The Technology page has been growing quite rapidly recently, and it is one of my favorites because I am supposed to be the tech person at my school.

3D Graphics

I'm just getting started with working with 3D programs - working with these programs is one of the things that I want to do when I retire next year. I have a variety of programs to work with - Bryce, Poser, and Carrera - but I just haven't had time to sit down and learn how to use these great programs. I'm just starting to play with them now, and I put my first attempt up on Renderosity today. I will be working on a list of sites for tutorials and freebies down below. If you are a 3D person, I hope that you find this helpful.

 ChromeSphere, has free tutorials for the 3D enthusiast. I used the one on optics and found out some very usual information.

All Grade Levels

 Bernie Poole's Home Page, is an excellent site for resources on technology.

 Creating for the Web, is a series of pages that take you through the process of making web pages using html. Some tips for teachers are on a pdf file that you can access through these pages.

 Education World Technology Center: PowerPoint--Creating Classroom Presentations, is a technology article from Education World. This will show you how to help students create PowerPoint presentations as an alternative format for school projects.

 Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask , is another excellent resource from U.C. Berkeley. I forget the figure for the moment about how many web pages are actually out there in cyberspace, but there are millions - a lot of them are junk. This page is a great reference to use with students when teaching them about the Internet whether it be creating their own web sites or using the Internet for research, or how to surf safely. You can adapt the material here for use with upper elementary students.

 Everyday Spreadsheets in the Classroom , has student lessons and teacher utilities that can be created with spreadsheets. If you want to integrate technology into your classroom, this site has some easy, but useful examples.

 Excel 2000 Tutorial - FGCU Technology Orientation , has an excellent series of Office tutorials that can be adapted for Middle School students.

 Gail Lovely's Website, is a site that I have just come across recently. I still have to explore it, but it has an interesting set of resource links for teachers.

 Internet Tools Which Make a Teacher's Life Easier, is filled with links that teachers can use in their daily work. Included are: Online Storage Sites, Teacher Tool Sites (including award makers, bulletin board printables, calendar makers, puzzle makers and more!), Teacher Assessment Tool Sites (rubric makers, quiz makers, etc.), Free Web Hosting, Portals, Printables, and New Teacher Help. This is an outstanding set of links.

 Kid's Tools for Searching the Internet, has 15 search tools to use for research including Ask Jeeves, Kid's.net.au, a dictionary, a thesaurus and two encyclopedias.

 Landmarks for School , is the site of the Landmark Project. It is "dedicated to the idea that the very nature of information is changing, practically before our eyes. It is changing in what it looks like, where we find it, what we look at to view it, what we can do with it, and how we communicate it. Here you will find information and tools designed to help us redefine literacy for the 21st Century." You can find the Classroom Blogmeister here as well as the Education Podcast Network. Check it out.

 Learning JavaScript for Beginners, is fron the Java Script Learning Center. It has a set of 14 lessons. If you want to learn JavaScript, this is a good place to start.

 Nicholson's Lesson Plan Blues , is a teacher generated site of lesson plans and assessment rubrics for a variety of applications including: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Dreamweaver, Flash and more. Very impressive. I'm going to try out some of her lessons this year.

 Online Spreadsheet Resources, has a variety of spreadsheet resources that you can use with elementary and middle school students. Good stuff for the tech teacher and the classroom teacher.

 Rubric, Rubrics, Teacher Rubric Makers, has a wide variety of rubric makers available for use. Some of the rubrics include: math, maps, writing, handwriting, science fairs and many more.

 Shopping Spree with Spreadsheets, is a cool project to do with your students to get them working on spreadsheets. Good for upper elementary and middle school.

 Teaching Through Technology Program, is a great site for integrating technology in your teaching. Definitely check out their detailed examples of what these folks do.

 TheFreeSite.com, has lists of free things available on the Internet.

 To Excel in the Classroom, is another site for using Excel with your students.

 Using Excel to Create a Chart or Graph, is an easy to follow lesson which can be used with elementary and lower middle school students.

