Most states have fully accredited online courses available to public, private, and homeschooling students who want to earn class credits but don’t have a wide enough variety of courses offered in their school or district. This is a great way for high school students to earn credits and get ahead on their classes, take advanced courses, or make up courses they may have missed. Most virtual instruction programs also offer a full-time, tuition-free online public school program which is a great choice for families who may need a home-based program for student health reasons or otherwise. Most online schools also have tuition-based options for non-residents. Here are a few online programs you can look into, many states have several programs available that might not be listed below. If you don’t find your particular state on the list, contact your state department of education to find out if they have a program available. (more…)

OER COMMONS (http://www.oercommons.org/)
Open Educational Resources (OER) was created to provide educators around the world with free K-12 lessons, college courses, videos, graphics, and media to use in the classroom. Just register for free and start searching. OER Commons has established partnerships with more than 100 reputable institutions such as MIT, Yale University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, NASA to provide you with the highest quality courseware available.

Video cameras these days are much more affordable then they used to be. Many teachers are using video cameras as a valuable tool for student projects and presentations. One of the most popular cameras for classroom use is the Flip Video, it sturdy, runs on two AA batteries, and is available for as low as $149.99. There are also special programs and incentives available for teachers interested raising money to purchase Flip Video for their classrooms. This week we wanted to share some simple ideas for using video cameras in the classroom. (more…)

ENCYCLOPEDIA.COM (http://www.encyclopedia.com/)
Encyclopedia.com is a valuable free online reference tool that provides students, teachers, parents, and researchers with access to millions of articles, photos, facts, biographies, and information about a wide variety of topics. It has an online dictionary, archived newspaper articles from reputable newspapers, academic journals, and publications around the world.

DROPBOX (http://www.dropbox.com)
Access all of your saved documents, photos, and files from your phone, home computer, work computer, or any internet connected computer using Dropbox. This free resource was created to make sure you always have access to the files you need. First you download the free application to each of your computers and mobile devices. Then anytime you create a document, download photos, or need to save something to your computer you put it in your dropbox. Dropbox automatically updates the files to the dropboxes on each of your devices as well as the Dropbox web site.

(http://www.tryscience.org/) 
Try Science gives parents, teachers, students, scientists or anyone with an interest in science exciting ways to experience science and technology. The Adventures section has interactive online games that allow players to discover the science behind sports, different environments, and engineering. The Field Trips section is a searchable database of science centers around the world. The Experiments section has a wide variety of offline experiments for students to try, each with an online component.