Nothin’ But Net 2003
SDCOE Library  Media Educators Professional Day

February 20, 2003
Claudia Jozel
cjozel@powayusd.com

Score Points With Your Teachers:

DiscoverySchool.com Lesson Plans
http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/
Part of the larger DiscoverySchool.com Teacher Section, you can find hundreds of original lesson plans, all written by teachers for teachers, organized by subject, grade, or both. A side menu and a drop-down menu make browsing easy. Covers a wide range of subject for grades K-12.

Teacher Created Materials: Free Stuff
http://www.teachercreated.com/free/
Teacher Created Materials is an educational publishing company founded in 1982 by Rachelle Cracchiolo and Mary Dupuy Smith, two classroom teachers. The section with the "free stuff" contains Free Monthly Activities, Free Lesson Plans & Activities, and Free Brain Teasers. Not a whole lot of stuff; but that makes it pretty easy to use. Too bad there is no archive of previous month's free stuff.

ClassroomClassics
http://www.bcsd.com/compton/library/classics/index.htm
ClassroomClassics is a one-stop source for classic books to supplement teaching History/Social Science California State Standards in your classroom! ClassroomClassics is organized by grade level from Kindergarten through 8th grade. Simply click a grade level, then select the state standard for which you wish to prepare your lesson. The books have been carefully chosen by Darla A. Brown, LMT, M.Ed, an experienced certificated Library Media Teacher.

Scientific and Technical Acronyms, Symbols,and Abbreviations
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/mrwhome/104554766/HOME
A searchable and browsable "tool for the look up of acronyms and other short terms used in scientific works." Additionally, there are various reference tables, including the Greek alphabet, Roman numerals, mathematical symbols and signs, various conversion factors, periodic table of elements, ASCII codes, and more.

PBS TeacherSource
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/
Thousands of lesson plans and activities, organized in broad as Concepts Across the Curriculum, presented as monthly themes.

Women of the Century: 100 Years of American Heroes
http://school.discovery.com/schooladventures/womenofthecentury/
An annotated list of more than four dozen phenomenal American women of the twentieth century "who left an indelible mark on our nation." Browse decade by decade or in categories of activists, reformers, politics and government, arts, media, space and science, sports, and exploration. A DiscoverySchool.com site. 
  
Life Magazine
http://www.life.com/Life/
Covers and "classic pictures" from Life Magazine for the years 1936-1972, when it was a weekly publication. Covers are searchable; pictures may be browsed by edition, subject, or photographer. The covers section also includes "past LIFE covers for this day."              

Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WW II Arkansas
http://www.lifeinterrupted.org/
Life Interrupted is about Camp Rohwer and Camp Jerome in Arkansas during WWII. This site is a partnership between the University of Arkansas and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. A beautiful interface (Flash) leads to a variety of resources for teachers, students, and others with an interest in History and/or Cultural Studies. Includes an interactive timeline, photos, VR panoramas.

Vietnam Women's Memorial Project 
http://www.vietnamwomensmemorial.org/
Did you know that over 265,000 women served in the armed forces of the United States? Nearly 10,000 women actually served in-country during the conflict. Articles describe the types of jobs women performed during the war. Also includes first person narratives from women veterans, information about the memorial, and links to more information. 

The Irascible Professor: Irreverent Commentary on the State of Education Today
http://irascibleprofessor.com/
Created "to provide intelligent commentary on the successes, failures, and foibles of the American education establishment...with a modicum of wit, and without the rancor and mean-spiritedness that characterizes so muchcommentary today." Frequent guest commentaries and freelance submissions supplement the author's own essays. Not searchable. Published irregularly by Mark H. Shapiro, professor of physics at California State University,Fullerton.

Infomine
http://infomine.ucr.edu/
A virtual library of Internet resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level. Contains useful Internet resources such as databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information. INFOMINE is librarian built. Librarians from The University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, The University of Detroit - Mercy, and other universities and colleges have contributed to building INFOMINE.         

Knowledge Network Explorer: A WebQuest Series on Creating Non-violentSchools
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/nonviolence/
Designed to help users "explore issues related to school safety," this site presents information resources,activities that promote understanding, and discussions of relevant issue. It promotes problem-solving strategies in the continuing effort to understand and to mitigate school violence. Topic Hotlist presents "learners a rich set of resources to use in their investigation of a topic."         

Teachers First Content Matrix
http://www.teachersfirst.com/matrix.htm
There are lots of things on this site; but the content matrix is one of the most useful when you are in a hurry. In a simple table format, organized by grades (Elementary, Middle School, High School) and subjects (art, astronomy, character education, drama, mind stretchers, physical education, writing, and world cultures to name a few). You simply click on the one you're looking for and you get a big list of links with descriptions. The downside is: everything opens up in the TeachersFirst frame which can be misleading.

