K-12 Educators

As a K-12 Educator, use this comprehensive collection of high-quality resources to create online course content and to help your students with postsecondary planning. Search for certified K-12, MnSCU, and U of M online courses and programs. Learn about student services, postsecondary enrollment options (PSEO), and online college in the high school (OCHS). Obtain college, career, and financial aid planning resources. Identify library data bases that your students can use to do homework, improve studies, and complete a quick review of subjects. Incorporate interactive tools and widgets, simulations, learning objects, video, audio and online textbooks in your curriculum. View professional development information. Use eFolioMinnesota to create and maintain your professional electronic portfolio.

MnLC Hippocampus - free multimedia lessons and course materials.
The HippoCampus offers free multimedia lessons and course materials to help you with your instruction, homework and studies. Subject areas include: Math, Sciences, US History, American Government and Psychology. Hippocampus is created by the National Repository of Online Courses.

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
MERLOT Open Textbooks Project is a strategic alliance of MERLOT and the Student PIRGs to promote the use of open textbooks.

MERLOT - Learning Materials
List of open textbooks MERLOT's Open Textbooks Project

Minnesota Energy Careers
Energy Careers, Education & Jobs. Discover what you like to do, explore careers, and learn about hot opportunities in energy. Prepare in high school, see energy pathways, and find post-secondary energy programs. Find occupations in demand in your region, energy employers, and job openings.

Community College Open Textbook Project
Our task is to look at different ways to make free, open textbooks a sustainable resource for faculty and students.

U of M iTunes U
The access-restricted iTunes U site is for students, faculty, staff, and guests, providing access to audio and video recordings of campus course sessions, faculty lectures, interviews, music, and events.

eFolioMinnesota
eFolio Minnesota is a multimedia electronic portfolio for to all Minnesota residents, including students enrolled in Minnesota schools, educators and others to create a living showcase of education, career and personal achievements.

NROC - National Repository of Online Courses
The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) is a growing library of high-quality online course content for students and faculty in higher education, high school and Advanced Placement.

GPS LifePlan
The GPS LifePlan helps students set goals and design plans that will lead them to the success they desire.

Flat World Knowledge
Free online textbooks.

SAS Curriculum Pathways
Funded by SAS and free to US educators and students (grades 8-14), SAS Curriculum Pathways is designed to enhance student achievement and teacher effectiveness by providing web-based curriculum resources in core disciplines: English, math, science, social studies/history and Spanish.

Open Source Teaching (OST) Project
OST mobilizes students to interview successful professionals so that they can inspire and inform the education and career decisions of students. This free, digital media is provided for the benefit of the public, with a particular focus on reaching middle, high school, and post-secondary learners.

Atomic Learning
Atomic Learning provides web-based software training for more than 110 applications students and educators use everyday.

25 ways to teach with Twitter
25 ways to teach using Twitter by Sonja Cole. Twitter can be used as a micro-blog and a valuable tool for professional development.

Apple Teachers Net
Find lesson plans, teacher chatboards, and the latest buzz from the Apple/Mac Classroom chatboard.

Online Learning Resources
Saint Paul Public Schools Online Learning Resources Page provides links to Web resources geared to give students and educators an efficient way to research online.

Free and open textbooks
This new Web site brings together information on free and open textbooks and course materials in one location. Though the Web site was designed for California's community-college faculty members, it could be a useful resource for anyone trying to find learning materials in the public domain.

Twiddla - online collaboration tool
A real-time online collaboration tool that is easy to use and available 24-7. Only requirement is a computer with an internet connection and a web browser. Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Professional level is free for teachers and students.

Children, Youth and Family Consortium
This site is a bridge to a wide range of information and resources about children and families. It connects research, teaching, policy and community practice.

LEO: Literacy Education Online
Find help with organizing research papers, the writing process, using online sources, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, citing sources, plagiarism, business writing, resumes and other topics. Produced by the Write Place of St. Cloud State University.

Connexions
Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute: authors create & collaborate, instructors build & share collections, and learners find & explore content.

Sketchcast for Animation and Audio
Sketchcasting is a new way to communicate online by recording a sketch, optionally with your voice speaking. A sketch can then be embedded on your blog/ homepage for play-back, and you can also point people to your sketchcast channel here--or let them subscribe to your sketchcast RSS feed.

MERLOT search for simulations
Use advanced search for "Simulation" under "Material type" and select the appropriate level under "Audience")

High School Math
Dynamic and interactive high school math tools and resources: general, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and trigonometry, Source: Jefferson County Schools.

