Educational resources and classroom activities for teachers

The internet offers a tremendous array of information to make PowerPoint classroom presentations more effective and interesting for your students. But sometimes finding the most useful sites can be a time consuming task.  And what teacher has time to waste?
Following are some of our personal favorites that offer unique and free (or discounted) resources for educational use.

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Interactive tools on the web offer up to date and stimulating resources for teachers and students. Explore media rich sites for tools to increase your students’ involvement and interest.

NEW on our List!
Share talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers at TED - Ideas worth spreading. Over 200 videos are available at no charge.  Inspiring and compelling!

Creative expression is a critical component of a complete education, but sometimes art and creativity get lost in the emphasis on testing and budgets. Hands-on art activities aid in brain development and help children learn in other curricular areas such as reading, math, and science.

The National Gallery of Art has an excellent tool for incorporating art into other subjects in schools. Whether you’re teaching social studies, math or science, the NGA Classroom lets you select a subject and find a full range of art activities and resources to accentuate the creative component of your topic.

Bring history to life with help from interactive resources available at The History Channel.  In addition to classroom programming, you’ll find study guides, history archives and even an Educators’ Forum.  Also check out the audio files available in the Speech Archive - hear how “words changed the world”.

People and their stories. Bio-search from the people at A&E Channel lets you search 25,000 biographies online.  Articles, links to related sites and people.  Also see the Classroom section of this website.  You’ll find useful content like Teaching Materials, Ideas from other Teachers and Lives that Make a Difference.

PBS Teacher Source has a searchable data base of over 3000 lesson plans and classroom activities.  The Public Broadcasting Service offers a wealth of information by curricular subject, topic and grade level and standard; details on PBS station outreach activities in your community; tips on how to effectively teach with technology; PBS television programs with extended taping rights for educators and more.

DJoin our community. We’ll notify you when we offer new products and send you updates and information on free downloads free sample  for use in your classroom.

We offer tremendous educational site license discounts. Contact us for details.

Need to trim your budget? Take a look at OpenOfficeorg - the free office suite that offers a word processor, a presentation tool, a spreadsheet and more.  It’s free and if you know Microsoft Office products, the interface will look familiar.

Are you using digital signs or electronic billboards in your school?  JPGS  and layered PSDs for your digital media network  are also available from Studio F Productions.

These sites offer PowerPoint tutorials and resources specifically for teachers.

A very simple 8 unit tutorial for K-12 teachers on how to use PowerPoint.  You’ll also find inks to other tutorials including other Microsoft products, how to use e-mail, networks and more.  All done at a very non-techie way suitable for classroom use.

Microsoft offers many specific resources for educators. You’ll also find a range of free classroom  resources, grant and scholarship information, lesson plans and more.  Of special interest are the tutorials, searchable by grade level and subject area.

From Education World, take a look at Lorrie Jackson’s “techtorial” on Creating a Class PowerPoint presentation.  Step by step instructions to help a student create a basic PowerPoint slide show, this tutorial also covers adding images, sound, and hyperlinks.

Here’s a handy list of PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts in chart form.  Make work faster and easier when building and showing slide presentations.

For even more valuable resources, check out the compiled links at Presenters’ Resource.

Find other useful research resources here.