4 more (free) websites to create cool student projects online

Fodey
Fodey is very useful a website that allows you to write your own newspaper story and headline. The site also allows you to change the name of the newspaper as well as the publishing date which makes it a perfect tool for social studies projects. Once the story is completed you can download it to your computer or use a screen capture tool to save the image. While this is a perfect tool for history projects, this website is great for any subject area.

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Newspaper Generator
This newspaper generator by Homemade Gifts Made Easy is very similar to Fodey but it has several features that make it more a powerful tool. First, it allows you to add a picture to your story which helps to make the finished product more interesting to students. Second, there seems to be no limit to how much text you can write. The finished product can be saved as a pdf by right clicking on the image. However, the story you write will be accompanied by several "nonsense" stories that come with the site.

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Paste to Grid

This website (currently in beta) allows you to easily create a photo collage which can be used on a website or as part of a student project. Choose one of the 14 grids and then add pictures and the final product can be saved to your computer as a jpg file. This tool can be used along with the Newspaper Generator above by Homemade Gifts Made Easy to create a nice newspaper project. 

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Brother Creative Center
This powerful site by Brother allows you to generate posters, newsletters (mailers), calendars and brochures. Each type of document comes with a collection of dynamic templates which a simple to edit. Projects can be saved for later editing and then be printed or saved to your computer when they are done. This site is a great online alternative to Microsoft Publisher and it is free to use.

5 websites with massive amounts of free educational resources

FREE Educational Resources
The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence (FREE) website contains a massive collection of education resources. Animations, primary documents, photograph collections, videos, maps, articles, and the lists goes on and on. If you have never visited this incredible collection of educational resources for all subjects and grade levels, then you really have been missing out. For all that our government does wrong, their collection of FREE educational tools and materials is quite extensive and very useful.

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Graphic Organizers
There are many places on the web where you can find graphic organizers but it may take searching through several sites before you find the right one. The next time you need a graphic organizer, start here at this collection of graphic organizers from the Vermilion Parish. They have collected the best organizers from around the internet into one large collection for you to use.

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CK-12
CK-12.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to education. Their website offers a large collection of resources for students and teachers like Brain Genie which I previously shared. The bulk of their resources are math and science centered where students can learn about chemistry, physics, algebra, and geometry just to name four. They also offer resources for other content areas as well including history, English, and SAT prep. Their website is free to join and offers a wealth of learning resources and activities. Their site offers articles, quizzes, interactive lessons, videos and students can keep track of their learning as they complete lessons and activities and members can upload their own resources to the site as well.

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Gilder Lehrman Institute
History teachers will want to spend some time here at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website. It features great resources such as this American History by Era which allows you to learn about American history by era and or theme. There is also a section dedicated to primary sources which is also categorized by era. In their Programs and Exhibitions area there is an online exhibitions page which includes enhanced audio, videos and slideshows about history. The site also includes a multimedia section with hundreds of videos as well as a community section where members of the site can communicate and share information. Suffice to say that the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History  is a fantastic resource for history teachers and students.

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Chronicling America
Chronicling America, from the Library of Congress, is a site that contains a huge database of historic newspaper pages from the years 1836 to 1922. Their homepage features "newspapers from 100 years ago today" but users of the site can use their extensive search option to look for year, state, topic, newspaper, dates, and even language. Here is a clip from a newspaper when I searched "World War I, New York, 1918."

Chronicling America could be a good tool for student research from a particular era or topic. If you are a history teacher you owe it to yourself and your students to take some time to browse around and see what the site has to offer.

Clik/Hear - A Compelling Multimedia Showcase

Clik/Hear is a multimedia web page from the Palm Beach Post that features compelling stories, stunning images, and amazing videos from around the world. Their extensive collection has six categories; South/Florida, World/Nation, Sports, Lifestyle, Video, and Pictures of the Week. Just browsing through this last category (pictures of the week) can take up a lot of your time due to the sheer volume of photographs on display. If you are a fan of incredible photography, thought provoking stories, and remarkable videos, then take a look at Clik/Hear and be prepared to spend a lot of time browsing around.

Chronicling America - Huge Digital Newspaper Collection from L.O.C.

Chronicling America, from the Library of Congress, is a site that contains a huge database of historic newspaper pages from the years 1836 to 1922. Their homepage features "newspapers from 100 years ago today" but users of the site can use their extensive search option to look for year, state, topic, newspaper, dates, and even language. Here is a clip from a newspaper when I searched "World War I, New York, 1918."

Chronicling America could be a good tool for student research from a particular era or topic. If you are a history teacher you owe it to yourself and your students to take some time to browse around and see what the site has to offer.

News, Sports, and 10 second videos

The journey around the world wide web has many turns and twists. I never know what new (to me) site I will discover or cool resource I'll uncover. Here are three sites I came across and am happy to share.

First is Newseum, a website that features the front pages of over 800 newspapers from all over the world. The papers can be searched by using a map, selecting a location from a list or by using the gallery which contains thumbnails of every newspaper. Please be aware that use of materials from the website does require permission of the site and the respective newspapers.

The GIF file has just become outdated. Coub is a new service that allows you to create 10 second videos uploaded from your computer or taken from You Tube or Vimeo that are similar to GIF's but the difference between them is that Coub videos have sound while GIF files are silent. Creating a Coub video is very easy to do but it does require a Facebook account to sign in which shouldn't be a problem for most people.

If you are a sports fan then you may want to check out  Sportz Hype, a new site with Pinterest like qualities. Their tag line is "a place where Sportz fans can share photos, news, videos, and much more." This site looks and feels a lot like Pinterest but there is no mistaking the focus of the site. Sports, sports, and more sports. If sports are your passion then you should certainly give Sportz Hype a try.