Links
from The Sage Family
Here's a growing list of links we recommend to families online. Many of these sites have been mentioned in The Sage Letter.
Help
for Homework
Family
Resources
Communicating
Kids
Technology
& Education
Teachers'
Home Pages
Resources
for Homeschooling
Homeschoolers'
Home Pages
'Net
Safety
Good
General News Sites
Good
Technology News Sites
Help
for Homework
- From NJNIE (New Jersey Networking Infrastructure in Education), the "Ask
an Expert Page" for original research (direct from the specialists themselves).
- "B.J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper"
- a fund of links from a real middle-school student who's tested them out.
What better source? Thanks, Beege!
- Studyweb - a much-used site from American Computer Resources,
Inc.
- Electric Library - It's not free, but it's a popular research site that even journalists use and swear by. It's like your local library updated daily via satellite, providing access
to 150 newspapers, hundreds of magazines, 2,000 books, TV and radio transcripts,
maps, photographs, art, etc. It's $9.95/mo. or $59.95/year. You can test it
out thoroughly before you decide with a one-month free trial the site offers.
- Jumbo! (the shareware site)'s Homework
Heaven - They head the page with "Lightning fast homework & school assignment
research." It includes the week's top research links (about half a dozen),
instructions on how to take notes online, and links to lists of all the elementary
schools and all the colleges and universities in the US and the world. Homework
help comes in 22 academic-subject categories, including Writing Technique,
Arts, Economics, Reference Sources, and Current Events. A nice service.
- For the sciences, junior high science teacher Judy Whitcomb recommends some
sites she's pointed her students to: CoVis's Geosciences
Web Server, a very useful resources
page on the Georgia Tech server, National Geographic's "Fantastic
Forest", and the US
Forest Service's lichens page.
- From Infonautics, there's Researchpaper.com,
offering ideas for paper topics, "Research Central" with tips for doing research
on the Web, and links by category (Art & Literature Society, History, Business,
and Science). We clicked on "Business," then "Automotive," then the topic,
"The costs and benefits of auto emission controls." When we clicked on the
"eLibrary" box, the site sent us to 30 documents on the subject from newspapers
and other information sources all over the Web - picked by Electric Library.
The research was free.
- For statistics, there are three great sites, recommended by readers of the
Wall Street Journal: The US Census's Web site,
the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank,
and the White House
Briefing Room (with data from a number of government departments).
- For social studies reports and research, there's nothing quite as complete
as the CIA's World
Factbook - economics, maps and flags, government structure, populations,
geography, transportation, defense, and more for every country in the world!
And the Factbook includes appendices with information about international
organizations, including the UN, international environmental agreements, and
other useful information. If you looked, you'd find the World Factbook in
book form - worn and dog-eared from heavy use - at any newspaper editor's
or magazine factchecker's fingertips.
- From Yahooligans!, a "Homework
Answers" page
Top
Family
Resources
- The American School Directory (ASD) claims
to include "106,000 Web sites" and to be "the Internet home"
to all K-12 schools (in the United States). This Internet project is sponsored
by Computers For Education, Inc., in collaboration with Vanderbilt University,
IBM, and Apple Computer, Inc. And speaking of school directories, under "Homework
Help," we mentioned Jumbo!'s "Homework
Heaven," which, they say, includes links to lists of all the elementary
schools and all the colleges and universities in the US and the world.
- CampusTours.com - For those who
want to see what the schools they're considering look like, CampusTours
says it offers "over 1 million [virtual] tours," plus interactive maps, and
links to colleges and universities. In their FAQ, they describe a "tour" this
way: It "usually consists of a series of still images of the campus with a
text narrative."
- Children's Television Workshop - All our
favorite Sesame St. characters are there, plus lots of activities for children
and parents to do together! That's CTW's online mantra: interactive means
moms 'n' dads interacting with kids, too!
- CyberKids - a site by San Francisco-based
Mountain Lake Software, Inc., publishers of educational software for teachers,
trainers, parents, and kids. Mountain Lake says the site is designed to "create
and promote youth community worldwide and give kids a voice and an interactive
place to express their creativity." They've also created CyberTeens
(same mission) and youngcomposers.com (see separate listing below).
- The Discovery Channel - a useful
site that does a lot more than advertise the channel or repurpose TV programming.
