My Top 12 Picks for Educational Resources Websites

As a former teacher, I always found myself looking for great material to use when teaching my students.  I found that I had to perform a lot of research when preparing new curriculums for my classes.  I also wanted to keep up with current events and news in my profession.  This kind of research is much easier now because of the wide-spread use of the internet.

Today, I still tutor math, reading and science part time (as I love teaching).  I do a lot of writing both in education and in many other fields.  My current profession as a writer requires me to do a lot of research.  One of my duties is to post cool, useful and interesting educational websites I find to Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.  The purpose of this article is to share with our readers my top picks for useful educational resource websites.

I actually use hundreds of sites on a monthly basis.  I easily investigate about 1000 sites each year.  With so many websites to choose from, I found myself with a selection dilemma.  Knowing of so many sites made my choices even harder.  Therefore, I came up with a selection criterion to narrow my choices.  My choices are based on these criteria: the information needs to be free, it needs to be useful, and it needs to stand out in some way.  I will provide the reader a short synopsis of each of the sites along with its URL so you can check them out personally.

My top 12 picks cover a variety of categories, including news, curriculum planning, class management, student material sites, craft sites, article sites, and blogs.  I hope you take a few moments to visit and explore these sites.  Please comment on the sites you liked.  Tell us about any site you know of that we should add to this list.  Your insight will be shared with our readers and could provide them the help they are looking for.

General Educational resources:

1) Teacher Link - http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/ - This website provides free lesson plans for teachers covering a wide range of subjects.  The material is specific and compressive to each subject listed.

2) Study Guide - http://www.studyguide.org/teacherlinks.htm - This site also provides free material for teaching and classroom management.  Particularly, I like their resources for writing strategies and idea creation.

3) Sites for Teachers - http://www.sitesforteachers.com/ - This site provides a large list of teacher resource links.  Here, you will find links to just about any imaginable subject, craft or lesson plan.

Crafts for the home and classroom:

4) The Crafty Classroom - http://www.thecraftyclassroom.com/ - This site has numerous craft projects covering all the seasons and a multitude of events - all free!  The crafts include paper crafts, modeling, and much more.  I think you will like it.

5) Disney Family Fun - http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/ - This site is owned by Disney and provides plenty of free craft ideas and projects.  You can look up ideas by age, type, material and more.  Did I say it was free?

6) Enchanted Learning - http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/ - This site provides a list of free crafts for children of all ages.  Subjects are listed alphabetically, making it easy to find what you're looking for quickly.  You will find many crafts from A to Z, including seasonal crafts for Thanksgiving, Christmas and more.

Online News and Magazines:

7) News4Jax.com, Education Section - http://goo.gl/9x2fn - (I used a link shortener to save space).  For local educational news in Jacksonville, I like News4Jax.com.  If you’re not in Jacksonville, every city has news sites and most offer local educational news.

8) U.S. News and World Report, Education Section - http://www.usnews.com/education - For educational news on the national level, my pick is U.S.N.W.R.  Their educational section is second to none.  Check it out.

9) Education Week - http://www.edweek.org/ew/index.html - Education Week provides a wide variety of articles, topics, blogs and more that I always find interesting, current and comprehensive. It’s definitely worth looking at.

Educational blogs and Article site:

10) Buzzle.com - http://www.buzzle.com/chapters/archives-226.asp - Buzzle’s website is an article portal. It offers a wide variety of articles.  Their education section is chock-full of interesting articles that are helpful and useful in today’s ever-changing classroom.

11) Education.com - http://www.education.com/magazine/articles/ - There are more than a dozen educational article databases on the internet.  I had a tough time choosing my favorite in this category.  I had to close my eyes and pick one, and my finger landed on Education.com.  The other two websites I liked were http://www.articlesbase.com/ and http://www.edarticle.com/.  Here, you will find articles covering every subject imaginable.  Check them all out and enjoy.

12) Clear View Education - http://goo.gl/DgmEo - (I used a link shortener here to save space too).  I really could not pick just one blog, so I decided to let you choose from 100 different ones.  Clear View Education blogs' main purpose is to share what they believe are the top 100 blogs on the web. Here, you will find educational blogs covering resources for teaching, technology, blogging teachers, special-education blogs and much more.  If you're looking for good educational blogs, you will find them here.

There you have my top 12 educational resource websites.  These sites will provide you with countless links to literally hundreds of useful educational websites.  Enjoy exploring these sites.  Please take the time to tell us what you liked, and which ones are useful to you.  Add your favorite site to our list by commenting on this blog entry.  I sincerely hope you find at least one new website to help you with your educational needs.  

Until next time, this is Hector Cisneros for A Quantum Leap signing off.