Internet Resources
I have enjoyed serving as the first guest blogger for Dangerously Irrelevant. I have benefited from the time to reflect on issues relevant to technology leadership in schools and I am reminded that thoughtful reflection takes time, something that many of us do not have much of. I am going to use my last blog referencing a few websites that I have used in my teaching and service work with school leaders and teachers. I am sure you have seen some of these, but I hope this introduces some of you to new and useful sites. As a parent of two young girls, I wanted to reference the starfall website because my daughters love using it as they learn to master reading. Thanks for the opportunity Scott! DMQ
http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/
The IRIS (IDEA and Research for Inclusive Settings) Center for Faculty Enhancement was designed in response to a request from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs. This national effort, serving college faculty working in preservice preparation programs, aims to ensure that general education teachers, school administrators, school nurses, and school counselors are well prepared to work with students who have disabilities and with their families.
http://reinventingeducation.org
The Reinventing Education Change Toolkit, based on the work of Harvard Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, is a Web site created by IBM to help education professionals be more effective at leading and implementing change. The Reinventing Education Change Toolkit was created through the collaborative effort of Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Goodmeasure, Inc.The Change Toolkit helps you to: Diagnose your situation, Get quick, relevant advice, Poll your colleagues and get anonymous feedback about your progress, Read real-life vignettes from other educators about their experiences leading and managing change, Plan for your change initiative or project, Collaborate with your team and hold on-line discussions.
The Starfall learn-to-read website is offered free as a public service. We also provide writing journals and books at a very low cost that can be used with the website or separately. Teachers around the country are using Starfall materials as an inexpensive way to make the classroom more fun and to inspire a love of reading and writing. Primarily designed for first grade, Starfall.com is also useful for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and second grade.
Read Please is a free downloadable text reading software program (PC only) that reads any text file aloud to students, e.g., text scanned into the computer with OCR (optical character recognition) software or downloaded from web sites, information posted on web sites, etc.
http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/home_tumblebooks.asp
Animated and narrated storybooks and games.
