Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Discover a huge collection of interactive illustrations to help explain complex concepts in science, technology, art, math, and a range of other topics. Use these activities to create interactive visualizations. There are thousands of Mathematica Demonstrations. A demonstration is a Mathematica notebook that takes advantage of Mathematica's manipulate command. Use the manipulate command to create sliders or buttons or check boxes to change the values of parameters in the displays in the demonstration. The result is you control the animation. View demonstrations on topics ranging from odd and even numbers to odd and even functions, fractions to fractals, and from linear functions to linear algebra and linear programming. In addition to mathematical topics, there are demonstrations illustrating the time in different cities around the world, global demographic information, the solar system, and art and music concepts. You need to download the Wolfram CDF player to use and interact with the demonstrations.
This site includes advertising.

Wolfram Tones is a different and dynamic approach to thinking about music. Instantly create music and download it to your computer. Choose tone style, select a variation, and adjust the tone by using the generator, instrumentation, pitch mapping, or time controls. Save your "tone" to your collection or email it to friends. Your collection is associated to the computer where you make it using web browser cookies so no registration is necessary. Tones are packaged as midi files. Mathematical rules create these complex forms of music on Wolfram Tones. The program takes the mathematical pattern and turns it onto its side to produce a musical score. Here, the height of the pattern is the pitch of the note. More than just a musical resource, this website allows you to see and hear math.

This creative site offers "how to" videos on a WIDE variety of topics. Anyone is able to view the videos, but you must be a member (which is free) to comment on the videos, grade the videos, or submit your own "how to" video. Topics vary; some are appropriate for the classroom - others are definitely NOT appropriate. Some of the general topics that may be useful in the middle school or high school classroom include: alcohol, autos, motorcycles, and planes, business and money, computers and programming, diet and health, education (which features a variety of science experiments and more), film and theater, language (English, Chinese, Hungarian, Russian, Finnish, sign language, Polish, and countless others), music and instruments, travel, and several other topics. Within each of these general topics, there are thousands of specific "how to" videos.

Membership is free and has many perks. You are able to comment and/or grade the video clips or even submit your own video. Registration does require some personal information: a username, password, email address, and date of birth. ALL USERS MUST BE OVER 13-years of age! Check with your administrator about allowing the students to register for this site using fictitious names. You may wish to set up a class registration instead of entering true data into the registration site. Another option is to create a free Gmail account to use for memberships. If you plan to have students register individually, you may want to create your own Gmail account with up to 20 subaccounts for each group of students (by code name or number) within your classes. Here is a blog post that tells how to set up Gmail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Warning: not all videos are suitable for the classroom. Be sure to preview what you wish to share. If you choose to allow your older students to navigate this site on their own (for research or a class project), be sure to set boundaries on which videos to watch, consequences for going elsewhere, and WATCH CAREFULLY! Some videos explain "how to" do things that are unsafe or inappropriate for school-ages audiences. Wonder How To does include unobtrusive advertisements.
This site includes advertising.

The Museum of Music History offers this online exhibition about the songs and life of singer Woody Guthrie. There are lyrics, music samples, and background information on the singer's life and life during the great depression. This one would be a great adjunct to a study of either folk music or the Depression.

Musician Woody Guthrie drew, wrote, sang, journaled, and painted. He was a man who used notebooks and the written word to record his musings on life. This site has a lesson in which students create make their own journals in the manner of Woody's notebook treasures.

Join Word GameTime for language arts, geography, math, and typing activities. Find a variety of games including brain games, crosswords, vocabulary, world capitals, and spelling. Worksheets and educational videos offer further explorations.
This site includes advertising.

WordsLiive is a lesson building tool that combines anchor texts with literary concepts and matching popular music videos. Follow the steps to build a lesson - final lessons include teaching notes, slides, and standards-aligned assessments. Begin building your lesson with a classroom text or literary concepts. Use the search feature to find titles and authors. When complete, save to your account and access the finished product at any time. Lessons build into prepared slides to share on your interactive whiteboard. WordsLiive uses the "clean" version of included songs and music by removing questionable language. Some videos still include suggestive content, be sure to preview all videos and song lyrics found in lessons you create.

