Best Websites for Teaching and Learning 2013

Here in Chicago, AASL’s Best Websites for Teaching & Learning Committee just released its standards-aligned 2013 list.

(Don’t miss AASL’s inaugural, Best Apps For Teaching and Learning list, also just released at ALA!)

Sites and tools are selected  because they engage users through innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. Honored websites, tools, and resources will provide exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning.

Using Edcavas as a platform for curation (see below), this year’s Committee described a fabulous array of tools in the categories of:

• Media Sharing
• Digital Storytelling
• Manage & Organize
• Social Networking & Communication
• Content Resources
• Curriculum Collaboration

The team confirmed several of my personal favorites: Pinterest, Smore, Easel.ly, TED Ed, and DPLA, for instance. But I learned about so many truly useful new tools this morning, my mind was racing with plans for both personal use and serious fall implementation.

Here is a list of  some of those new-to-me discoveries:

• Workflowy: for planning an organizing
• FlipSnack: for digitally publishing professional looking flip books.  I’ll check this out as an alternative to Issuu.
• LitPick:  a global network  that offers free books to preteen and teen book reviewers in exchange for book reviews 
• Socrative: a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets.
• QuadBlogging: allows four schools to blog together and share student writing
• Biblionasium:, a Goodreads alternative for young readers (look for a full post on this one later this week)
• Marqueed: a collaborative platform for annotating images and PDFs
• Inklewriter: a platform for writing interactive, branching stories (ala choose your own adventures)  Stories can be published to Kindle.
• myHistro: allows stories to be created and shared as mashed-up maps
• 19 Pencils: a library/search tool for locating, sharing and using K-6 educational resources
• iCivics: founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the site includes 18 educational video games, teaching materials, and a comprehensive, standards-aligned civics curriculum,
• Wonderopolis: the National Center for Family Literacy celebrates the learning moments in everyday life—ones that fit in with dinner preparations, carpool responsibilities, a stolen moment between breakfast and the bus, or within school curriculum and education programs.
• Youngzine: child-centered zine by and for kids in grades 8 through 12 where they can learn about current events around and events shaping their world using fun trivia,  visuals and videos.
• Seriously Amazing: The Smithsonian presents seven quirky characters who symbolize the questions the Smithsonian asks and answers every day.
• Codecademy: teaches kids to code interactively in a variety of languages

There’s much more!

Study this list over the summer so you can plan a serious roll-out of what makes best sense for your teachers and kiddos in the fall.  The Committee noted that several of the sites are in Beta, and it is possible that they may change.

The 2012/2013 Committee included:

• Donna Baratta, Chair
• Kyle Harmon
• Jessica Hinman
• Debra Kay Logan
• Floyd Pentlin
• Elizabeth Dumas
• Susan Hess
• Catherine Nelson
• John Schumacher

Filed under: ala, apps, digital publishing, digital storytelling, websites