Drop by every Friday to discover what wonderful website my classes and parents loved this week. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of yours as they are of mine.
Age:
3rd grade and up, as well as teachers, homeschoolers
Topic:
Science, math, literature, Spanish, Social Studies, music, safety, character development
Address:
Review:
While YouTube has some of the best training videos around, if your school’s like mine, you can’t access it on campus. Which means, I’m constantly on the look-out for a good alternative in this video-oriented education world I find myself.
I found Sqooltube. It includes:
- edutainment games
- ebooks
- printables
- Interactive White Board activities
- as well as videos
…but I go there only for its collection of several hundred themed videos for kindergarten through fifth grade. You’ll find movies to support classroom inquiry into math, science, literature,social studies. It also integrates with hard-to-find areas such as music, safety, character education and sign language. In fact, it has one of the better collections of Spanish videos I’ve seen on the internet.
Once you click through the growing amount of ad clutter, you get to appealing, focused videos that your students will love. I found none that weren’t high-quality and sure to keep the attention of their child audience. Here’s an example:
But, as with most freebies on the internet (with the exception of Starfall–that site is a Kindergarten through second grade teacher’s dream), it has its drawbacks:
- too many ads. I don’t think they can squeeze any more advertising in than they have.
- and the ads have gotten more intrusive since I started using it
- some of the links take you out of the site to other sites I may not trust as much. I know this doesn’t bother some people, so I’ll let you decide.
On balance, this is a site worth adding to your arsenal of tools for tech teaching.
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
