If you aren’t getting the Internet Scout Report (ISP), you should be.  It comes from the University of Wisconsin’s College of Letters and Sciences, and since 1994, it has featured some of the best web sites and tools on the net.  Here are just a few of the excellent sites I’ve seen in the last two or three issues:

  • Celebrating Wildflowers is an excellent site from the Forest Service that includes photos and information about thousands of different American wildflowers.  It also includes teacher resources, kids pages, and gardening tips. 
  • Can I Have a Word is a site from the United Kingdom that includes animations and audio clips, intended to inspire children to get interested in creative writing.
  • Voices on Genocide Prevention is a series of podcasts presented by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.  As difficult a topic as it may be, the reality is that there are millions of people are at risk in some of our world’s war-ravaged areas.
  • Virtual Labs comes from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and provides students with an opportunity to tour virtual lab environments for research in immunology, cardiology, neurology, bacterial identification and others.

These sites would make excellent additions to your collection of quality Internet resources.  Think of how they could add that little extra “something” to a child’s research.

ISP provides more than just great Internet sites.  It also highlights great tools.  Here are a couple of examples:

  • FastStone Capture is a free software download for doing quick screen-captures of virtually any screen on your Windows computer.  This could enable you to create more dynamic instructional materials for computer training or highlight content on a particular website without the need for a image editor.  Best of all….it’s free.
  • Wufoo makes it possible to create web-based forms to collection information on any number of topics.  The site lists such examples as workshop registration, customer satisfaction surveys, job applications, time sheets, recipe book, audiovisual collection.  The free account allows for three forms and 100 entries per month.  If you want more, there is a varying pricing options.

Check out the searchable archive also.  It has 9-years worth of content in its database.  The one down-side I’ve found is that they haven’t yet embraced RSS feeds, so the only way to subscribe is through email, but what a great resource!