Scholar - academic social bookmarking

"Blackboard Scholar® is a social bookmarking service customized for education. It provides an exciting new way for students and instructors to find educationally valuable resources on the Web. Using the knowledge and power of our network of educational users, Scholar makes it easier for instructors and students to find relevant resources on the Internet for courses and research. Furthermore, by storing and sharing associated information with each resource such as tags, disciplines, other users who have tagged and more, Scholar allows users to evaluate the resources and find the most relevant and reliable. And it is directly integrated within the Blackboard Learning System(TM) - Enterprise, Vista, and CE Licenses, providing easy access right within the course environment."

OER Commons - Open Educational Resources

Welcome to a worldwide learning network — OER Commons: "Resources, or OER, offer new ways to engage with free-to-use learning content." "...open network of shared resources and practices, from K through college, from algebra to zoology -- it's all free to use."

Peterson's - a very helpful website for students

Search "Online Learning Programs" by filters of Course of Study and Level. "Even if you don't have a clue where you want to go, there's no reason to worry. We'll guide you through every step of the college-planning process, from discovering the right school to finding scholarships."

Many other tools available on the site -- search for colleges by discipline; get advice about choosing a college or about campus life; lots of help for new college students; help with preparing for tests --filtered by specific existing test types; excellent last minute study tips for various types of tests; and MUCH MORE!

Distance Learning Moves Into 'Second Life' Virtual Classroom

Another higher education institution has moved into Second Life -- University of Florida in Gainesville.

"Paul Fishwick, a computer science and engineering professor, is teaching one of at least two classes offered at UF this semester largely in cyberspace — specifically, the trendy three-dimensional online world called Second Life. There, Fishwick’s 'avatar', the character that represents each player in Second Life, leads discussions among some 30 other avatars controlled by upper-level UF undergraduate and graduate students in CAP 4403/CAP 6402, Aesthetic Computing.

With distance learning decades old, classes on computer are nothing new. But Second Life, which has more than 2 million users worldwide, opens a wealth of fresh possibilities, one educators nationwide are increasingly experimenting with."

Curriki ~ Global Education & Learning Community

Curriki stands for (I'm guessing) curriculum wiki. They're new, so resources are limited right now, but please join and contribute!

"The Curriki Community is comprised of thousands of people like you who want to create and use high-quality educational resources. ...Our mission is to improve education around the world by empowering teachers, students and parents with user-created, open source curricula, and it's all free!"

Embedded Media HTML Generator

"The Embedded Media HTML Generator has been developed to ease the burden of inserting video and animations into web pages." The page will generate code for embedding Flash, Quicktime, RealMedia, Windows Media.

Accessibility Information & Resources

Accessibility Information & Resources: from Saskatoon Catholic Cyberschool, a commented list of resource sites.

Instructional Scenarios Wiki for WebCT Vista

Topics included are Content, Communication, Course Management, Evaluation. Lots of good tips 'n' tricks here!

"This site is designed and maintained by the Teaching Technology Services group of Instructional Multimedia Services of McGill University. This wiki describes how to use WebCT Vista to do complex instructional tasks using multiple tools. We (the Teaching Technology Services staff) built this wiki to explore the potential of the technology and to experiment with collaborative group work. These instructional scenarios are meant as a complement to the WebCT Vista manuals and do not duplicate any information from them. "

Video Blogging Resources

Video blogging made easy: From Telus, a step-by-step how-to for those who are new to videoblogging. The article includes links to other help/tutorial sites, so I'll include those here too:

• The Video Blog Handbook - a community project for documenting tips and tricks


• Node 101 - an educational resource aimed at teaching people how to video blog


• Freevlog - a multi-lingual how-to on video blogging


• How to video blog with Blogger - A tutorial on video blogging with Blogger and QuickTime

DropShots: A Free sonline video host -- "family friendly photo & video sharing service". s"We support MPG, AVI, MOV, WMV, and 3GP from all major digital cameras. You just drag and drop the video to our application and we resize, transcode, upload, and host your video. We use the Flash plug-in to stream the video, which is already installed in over 98% of browsers and has a 1-click install process. This makes video easy to post and easy to view."

Zippy Videos: "Your media sharing community." Free host for an unlimited number of videos up to 100mb each. You can create your own URL on the site for sharing videos.