Google News
www.google.com 
Read Global News in one place. If you want an overview of international news, Google aggregates articles from more than 4000 sources worldwide (including TV and radio Web sites) and organizes them on a clean page, under subject headings. Searchable.

Cybrary Stuff: 

Readers' Café: A Virtual Meeting Place for Books and Readers
http://www.montgomerylibrary.org/readerscafe/
Great reader's advisory material: monthly Spotlight on themed bibliographies with brief annotations, book reviews by readers and librarians, author of the month essays with links to more information, and book group suggestions. Some information is local but there is plenty of general content and anyone may participate in the online book discussion. From the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Libraries.  

Page by Page
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/
These are electronic versions of hundreds of the "best public domain books, available in easy to read format." Because the site limits each screen to a brief amount of text, readers can bookmark where they left off in the text so they can get back to it easily. Listed by author and title, with recent additions noted on the main page.

eBookLocator
http://www.ebooklocator.com/
Search through a database of thousands of eBooks by author, title, keyword, ISBN, or publisher. "Get the latest reviews, excerpts and author bios." Browse top-selling electronic books. 

Teen Reads
http://www.teenreads.com/
Info and features about teens’ favorite authors, books, series and characters. A part of The Book Report Network, a group of websites founded in 1996 that share thoughtful book reviews, compelling features, in-depth author profiles and interviews, excerpts of the hottest new releases, literary games and contests and more with readers every week. Teenreads.com is THE place online for teens to talk about their fave books --- and find the hippest new titles!"

The Digital Book Index
http://www.digitalbookindex.com/
A database of over 60,000 fiction and nonfiction e-books from over 1,800 publishers. Many categories of books are listed, including reference, history, children's, and African American studies. Titles are from commercial and noncommercial publishers and vendors and may be free, available by subscription, or for purchase. The site also links to e-book reader software. 
 

Find the Best Online Price for Books
www.bestwebbuys.com/books
Whether you're looking for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy, the book page of BestWebBuys will scour online bookstores to help you find the best price for new and used titles.

Tech Talk
www.webtalkguys.com
They're not as witty as Click and Clack, NPR's Car Talk guys, but the WebTalkGuys--actually two guys and a gal--put on a good low-key show with interesting guests and lots of useful advice. Past shows, archived on the site, include tips for online stock trading and car buying, developing a community on your Web site, and photo trading. Issue-oriented discussions cover finding a tech job in tough times, navigating the domain name wars, using file-swapping services, and dealing with spam. When it comes to the Web, there's a lot to talk about.

DriverGuide
www.driverguide.com
You upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows XP, and some of your peripherals go AWOL. It's likely that your new operating system doesn't contain an updated driver for your Rockwell modem or OPTi sound card. So where do you find the driver that will set everything right? DriverGuide saves your old peripherals and parts from obsolescence by providing nearly 70,000 downloadable driver files, including hard-to-find ones from vendors gone belly-up. The site has drivers for printers, scanners, digital cameras, and network adapters, among other devices. And if you can't find the driver you need, post a message to the request board. Just don't forget: Back up your system before installing any new device driver. Unless you like running in Windows' Safe Mode, that is.

Google
www.google.com
The number one, award-winning Search Tool continues to evolve and improve. Page ranking results. Fast, ‘clean’, and user-friendly. Tune in for details.

Vivisimo 
www.vivisimo.com
A clustering search tool. Does not search the Web. Searches the results of other search engines. Excellent for gathering and organizing information.

 
Research Public Records
www.searchsystems.net
Every state has different rules about what records the public can access. The site offers links to thousands of records, categorized by geographical region and subject. You can find links to records about foreclosures, professional state licenses, property reports, missing-person databases, and college alumni lists, among others.

Hints from Heloise
http://heloise.com/
This site covers a multitude of practical, inexpensive, and useful household suggestions and advice. Heloise (born Pónce Kiah Marchelle Cruse), author of the internationally popular column, "Hints from Heloise," shares numerous online hints, a short biography, and valuable travel tips. Don't miss the Tattoo Removal Program.

Evaluate Products Before Buying
www.consumerreview.com 
You may think the world of Bose speakers, but what does the world think of them? Before spending $3000 on a home theater system, discover how past purchasers view the item you're contemplating. Consumer Review compiles opinions on everything from cars to golf clubs, and each review includes a summary and lists of a product's strengths and weaknesses. Consider also opinions of other folks who bought or used various products: www.eopinions.com

Know Your Money
http://www.secretservice.gov/know_your_money.shtml
U.S. Secret Service site designed to help consumers "detect counterfeit currency and guard against forgery loss." Includes history of United States currency, characteristics and design features, positions of important features, how to detect counterfeit money and coins, advanced technologies in counterfeiting, and what to do if you suspect a note is counterfeit.

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