FREE

When I received a press release a couple of years ago that the Department of Education's FREE ( Federal Resources for Educational Excellence) site had been redesigned and relaunched, I assumed it was just another boring, DOE disaster. I didn't give FREE much of a look until I began noticing some interesting stuff from it on several mailing lists and RSS feeds I'm subscribed to.

The FREE site links to federally supported teaching and learning resources. That said, it includes all sorts of stuff where federal grants have been involved, so there's a lot of linked content there. While you can search the site to find materials, I'd also recommend adding their RSS feed to your newsreader, as I often run into stuff that I was previously unaware of via their new listings. The same information, along with upcoming grants is also available via the mailing list. (Be sure to put, without the quotes, "subscribe EDInfo your name" in the body of your email, changing "your name" to your name.)

A recent posting on FREE led me to NASA's The Space Place. While The Space Place has been around for over ten years, I'd never noticed it. It contains lots of space information and activities for elementary students. I like their printable monthly Space calendar and their basic introduction to binary code, What is the "secret code" used by the Voyager spacecraft?

Another find from FREE was JPL's PlanetQuest site. It's a site devoted to "exoplanets," or planets discovered outside our solar system.

When I imaged the site at left in June, the planet count was at 303. Today, I noticed it had jumped to 344!

While FREE isn't a content repository (having its own content), it really is a good way to get into all the sites and resources the government has funded over time.

PBS Teachers

PBS Teachers offers lots of PBS content online. For example, when I searched for middle school science, I quickly came upon a lesson plan for Absolute Zero that included the two-hour NOVA episode. I liked that the video was divided into ten sections or chapters which facilitates watching just sections of the video or spreading it over multiple class periods.

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress site offers lots of resources for history and the performing arts, along with lesson plan links. Separate sections are available for teachers, parents, and others. Currently featured on the site are the Thomas Jefferson Papers. Another section for elementary and middle school students is America's Story from the America's Library of the LOC.

Yeah, you may have guessed. This one isn't one of my all time favorites, but I've included it anyway, as it's one of the "biggies."

National Science Digital Library

For a sense of completeness, I'll add a link here to the National Science Digital Library. The home page states that it is "the Nation's online library for education and research in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics." While I spent a good bit of time searching its database, I found that I kept ending up at paid sites, lesson plans, and other things that just didn't light my fire! I did find two really good resource links listed on the home page:

• Pat’s Picks for STEM Educators
• Exemplary Resources for Middle School Math and Science

Honorable Mentions

There are far more resource sites than I've mentioned so far, but you've seen my favorites. And yes, I'm a bit biased towards science related sites. Here are a few others that may fit your fancy.

• OER Commons is a comprehensive network for open education resources "from K-12 lesson plans to college courseware." I tend to get lost in it when hunting for content!
• The Orange Grove is a good higher education source of SCORMs. Look here for some excellent algebra lessons.
• Classroom teacher and textbook author Joe Martha runs Scienceman.com, a Canadian site with tons of links to valuable science learning activities. If you dig down to some of the other sites Joe works on, you'll find some real treasures.
• TEACHEngineering Resources for K-12 is a brand new site I found on a government mailing list.
• The Webjunction offers librarians and media specialists a "watering hole" of like-minded folks and activities.
• Learn.Genetics is another relatively new site from the University of Utah that I really need to check out.

Earlier in this column, I promised math teachers a couple of "crackerjack" math links. Well, here they are!

• The Oswego City School District Regents Exam Prep Center has lots of online tutorials. Some are fantastic and some are just so-so.
• The online component of McDougal Littell's Classzone math texts always impresses me because their tutorials are narrated. Such tutorials should be helpful for reading challenged math students.

Odd Thoughts While Shaving Between Paragraphs

I began writing this column last June. It's definitely an outgrowth of some of what I learned while working for my previous employer. When you switch from writing for hire to writing for yourself, you have to be careful not the write a column that someone else already owns. So I let this column sit until I felt comfortable with its content being original. And then I got busy with other stuff and forgot about it. So I'm glad that I read the March newsletter this week from Teachers' Domain, as it jogged my memory and got me going again on publishing this listing.

I hope you enjoyed it. And once again, if you have favorite educational site you think should appear on Educators' News, please . I'll try to add it to a future column or post it on Educators' News (if I like it ).

Return to page 1 of Resource Sites for Teachers.

Send Feedback to

Ads shown on this site do not represent an endorsement or warranty of any kind of products or companies shown.