their creative process and how storytelling is a part of everything that they do.
Think of this as the attic of the Internet. You could spend pretty much every waking moment exploring millions of free books, movies, software, websites and more! I also really love the Wayback Machine feature that allows you to look at more than 726 Billion archived webpages throughout the history of the Internet.
I have always been fascinated with Presidential Campaign Commercials. This site collects TV commercials dating back to the very first one in 1952 and provides historical context of each.
We are living in a very exciting time for space exploration, but it seems like almost no one is paying attention. In August of 2022, NASA will launch Artemis I which will orbit the Moon before returning to Earth. Then by 2024, humans will return to the surface of the Moon for the first time in over 50 years. From there, it’s on to Mars!
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Education Resources & Programs
If you are teaching about space, this is my favorite collection of education resources. JPL has done a really nice job organizing these activities.
National Archives Educator Resources
Earlier in our alphabetic list, we talked about DocsTeach from the National Archives, but this is the full collection of educator resources.
I recently learned about this one during a Speed Geeking event at Edufest in Boise, Idaho. It provides educators and students with new perspectives on Native American history and cultures. NK360° provides educational materials, virtual student programs, and teacher training that incorporate Native narratives, more comprehensive histories, and accurate information to enlighten and inform teaching and learning about Native America.
New York Times Learning Network
You have already seen one of the resources from this collection in What Is Happening in This Picture?, but there’s so much more to explore!
I am going to say that you have probably heard at least one teacher talk about this site. If you haven’t or haven’t taken 5 minutes to at least see what they have to offer, NOW is your chance.
The Poetry Foundation is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. If you are doing anything with poetry in your learning environment, then you definitely want to check out this site.
Long before the Kindle existed, Project Gutenberg was offering up tens of thousands of FREE eBooks in a wide variety of formats. Download entire books or even just a single page for annotation purposes.
This is the one stop shop for all of the educations things that the Smithsonian has to offer. Here you can create your own interactive learning experiences or adopt exemplars made by teachers and Smithsonian experts.
This site is dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas – focusing on works now fallen into the public domain, the vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restrictions.
This is absolutely one of my all time favorite content resources! Founded in 2011 by Rion Nakaya with input from her two kids, this is a collection of over 5,000 smart videos for curious minds of all ages. There is literally something new and intriguing here every single day!
Today’s Front Pages from Freedom Forum
One of my all-time favorite museums was the Newseum. Sadly it is no more. One of their best features was the exhibit which displayed daily the front pages from hundreds of newspapers from around the world. Thankfully, Freedom Forum is continuing this really interesting project. Talk about multiple perspectives!
Well, I presented this list alphabetically, but I kind of feel like I am saving one of the best for last. I absolutely love Wonderopolis and would use this with my students pretty much every single day.
