Websites to help with School Assignments--Part 2

Continuation of the Family Circle article of Oct 17, 2009:
MyCollegeCalendar.org: Teens can start in their freshman year of high school learning what they need to do, when and how, in order to go about applying for the college of their choice. When and how to file applications, how to write the accompanying essay, where to get financial aid and scholarships. The "wizard" will set up a calendar for the student to follow! Wow- everything is "interactive" these days.
Scholar.google.com: Supposed to skip all those unreliable sources brought up by plain ole Google. The search engine only searches scholarly works: papers, books and articles from academic publishers, universities and other similar organizations. Says it's still in Beta form. Give you the option to search articles OR legal opinions and journals.
TheFreeDictionary.com: Not only does this site give you the definition and the pronunciation, you can have the word translated into dozens of languages and play hangman to boot. Information plus entertainment. Again, the way students learn today. There really is a lot available on this site: Legal dictionary, medical dictionary, weather forcast, quote of the day, article of the day, this day in history, etc etc. You could spend a lot of time here.
WolframAlpha.com: like having your own private know-it-all computer! Self-described as having a "long term goal of making all systemic knowledge immediately computable and assessible to everyone."

Twitter 101

Twitter 101, an article by Christian Tynan-Wood (Family Circle Jan. 2010), gives us a basic look at the Twitter (actually, it's twitter with a small case "t") phenomenon. To start at the beginning, twitter is a "free service that shoots your personal musings to the Internet in 140-character bursts." She suggests that teachers could use a Twitter-feed to "communicate info about homework, field trips, and classroom events." This, of course, "as long as her audience signs up to follow her posts." Followers (of your tweet) can be limited by going to the "account" setting and clicking on the protect button. You will have to approve anyone who asks to follow, and your tweets go only to them. Otherwise, anyone can follow you in the "live stream of mutterings" that anyone can access at twitter.com.
There are some neat features on twitter: a news feature allows you to get headlines, weather warnings, and alerts from the White House. Or you can just stick with the random thoughts from family and friends. For fun, you can follow the celebrities, the NFL draft, or other monumentally important happenings. So if you don't have time to read a newspaper or sit down and chat with someone (sigh..) you can always check twitter to catch up on the latest gossip, I mean news.
And if you find you can't live without the constant stream of information, try twitter deck. But that's a whole 'nother post.
Here's a link to twitter.

Animoto.com

Animoto.com: advertises itself as the "end of slideshows". Family Circle (January 2010) reports this: "Upload your favorite photos or video clips, pick a song and Animoto will produce a professional-quality movie that can be downloaded or shared on blogs, YouTube, Twitter, social networks and media devices." Wow- the only thing it doesn't do is the dishes. 30-second videos are free; full-length ones are $3 and an annual subscription is just $30.

Some websites to help with school assignments

From a Family Circle article in the Oct 17, 2009 issue (don't have title or author of article). Several great websites to aid in all sorts of school assignments.
BibMe.com Bibliography maker. Free. Recommended for All Ages.
Bing.com a new search engine designed with kids in mind. You can set it as your homepage and be treated with a "Picture of the Day" along with interesting info about the image. Describes itself as "a search engine that can find and organize the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions." Has all the cool stuff teens are interested in. Free. Recommended for All Ages.
My note: It is set up very similar to Infotopia.com, another great search engine, but one with research in mind.
Cramster.com allows high school and college students to study together in this social network built around learning subjects such as math, calculus, chemistry, and engineering. Kids can connect with peers from their class or around the world. They can also post questions and access study guides. Recommended for Teens.
Evernote.com. The website describes itself as a place to "save your ideas, things you see, and things you like." Accessible from any computer or device you use. The Family Circle article goes on to say that you can scan, photograph or cut and paste everything you need to remember, then store it on this site. To then find a document you have saved, just search for any word contained in the document. Recommended for All Ages.
Livemocha.com is a great way to learn another language. 26 foreign tongues offered. A series of visual, fun, multimedia classes. Wow- this really is the way our kids learn today. Free to join.

smparentalcontrols.com

Again, Rosalind (Family Circle Oct 17, 2009) recommends this site. It is a downloadable parent control program for cell phones. It allows you to turn off your child's phone service at night (or other times). I love what Rosalind says about the issue of parents trying to govern how much their child uses the phone, texts, etc: [To the parent]: "I don't understand why this is so confusing for parents. She's 13. You are in control here. If she's not furious with you at least part of the day, you're doing something wrong."
SM Parental Controls link.

schooltube.com

Rosalind (Family Circle October 17, 2009) recommends this site. Parents, kids and educators can use it to showcase all kinds of material: student-created videos, recent sports events, school events or class activities. It's not firewalled on school campuses and all content is "vetted" by the company before it goes live, so it's safe. School can create its own channel!
School Tube.com