Engage your middle and high school students with Working in Harmony. Discovery Ed and CMA have worked together to create this educational STEAM site. These standards-aligned activities demonstrate how diverse country music careers apply STEAM skills. With activities aligned to "This is STEAM Country Video Topic Series," students can hear how STEAM skills are used in the industry. Find a virtual tour and many activities and lesson plans. Though Working in Harmony features country music, the activities and lessons can be applied to various award shows and music genres.

This short animated YouTube clip shares specific copyright issues, focusing on reusing previously developed materials available on the Internet by uploading and presenting them on YouTube. It begins with a written quiz on the right side of the page to assess prior knowledge and also to get viewers thinking about copyright issues. It presents the message that uploading copyrighted material onto YouTube can have serious consequences. It also explores the fact that, in addition to written and broadcast media, performances and other public presentations may also be copyrighted. It explains the concept of Fair Use in easy-to-understand terms and examples. It also points out that you may watch for people who misuse material and report any such items so they will be removed from YouTube. The video is hosted on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, then it may not be viewable.
This site includes advertising.

Join YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum in recognizing a biennial review of the best online videos from around the world. As a form of modern and contemporary art, celebrate free access every day for your virtual field trip from a Webby award-winning nominee site for 2011. A panel of 20-25 experts chooses from a selection of over 23,000 videos submitted. Explore art, music, movement, poetry, and prose on this creative video site. The option of subscribing to recent uploads is available at no charge. Click "continue" to see thumbnails of all available winners. If your district blocks YouTube, then this site may not be viewable. Not all comments posted are appropriate and videos should be previewed before viewing in the classroom setting.

YouTube Teachers and the related YouTube EDU form an education-oriented area of YouTube that categorizes videos into subjects for easy retrieval. YouTube is a vast online video library. You upload, view, share, and comment on content found on the site. Videos found on the full YouTube range from commercial to educational content. YouTube often has questionable content so is blocked in many schools. Some schools block YouTube simply because streaming video "hogs" network resources. If inappropriate content is your administration's main concern, YouTube offers a way your tech department can configure a limited access channel. See the explanation video and related information to share with the tech department here.

YouTube is very valuable to educators looking for great educational content. There are videos for early elementary concepts like safety up through college-level courses. YouTube has the ability to stream content into channels based upon your viewing preferences, and videos are easily marked as "favorites" to find in your history. It offers suggested channels based on your watching history including trending and popular videos. Parents can filter out objectionable content and comments using Safety Mode -- which is often disabled.

Create a YouTube channel to collect videos for easy access by students. Upload teacher-created videos for your class to your channel. Do you know a great video not featured on YouTube EDU? Suggest it for the EDU collection.

Zencastr is a podcast hosting and creation tool that provides many free resources for members. The free option includes unlimited audio and video recording, unlimited audio uploads and hosting, options for recording on several tracks, and many other excellent features. Begin by creating and verifying your account. After logging in to your account, begin with the link to add information about your show. Next, follow the prompts to add a cover image and description of the podcast. Then, add an episode by uploading a file from your device or selecting the record button to record a new broadcast. Next, include up to twelve participants in your recording by providing access through the invite button. When finished, use the produce and publish link to complete the publication of your podcast episode. Finally, share podcasts using the share link that includes a custom URL or sharing to social media sites.

Have you been pining to include pertinent webquests in your curriculum? This site allows you to view already created webquests and/or use their online tool to create your own webquest without HTML code or web editor software. This site walks you through a tutorial on creating your own webquest for the parameters YOU want. The tutorial includes planning, building, and getting your webquest published. Best of all-- it is free. This site also includes ready-made webquests in nearly every subject area (math, art, music, social studies, science, etc.) submitted by others like you. There are webquests for all grade level. The webquests are free to use and many include reviews by other educators. An easy to follow webquest matrix is available, with all of the subjects and grade levels. You are also able to do a webquest search for a specific topic. Nearly all of the webquests are in English, but a few are in other languages. Note: the quality of webquests is completely determined by others using the site to create webquests, so PREVIEW before using any webquest in class.