The site provides good educational family "surfing" and a resource
page for educators (including parents and homeschoolers, of course).
- Disney's Daily Blast - their online
service for families; includes family.com, another Disney product (targeting
ages 3 through 12)
- Family Fun Vacations.com is mostly what we call a "billboard site," but we can tell there's a lot of valuable, focused information here for those who join up. We're glad they put in at least a little bit of free trip information (at this writing, for example, a Caribbean cruise put together by FFV and Celebrity Cruises especially for grandparents and grandchildren).
- GRIP Vision is the Web part of a
print/Web publication by and for high school students. GRIP says the magazine
is distributed to more than 1,500 high schools and read by 1.28 million teens
in the US. The Web site's monster
database of college/university financial-aid opps is a tremendous service.
It offers information on grants, scholarships, and loans in many categories,
including academic merit, affiliation, ethnicity, athletic, academic or vocational
subject - from wildlife management to the performing arts. The information
is for conventional contact only - address and phone number - but that's probably
how the money-givers like it! There's a button offering links to other scholarship
resources, but the page is just a list of state financial-aid agencies - a
nice resource, too, but it'd be great to see other resources out on the Web.
- Girl Games - This is a company that
really knows girls 8-18 - because of their continuous research among them.
Girl Games does research at "slumber parties" they hold (for a few girls at
a time) all over the country. The one researcher who plays host is almost
indistinguishable from the guests. They make products and Web sites, but they're
also a desirable resource for a number of consumer products companies (like
Procter & Gamble). Their latest and coolest site is Shred
Betty, honoring "the Inner Betty" in all of us.
- Girl Tech - a company founded in 1995
"to encourage girls in technology use by creating products and services just
for them." The site includes a chat area for girls, a "Girl Powered Search
Engine" for searching the 'Net "without the danger of being exposed to inappropriate
content," and "Tech Trips" that take members on "voyages" of recommended sites
around the Internet. A couple competitors are Her
Interactive ("for girls who aren't afraid of a mouse") and Planet
Girl.com by Girl Games, Inc. - more marketing sites for their CD-ROM and
other products.
- The High School Student's
Survival Guide is "dedicated to high school students and teachers everywhere."
It contains links put together by high school counselor Amy Mahaney aimed
at helping "students survive their sometimes difficult yet enriching high
school career." Invaluable is a link on the page to the Marblehead (Mass.)
High School Guidance Department's page with links to information on college
planning, scholarships and financial aid, career information, standardized
tests, learning disabilities, lesson plans, parent information, electronic
college applications and more. This is an example of the Internet's real value
- the fertile ground it provides grassroots altruism and its millions of beneficiaries.
Thank you, Amy!
- The Jason Project site offers
the full scoop on the project founded in 1989 by oceanographer Dr. Robert
D. Ballard as an educational tool. Since then the JASON Foundation for Education
was created to administer the project and sponsor an annual scientific expedition,
the focus of which is an original curriculum developed for grades 4 through
8. Many schools and cultural institutions in the US and overseas are involved.
- KidsCom aims to be a "safe place
for kids [aged 4 to 15] to hang out online."
- Kidsites 3000 - a company that
"creates programming that empowers kids, tweens, and teens on television
and on the World Wide Web." Their sites include Getting
Real! (which follows eight "real teens" trying to turn their
ambitions into reality) and Citizen Phoebe (Phoebe, who was the only
15-year-old candidate who ran in last year's presidential election, is White
House Special Adviser for Kids).
- Kings County S.P.C.C.:
Resources for Good Parenting - from the Kings County, NY, Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which promotes the promotes "the general
welfare and well being of children between the ages of birth to 16 years,"
including well-being on the Internet!
- Links for Parents and
Children - a resource page put together by the North Rockland, NY, PTA.
Includes links to 'Net-screening software sites.
- MaMaMedia - This site, for 5-10-year-olds,
is just plain fun to mess around in. It places more emphasis on playing (or
learning through play) and creating than on real-time communicating (kids
can send e-mail to Jessie, Devin, and other members of the "M Gang"). Other
activities include creating pages (and viewing other kids' creations), customizing
the way the site looks to the user, surfing through the Sandwich Shop (MaMa's
database of 2,000+ screened and reviewed Web sites), pick and contribute your
own favorite Web sites, and a heck of a lot more. For information on safety,
vision, the MaMaMedia "family," etc., click on "MaMaMedia's Safeguards for
Kids" or the "Grownups" button right on the home page.
