In the January 2012 edition of Tech & Learning, there was a list of 100 sites/apps they recommended for educators.  I found several I wanted to research further.  With that in mind, I spent a little bit of time looking at these sites and would like to share the following:

1.  Useful Charts - This site claims it's for lesson plans, study help, or quick reference.  Their homepage is divided into several categories such as most popular, science, social studies, English, and even "just for fun".  The first one which caught my attention was under the psychology section.  Simply clicking on the name or icon for any of the charts will take you to the appropriate page.  In the case of the Myers Briggs Types, you are shown a screen which includes information about the various MBTI types.  You can click on the Short Personality Test link and answer four questions.  Once you do that you get a four letter "code" which you can then read about to find out more on your personality.  This might be a great activity to do with students, especially at the start of a new year or new semester.  It could really make a difference in how you interact with students and even reach as far as letting them know how they can interact better with each other.  There are so many charts on this site, it's virtually impossible to preview them all, but hopefully you can find something you can use, either personally or with students.

2.  Draw Island - This is a very quick drawing program.  You can select from several sizes of drawing space and then use different tools on the left-hand side to draw.  There is a pencil, a line, different styles of rectangles and circles, plus an eraser, etc.  You also can change the opacity and size of the drawing tool used.  There is even an animation piece!  Once you are done with your drawing, you can save it as a png file.  Even though this site would be appropriate for any art class, you could also use it for other courses - for example, a student could make a quick illustration of what a poem or short story means to them.

3.  Fraboom - An online children's museum, Fraboom has many "rooms" to explore.  If you click on the Map beside the name at the top of the homepage, you can see some of the possibilities.  Being a social studies teacher, I checked out the US Presidents part first.  There were different activities and games to do and my favorite quickly became the "Name That President" game.  Presenting some caricature-style drawings of the different presidents, you have to select from four possibilities to see if you can match the president's picture with their name.  It was more difficult than I had anticipated!  Another interesting game was trying to decide which presidential function went under a particular category.

Try these three sites this week and in the future, I hope to share a few more of these interesting sites with you!  Have a great week!