Rights and Responsibilities of Students, Providers, Enrolling Districts and MDE
Information about online learning rights from the Minnesota Department of Education.

The Orange Grove
Orange Grove Text Plus (OGT+) is a joint initiative of the University Press of Florida and The Orange Grove, Florida's Digital Repository. The goal of this partnership is to reduce the cost of books to students by offering texts that are affordable, accessible, and adaptable to reader preferences.

Edutopia.org - What Works in Public Education
An in-depth and interactive resource, Edutopia.org offers practical, hands-on advice, real-world examples, lively contributions from practitioners, and invaluable tips and tools.

Slideshare
Slideshare is a presentation sharing website where users can upload, view and share presentation files including faculty and student presentation on education, business and technology.

GreatSchools
GreatSchools' purpose is to improve K-12 education by inspiring parents to get involved. GreatSchools.net profiles more than 90,000 public elementary, middle and high schools in the United States including charter, magnet, year-round schools, and some continuation and alternative schools.

Characterization Facility (UM)
The Characterization Facility ("CharFac") is a multi-user, shared instrumentation facility for materials research spanning from nanotechnology to biology and medicine.

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities - ITeach Professional Development Center
The ITeach Center is a virtual guide to teaching and learning, including teaching resources, educational oppportunities, online teaching resources, and an interactive community.

Google Scholar
Provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles.

WebJunction Minnesota
WebJunction MN is an online community for Minnesota library staff or faculty to connect, create and learn; no cost for eligible members. Learning Center has self-paced online courses, e.g., technology, application software, and web design. Other courses from partners like LE@D U of North Texas.

eLearning Tools for English Composition
Thirty of the best tools to help create engaging and interesting presentations, whether to teach rules of citation, grammar, or any other writing topic.

Physics Education Technology (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Top simulations

Minneapolis Public Schools NROC Curriculum Index
Whole courses and multimedia only lessons and projects for use in many ways.

MIT OpenCourseWare Initiative
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content.

Social Impact Games
"Education and Learning Games" directory

Web Skeletons: Digital Tools for WebCT/Vista
Web Skeletons: Digital WebCT/Vista Tools for Online Course Planning and Development provides a framework, or a series of skeletons, to help users develop effective online courses, whether starting from scratch or modifying an existing course.

Wikibooks
Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Subjects include: natural and social sciences, computing, business, humanities, etc.

Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation
The Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that provides leadership, networking and support for educators and educational institutions to achieve their objectives through Open Education. Sponsor of WikiEducator and Learning4Content.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence
Free resources in Arts & Music, Health & Phy Ed, History & Social Studies, Language Arts, Math and Science.

Scratch
Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills.

WikiEducator
WikiEducator is a collaborative project for building capacity in the authoring of free content; developing free content for use in education settings; facilitating the establishment of community networks, and fostering new technologies that will widen access, improve quality and reduce costs.

Find Reading Levels
Find reading levels of a book by typing in the title. Also get author and book information, lesson plans, discussion guides, etc.

Teacher Tube
TeacherTube provides an online community for sharing instructional videos.

Free open source resources
Save money with freeware and open source software for grades K-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-12 and teacher tools.

Partners in Learning
A global initiative designed to actively increase access to technology; improve its use in learning; help schools gain better access to technology, foster innovative approaches to pedagogy and teacher professional development.

Kerpoof
KerPoof is a free online multimedia software that allows children to explore their creativity by drawing, making animated movies, writing and illustrating stories, producing pictures and cards and more.

Zefty money management
This site teaches students about responsible spending and saving is difficult. Zefty functions like a bank account but there's no real money involved. Parents or teachers can set up and account for each student and specify how much allowance they get and how often.

Braingle
Site has over 20,000 brain teasers, riddles, logic problems, quizzes and mind puzzles submitted and ranked by users like you. A useful teaching tool for all educators.

PBS Kids
Collection of interactive whiteboard games for educators on PBS KIDS. Students will enjoy participating in these collaborative, fun and engaging experiences, while exploring curriculum from trusted programs, all are age-appropriate and vetted by educators.

Kinetic City
Kinetic City is a collection of science experiments, games and projects for everyone. Produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Estimator
This site from the Oswego School District in NY state allows for estimation of numbers and fractions on a number with 7 different levels of difficulty. This site can be used with a Smart Board.

UberStudent
UberStudent is a free Linux learning platform for learning, doing, and teaching academic computing at the higher education and advanced secondary levels. It is supported by a free virtual learning environment. Powered by Moodle.