- Nick.com - Nickelodeon's site for kids
(slow to download with a 28.8 modem)
- Scholastic.com's Parents'
Page - Includes internal and external resource links for parents, as well
as tips on "Cyber Safety" and ways to support literacy
- PBS Online - mostly geared to ages 2 through
12, but "Vietnam: A Television History," for example, is in there
too
- Purple Moon - a site for girls
8-12 created by a new Mountain View, CA-based entertainment company partly
funded by Paul Allen, former partner of Bill Gates. Purple Moon, the company,
was founded "to meet the need for a new entertainment concept that is truly
meaningful and relevant to girls' lives, identified after four years of intensive
research."
- Student.net - a site for college/university
students by students - Ivy League ones, apparently ("Except for Adam,
who's a senior at Columbia, everyone goes to Yale," the Student.Net tells
us). FYI, 98% of the 8.8 million US university students reportedly have Internet
access.
- Yahooligans! - Yahoo!'s "searchable,
browsable index of the Internet designed for Web surfers ages 7 to 12";
includes "Homework Answers"
- For musicians and music lovers out there, there's a nice site called youngcomposers.com,
where you can post your own compositions! According to its creators, the site
is designed to encourage young people's musical creativity by providing a
worldwide audience for their original compositions - as well as a community
where they can discuss their music. The site welcomes music in styles ranging
from baroque and other classical periods to rock 'n' roll to blues. Work from
composers in countries such as the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil,
Germany, England, and Thailand is published in MIDI format, but the site's
editor, Julie Richer, says they're planning to add other formats later this
year.
Top
Communicating
Kids
Internet Relay Chat
IRC is old-style real-time chat that's been around much longer than the Web.
You can get to it now via some attractive Web interfaces that present all the
information you need. At the kids-only IRC channels listed here, kids' chat
is monitored. For more detail on IRC, there's a helpful explanation at Mining
Co.'s Penpals
for Kids site.
- KidsWorld - Purports to be the safest
place for kids on the Internet. KidsWorld is allied with the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children and some law-enforcement organizations.
The site links to a place where you can download IRC client software in order
to get started chatting.
- StarLink IRC Network - Bills itself
as "a safe and helpful chat environment suitable for all members of the family,"
stating in its information section that it stands by and strictly enforces
its charter.
StarLink's monitored area, called KidzChat is for children 7-17. There are also channels just for teens.
- Parent Soup says it has IRC for kids (not just for parents about their kids), but after a lot of surfing through their chat pages, we couldn't find specific references to it. They're certainly not promoting it heavily.
Web sites with chat and other communication forms
Among these are MaMaMedia, Purple Moon, KidsCom, CyberKids and CyberTeens, mentioned in "Family Resources" above, because they offer a lot more than comunications.
- The Chatalyst - More for teenagers; parents will want to check out some of the rooms first, probably, because this site is undergoing "major reconstruction" and - at this writing - has no pages about rules, monitoring, or any other safety information. The URL is registered to a company in Omaha, NB.
- FreeZone - Registered to a new media company in Seattle, WA, this site has lots of communication forms - the Chat Box, E-Pals, Bulletin Boards, and Postcards - and manages them responsibly (with safety tips, a form for reporting offensive behavior, a privacy statement, and special information for parents and teachers). Chat is monitored, and board and "e-pal" messages are screened. When we logged into the Box on a Saturday afternoon, 91 people were chatting! There is open chat and "event chatting" (all-girls time, entertainment, homework help, etc.).
- Headbone Zone - Headbone has a kids room, two teen rooms, and a game room where people can play an interactive game and chat at the same time (Christopher would like this!). Kids can chat wherever they feel comfortable, regardless of rooms' designated ages. The rooms are open 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Pacific Time, which means the chat's monitored (this is good). :-) This site's owned by the Carlisle Sentinel newspaper in Carlisle, PA (we think this is a fairly new development).
- KIDLINK - a grassroots project aimed at getting youth of ages 10-15 engaged in a worldwide e-mail dialog (or would that be multilog?). Sponsors include universities, corporations, children's museums, and foundations. Here's a glowing testimonial to this project from PBS's Andy Carvin, writer and producer of EdWeb, which is all about education reform and technology.