 Using Excel to Create a Chart or Graph with Pictures in the Graph, is another easy to follow lesson from the Internet4Classrooms folks which can be used with elementary and lower middle school students.

 Using Microsoft Excel to Analyse Classroom Data, is still another easy to follow lesson from the Internet4Classrooms folks which can be used with elementary students for something like analyzing a survey. It's easy to follow lessons like this that teachers really want from the Internet.

 W3 Schools, has free online lessons in CSS, HTML, Javascript available. This is an excellent resource.

Elementary

 Classroom Strategies,has strategies for using Excel with students from Kindergarten to Grade 5. There are outcomes listed along with examples and templates. Very useful for classroom teachers as well as technology teachers.

 Elementary School Projects: Teaching Through Technology Integrating Technology into the Curriculum, has 23 projects for use with elementary school students. The projects are listed by grade level and give the subjects for which these projects were designed as well as the technology applications used. Excellent site.

 Teaching Through Technology: Grade K-5 Projects, has three Grade 4 projects for use in the classroom. These projects can give teachers a good starting point for developing their own projects.

 Technology Integration: Project Planning Form, is an excellent step-by-step plan for creating your own integrated technology unit from the Kent School District. There are a lot of resoiurces that go with this form. Try it out.

 Technology Integration Resources, has a wealth of information for teachers of K - 6 students. This is a great site from Kent School District.

 The One-Computer Classroom: Getting Organized, has some interesting ideas about how to get started using your one computer on a regular basis.

 To Excel is Elementary: Pictographs for the Younger Students, shows you how to use Excel with elementary students. These kinds of pages are one of the great benefits for teachers that comes from the Internet.

Java Scripts

 JavaScript Notes, has a very easy to understand introduction to JavaScript. This page is useable with Middle School students and up..

 scripts and codes.com, has an extensive list of java scripts that you can use to spice up your website, including such geek things as a star trek date script. I haven't tried these yet, but check out this site for some examples in the new future. This site also has tutorials for Dreamweaver, Java, PHP, and more.

Mac Stuff

 FreeMacWare.com, is a site where you can get reviews on the latest and best free Mac software. Get the RSS feed to automatically get updates.

 Mac Forums, is a forum for Mac users. Mac users are a very vocal group and generally ready to help with information. This is a particularly good site if you are new to the Macs or a returning Mac person like me.

 Mac OSX hints, is a great site for Mac folks. This place has over 10,000 hints and a forum as well. I'll be checking this out during the upcoming break.

 Things Macintosh , is a cool site that I just discovered for the Mac fanatic. This page has links to hardware, software and other cool Mac stuff. Definitely a check it site for Mac people.

 

Middle School

 Middle School Net, has a great list of Internet resources to use with your classes if you teach technology courses. You can learn how to write HTML, create forums, join lists, find free graphics and fonts. This is an excellent site.

 Middle School Projects: Teaching Through Technology, has twenty teaching projects that you can do with your students.

 Mr. Olejarz, Eisenhower Middle School , has his sixth, seventh, and eighth grade classes work online which includes podcasts, digital video, and digital imaging. There is also material from professional development classes.

 Sixth Grade Introduction to Technology, is a nice little site that shows you what one teacher is doing with his students in the United States.

 Style Sheets for Citing Internet & Electronic Resources, is a valuable site for middle and high school students, as well as teachers, who need to know how to cite electronic references.

 Web Quests, has six links to sites about creating web quests.

 Meridian: A Middle School Computer Technologies Journal, is an electronic journal dedicated to research and technology in Middle School classrooms. It is published twice a year. Excellent stuff.

 The Integration of Technology Across the Middle School Curriculum, is a website by the Pine River Middle School which has many units which can be used to incoporate technology. There are lessons in Math, Social Studies, Science, Spanish, Life Skills and more. Very, very cool stuff for Middle School.

