AASL’s 25 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning–now what?
Jul 20th, 2011 by Cathy Jo Nelson
The American Association of School Librarians released its 2011 list of the 25 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning recently. This list provides several topical areas, topics naturally aligned to the AASL standards, as well as a brief description of the tools themselves along with links. While the list is targeted at school librarians, the list is most certainly applicable to the teaching arena which encompasses all educators. As a technology leader in our building, it is our responsibility to educate our school environment about them, leading and learning right along with them.
The list covers the following topics:
- Media Sharing
- Digital Storytelling
- Manage and Organize
- Social Networking and Communication
- Content Collaboration
- Curriculum Sharing
- Content Resources: Lesson Plans and More
Many of the tools on this list were new to me, including Dipity, Digital Vaults, and PicLits.
So what should we as school librarians do now?
- EXPLORE! Visit each and every link to refresh ourselves or become familiar with the potential.
- Share as we feel appropriate in our school environment.
- Market these sites not only to teachers but also to administrators (both site and network) and campaign for their educational value and use (remove the filter!!)
- Use them as well–often times all it takes is our modeling their use for our educational communities to realize their potential.