- Mining Co.'s Penpals for Kids - Shauna Brunette, Mining Co.'s guide for this site, does a great job of explaining "IRC" (Internet Relay Chat), real-time communication over the Internet, which can also be described as the Internet version of AOL chat! The page includes descriptions of and links to the three kids-only networks on IRC: Kidsworld, Starlink, and Parent Soup. This site's own chat area is unmoderated, though, and it looks like Shauna can only stage chat events on weekends (we can sympathize!), so this is more a chat resource site than a chat site.
- techno teen - A very hip-looking and -sounding site (out of the Dallas, TX, area) for teens only, it includes chat and a new "Keypals" board divided into "Guys" and "Gals" where teens can find e-mail pen pals. The chat area has two moderated chat rooms for open discussion (no particular topics).
Top
Technology & Education
- The American School Directory (ASD) claims
to include "106,000 Web sites" and to be "the Internet home"
to all K-12 schools (in the United States) - a tremendous service, whatever
the number. The project is sponsored by Computers For Education, Inc., in
collaboration with Vanderbilt University, IBM, and Apple Computer, Inc.
- The Collaborative
Visualization (CoVis) program referred to by science teacher Judy Whitcomb
in our September issue.
- EdWeb - an experiment
in online information and learning with lots of great Web resources produced
by Andy Carvin, technological and geographical adventurer and new media project
officer at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Educators, it will point
you to WWWEDU, an e-mail discussion list (these are invaluable resources)
of more than 1,600 members from 35 countries about the use of the Web in education.
Andy, nice guy that he is, also has an "HTML
Crash Course for Educators."
- John Mullens's
EdLinks - John, computer technologist for Spring Valley High School in
West Virginia, created this rich and growing resource page "as a starting
point for educators who are interested in researching educational topics on
Internet." John says these links are just "a few of the better ones" he's
found.
- Scholastic.com's Parents'
Page - Includes internal and external resource links for parents, as well
as tips on "Cyber Safety" and ways to support literacy
- Stories
from teachers about the power of the Web in their work, both with students
and with their schools' communities - gathered by the National
School Network in Cambridge, Mass.
- Web Mysteries Explained
is a nice service by Serena Fenton at the University of North Carolina (its
part of her personal site). The page includes Tech Resources for Teachers
(and homeschoolers and parents), links to academic journals that speak to
the impact of technology on education, and a wonderful set of "Internet Basics"
links, with CNet's "How the Web Works." Serena taught 6-12-year-olds at Kid's
Web Camp, summer of '97.
Top
Teachers'
Home Pages
- Mathematics and science teacher Mark
Karadimos's Home Page - includes his "classroom constitution," a page
entitled "Why Must I Learn Math?" with good reasons for doing so, and very
credible math and science links.
- Village School
- includes lesson plans, education links, classroom recipes, Web site design
tips, etc.
- Margie's Writing
Classes - online courses for adults, seniors, and children, and great
links to sites about good writing and illustrating good writing
- Teachers' Library
Home Page - online teaching resources put together by UK geography teacher
Mike Shamash (who, through much persistance, got some funding from Lotus to
put together the site)
- Starry Messenger - Galileo
lectures on his "most recent discoveries" (with links to sites about Galileo
and the home page of New England's
Solo Performers, who teach through performance)
- Clive
Hodsdon's Modern Languages Links in the site of St. Peter's School, York,
UK
- Former teacher and grandmother Julie Brady
Ratliff's Firsteps - a site about children, parents, and reading
- A site for Pre-College
Guidance and Counseling - a fund of links from a guidance counselor, put
together by her teacher husband, Nick Wunder
- The North Rockland SEPTA
Home Page - a special education resource site put together by the North
Rockland, NY, Special Education PTA. Not exactly a single teacher's home page,
but teachers are involved, and the links are very useful.
- Tina's World
of Art - Tina is a substitute teacher and a recent graduate with a degree
in fine arts, certified in New York and New Jersey - soon to be a full-time
teacher, we bet! This is a nice resource page with links to some of the world's
great museums, as well as a few links specifically for art teachers.
- Kindergarten teacher
Jenna's home page - A nice resource page for teaching those wonderful
5- and 6-year-olds. Not just links to other sites appropriate for this age
group, but Jenna's own ideas and techniques.
Top
Resources
for Homeschooling