 Technology Integration in Education by Linda J. Burkhart: Middle School - Uses of the Internet, is about Middle School students researching on the Web. This site has some excellent suggestions and links for using the Internet for research. If you are just about to get into this with your students, checking out this site can save you some time and pain.

 Understanding Keyboarding, is a series of pages about keyboard for 6th graders in the state of Washington. It lists assignments and links to other sites about keyboarding.

 Web Quests, has links to six web quests to try out for MS students and their teachers.

 Word 2000 Tutorial, comes from Florida Gulf Coast University. It is an excellent tutorial. I have this listed under Middle School, but it is just as much a teacher's resource. This tutorial covers a lot of material. Go through this and you will be a skilled Word user. Find out what serif means for your font use.

Podcasts

 Podcast for Teachers , is a site for teachers who want to learn about podcasting which is what we are about to get into a school now (we have already tried it, but didn't get very far). This site is full of resources and has links to many, many podcasts for teachers. Check it out.

Photoshop Resources

 Elite by Design , has Photoshop tips for those of you who want to do some cool stuff with Photoshop. I'll be working with these tips in a few weeks.

 Laurie MaCanna's Complete List of Photoshop Tips , has a long list of Photoshop tips for those of you who use Photoshop (and who doesn't) and would like to do some cool things without reading the manual.

 Photoshop Tutorials on Photoshop Contest, is another site with some cool Photoshop tips.

PowerPoint Resources

 Microsoft Office Assistance: Avoid missing font styles in PowerPoint, is a page with three tricks to do just what the title says.

 Microsoft Office Assistance: Use embedded and link sound files in PowerPoint, is a page with three tricks to do just what the title says.

 PowerPoint Activities, has a number of lessons for teachers using PowerPoint, including templates.

 PowerPoint and Flash Techniques, Programs, Converters, Inverters, is a page that is an excellent resource (that is it points you in the right direction), if you want to use flash movies in your powerpoint presentation. This page is from indezine which has some excellent tech resources for PowerPoint and Photoshop.

 PowerPoint Games, has seven games created in PowerPoint. The games available are: Jeopardy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Twenty Questions, Guess the Covered Word, and several others.

 PowerPoint in the Classroom, comes from the Reach Every Child website of Horace Mann. You will find a collection of links to sites for the educational PowerPoint user. I've found a number of the links very useful.

 PPT FAQ, has answers to dozens of questions about PowerPoint. If you are working with PowerPoint and your students have questions, this is a good resource to direct them to. Have them find the answers rather than depending on you.

Search Engines

 YoYsearch - a web portal with ten types of search, - a web portal with ten types of search.

Software

 BerliOS Developer, is a site that you can check out for open source software. I just came across this - more during the break.

 Blender, is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. I've just started working with it on my iMac. There is a big learning curve here if you're not familiar with using 3D programs, but there are tutorials out there. I'll let you know how it goes as I work with it.

 Juice, the cross-platform podcast receiver, is open source software to use when you want to listen to podcasts but don't have the time to do it live .

 Major Geeks.com , is a great site forshareware and freeware for both PCs and Macs.

 Open Source Mac , is a small site with open source applications for the Mac . There are some good apps here so you should check this out.

 Softpedia, is the encyclopedia of free software for both Windows and Mac . This is an excellent site with loads of stuff to download and check out.

Technology Resources

 Absolutely Freebies, is a page with links to free things for use on the internet and your computer.

 Browse free virus protection and computer tuneup resources, is a page of links for anti-virus and spyware software from Horace Mann. You can never go wrong using protection.

 Digg, is another extremely popular socialnetworking/socialnews sites. You can read what others find interesting, suggest sites that you find interesting, and interact with other uses of digg. I'm just getting around to checking this out. More when I retire and have to explore more.

 Dreamweaver Templates, is a page of links for dreamweaver templates. This is great if you are like me and not exactly gifted with great design impulses. You can also find a lot of resources for CSS templates to use with Dreamweaver.

