Off to Chicago

Tomorrow I leave for a short trip to Chicago to teach a seminar called, The Best of the Best: Top 100 Web Resources for Elementary Teachers, K-6. Sponsored by the Institute for Educational Development, this full day seminar includes:

• Teacher-friendly templates to use upon returning to your classroom
• Grant funding opportunities for educators to add much-needed resources to your classroom
• Best subscription databases and the resources they provide to teachers
• Searchable databases filled with engaging Webquest adventures for all elementary subject areas
• Timesaving teacher tools to ease the strain of all that paperwork in your classroom
• Exciting online collaborative projects that can connect your students with a world-wide community of learners
• Copyright-free digital images to enhance your presentations and Web sites
• Explore the wonderful world of free Google tools
• The latest, most cutting-edge Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and Webcasts and how to use them in your K-6 classroom
• Web site addresses (URLs) and what the various parts mean to make you a savvy surfer
• Web browser choices and why you may need more than one on your computer
• Online bookmark services to organize your favorite Web sites in one location for easy access from any computer
• Tips for conducting successful searches to ensure that your valuable time online is well-spent
• Elementary curriculum sites that focus on elementary math, social studies, art/music, ELA, reading, science, special education, and ESL
• Software to create your own Podcasts to communicate world wide or locally
• Online translator tools to help improve your communication with ESL parents

This is a new seminar for me. My biggest hope is that the teachers who attend will learn how to save time and money by finding the best resources that are available. When you search Google for Ancient China, you get over 10 million hits. Life is too short to sort through that.

So, what are your 5 favorite sites? Oh, and by the way, the Voki, is one of those cool things we'll learn now to do.