Online Tools For Middle School Teachers

 Online Tools for Middle School Teachers 

Using videos online and in the classroom
Videos are a great resource.  They can be instructive, demonstrative, and be the focus of a class discussion.  Moreover, student can watch them in the classroom, on their home computer, ipad, ipod, or smart phone. Finding good videos takes time so it's important to organize them so for easy access once you've found them.  YouTube allow you to save favorites and categorize them in folders.

Unfortunately, some schools block YouTube, which is a shame because it's a great resource.  However, there are free programs that will allow you to download videos to your computer, such as YouTube video organizer (PC only) by Aquarius Software or iSkysoft's (instructions) and Evom for the mac. You can also download videos directly from Safari (instructions). You can then show the videos from your computer.  If you want to include videos in an online lesson plan they must be on a server (other than YouTube if blocked) that is accessible online.  You can't directly link resources from your computer to an online website or lesson plan.

 Ebooks

GrabMyBooks is a browser based tool that can grab content from any webpage (or the entire webpage itself) and compile it in a very readable ePub format for your digital handhelds or eBook readers.

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  Dr. Lindley Hanson, Department of Geological Sciences and Coordinator of the MAT in Middle School Science at Salem State University, Salem MA