 Dynamic Drive - Background and Document Effects, has DHTML scripts for a variety of background effects that you can add to your web page. Once you get here you can use other links on the page to get scripts for other things like navigation and menu bars, image effects, slide shows, text animations and more. Cool stuff for teacher use and with some help your middle school students can use these as well.

 FILExt - the File Extension Source, is the place to go if you want to find out what that file extension means and what application will open it. This is a great place for those techies who want to clean up their machine but aren't sure what some of the files are.

 FindSounds, is a free site for finding sound effects and music samples on the internet. This is a search engine like Google or Yahoo, with the difference that it focuses on sounds. Obscene sounds have been filtered from the search so it is safe for students to use.

 Flashcards: The World's Largest Library of Printable Flash Cards, has a database of over 12 million flashcards on subjects like social studies, math, biology and much more. You can create, print, and download flashcards here.

 Flickr, is the popular site for posting photos online. It's free and easy.

 Free Fun Files, is a site where you get links to free software for PCs . It's also good to know where you can get free software. You can never tell what you're going to need or want.

 Free Goodies from Sonnyboo, is a site that promises free music and other goodies for moviemakers. This is a somewhat peculiar site by an indie filmmaker who is giving away some of his original compositions for use in other people's movies. Your students might be able to use some of this in their own productions.

 Free Webmaster Resources, is a site that has an incredible amount of free resources for webmasters. If you run the school website, or have students who are budding webmasters, check this place out. The layout is a bit intense, but bear with it and you'll probably find what you need.

 Grey Olltwit's Freeware, has educational programs and games, screensavers, utilities, wallpaper and more all for free. Grey created all of the programs on this site with the exception of some math programs. He has some ADHD programs here as well as his son has ADHD. A very cool place with some cool free things. Thanks, Grey.

htm2pdf, is a free site where you can convert your web pages to pdf format. For the time being this is free, so if you want to use it better do it now.

 Learning About Webquests, is a page full of links to sites about webquests. If you want to use a webquest with your students, this is a good place to start.

 Marcovitz Electronic Resources, is a page full of annotated links to resources for teachers, students, and tech coordinators. Some topics include web design, staff development, software reviews, internet issues, file conversions, and more. Great page.

 Portable Apps , is a site where you can get open source apps that you can take along with you on a flash drive to use on any Windows machine.

 Royalty Free Music and Sound Effects, has a nice group of sounds that students can use in their multimedia work.

 StumbleUpon, is one of the new social sites that I just well, stumbled upon. It's a little toolbar that sits in your browser and gives you webpages, videos, photos, and more that other people with matching interests have found interesting. I've only had it on my browser for a few days, but it's fascinating, and I've come across some really interesting sites. You can also make new friends here.

 techLEARNING.com: Technology and Learning - The Resource for Education Technology Leaders, is a site for K-12 technology people. It includes software reviews, articles and more. This link will take you to an article on creating a web site and using it.

 Time Machiner, is this little web app where you can send an email to someone at a future date . How does this work? I haven't got the slightest idea, but it's a cool little toy.

 Utility Geek, is one of those sites where you can download software, but it says that it is different from the others in that there are only quality downloads here and there are for the computer tech person and the home user. You can find diagnostic and repair tools here for your PC. Sorry no Mac stuff.

 Wav Central.com, calls itself "the best sound site on the 'Net." It certainly is pretty good.

 Wavesite.com, is a database with over 4300 movie, tv, and cartoon sound files in wav format. This is a nice little resource for using in multimedia projects with your students.

 Wise Words by Cool Men , is a movie soundtrack site. If you have a favorite movie like I do, check this site out for some sounds that you might like to use in your website (or to use in a website that you're leaving).

Wikis

 Cool Cat Teacher Blog, has a blog about using wikis to teach with. Follow this link to get some ideas . There are also posts on using podcasts and blogs in the classroom as well. Excellent resource from Vicki Davis, a high school teacher in Georgia, USA.

 Wikispaces, offers free wikis for K-12 education . If you want to set up a wiki for your school or class, this is a good place to start.