iCochise - Webliography
This is my Webliography, or a sampling of Web sites you may be able to use as you work with students (whatever their ages or discipline). If you have suggestions for things to add to this page (of if you find a broken link), please let me know.
Miscellaneous Links
Textbooks
The Assayer The Assayer is a catalog of books whose authors have made them available online for free. The site has been around since 2000, and is a particularly good place to find free books about math, science, and computers.
Bookboon This site has dozens of textbooks in PDF format. It is supported by small in-book ads, but the books are free. Check here to see if there is anything in your discipline.
College Open Textbooks This is a repository of academic tomes suitable for teaching in a college, but available free of charge to students and faculty.
Flat World Knowledge Flat World Knowledge is a book publisher with a new type of concept: let students determine how much they pay for books. They can choose a black/white version, color version, online version, or even a chapter at a time. In the end, students control the cost of their books. The Flat World Knowledge catalog is still fairly limited, but it is growing larger every semester.
Open Learning Initiative This site has only a few open courses (with books); but if you are teaching one of the courses they have available, you will find their work to be excellent.
Textbooks Free This site has a lot of information about free online books, including dozens of links to sites that offer free books. This should be your first stop to see if there are free alternatives for the class you are teaching.
Wikibooks This site has a number of good books that have been written by contributions from our peers; you may find just what you need. Perhpas Wikipedia is controversial; but if there is a good book available in the Wikipedia space, you can always correct misinformation during class (and correct the book itself!).
Learning Skills
Paradise Valley College’s Success Strategies Here are good tips about studying. taking exams, and other student skills.
Virginia Tech’s Study Skills Page This site lists lots of tips about studying and passing exams.
Object Repositories
The Gateway to 21st Century Skills This is a repository of information sponsored by the National Education Association.
Merlot This site has hundreds of great lessons developed by professors all over the world. You may find just what you need for a class.
WISC Online This is from the state college system in Wisconsin and there are a number of good lessons here for you.
Video Tutorials
Kahn Academy This is a video repository started by Sal Kahn, who made a few algebra tutorials for his family. Today, the repository contains more than 2100 tutorials and 100 self-paced exercises covering, primarily, mathematics and science.
Sophia This is a fairly new organization that permits professors to upload videos that students can view for help with their college classes. It is rather unique in that the videos are rated by other professors for accuracy, so students can be reasonably sure that what they are viewing is factual.
Other Resources
Web Archive This site bills itself as "Universal Access to All Knowledge." That's a rather grand statement, but there is a lot of information linked here. You may want to try their "WayBackMachine" to see some site as it looked years ago. They also have a huge repository of books, music, and other information. Maybe it is "all knowledge" after all.
Discipline-Specific Links
Anatomy and Physiology
Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) This is a library of information of interest to all medical professionals.
Heart Sounds This is a good tutorial on heart sounds and ECG's, including a quiz.
Medline Plus The National Institutes of Health site with excellent tutorials on a number of health issues.
Art
Louvre It's a trip through the world's most famous art museum - but you don't have to fly to Paris.
New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Want to see Warhol's self portrait?
Smithsonian Museum This is the largest museum on earth - and you're invited.
Astronomy
Astronomy Information This is Leicester University’s (England) astronomy site for teachers and children. There are great photos and activities for astronomy.
SETI The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) goes on, and this site has all of the latest information. This is not an “aliens have landed” site, but a scientific search for any sort of intelligent electromagnetic signatures among the stars.
Star Child This is NASA’s page for children to learn about space – and earth. (Be careful – I killed over an hour exploring this site!)
Worldwide Telescope This Microsoft site permits people to view star charts, zoom in on galaxies and such, and record their own commentary as they zip around the cosmos. There are great videos already created there, such as a tour through the various star classes. However, anyone can create additional tours, opening the possibility of an instructor customizing a tour for a specific class.
Biology
Africam Live cameras have been set up all over Africa (and other locations – like the poles) so you can look for animals. It's almost like a safari, but without the flies.
BioEd Online. Their tag line says it all: Biology teacher resources from Baylor College of Medicine. This site is an incredible resource for teachers in biology. It includes lesson plans, slides, videos, photos, and all sorts of help.
Earth-Touch. This site has scores of very interesting, short videos filmed all over the world (and underwater). You can watch African elephants, sharks, or other creatures in their native habitat.
Enature. This is one of the premier sites for identifying plants and animals around the world. The site also features a field guide for a given zip code, so folks can start looking for birds, plants, and other wildlife near home.
Visible Human How would you like to see a "slice" of a human being? Here's one you can slice and dice in any number of ways – and you won't even go to jail.
Chemistry
Chemistry For Kids! This site has lots of information, activities, and fun facts to help teach chemistry to children, no matter what their age.
The Periodic Table This page has some nice, printable periodic tables (simplified and comprehensive).
The Periodic Table of Videos The University of Nottingham has produced 118 videos, each depicting one element. These are educational, but also humorous, ways to learn something about the periodic table.
English Composition
Paradigm Online Writing Assistant This site has tons of information about writing. It is well organized and finding help is quick and easy. Additionally, visitors can purchase ($7.00) the entire site (about 200 pages) in a single PDF file to print and have available.
The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) This is one of the oldest, and most useful, composition tutoring sites available on the web.
Government
Oyez contains information about Supreme court cases, attorneys, justices, and all things supreme. You can even take a virtual tour of the supreme court building.
The Congress Information about the current activities of Congress and who to write to if you have a complaint.
The Library Of Congress The Library Of Congress has a lot of information you can use in civics classes.
Oyez Project. This is a great site for researching Supreme Court cases.
White House For a visit to the President ’s house, use this link.
History
History Engine This site provides a place for students to post historical articles (what they call "episodes") describing daily life throughout American history. It is a way for undergraduates to learn what historians do and actually practice that craft as part of a class.
The History Channel If you want to know what happened in the automotive world (or any other world) on a particular date, The History Channel can help. For example, you probably didn't know that on October 30, 1963 the first Lamborghini appeared at an auto show (the engine wasn't finished in time, so a crate of old tiles was placed in the space). Pick a date and find out what happened in politics, technology, literature, science, or whatever.
Maps of War. These are fascinating animated maps. Despite the name, there are maps of more than just war. You can watch, for example, the expansion of religion around the world for the last 3000 years.
The Valley of the Shadow This site organizes a huge repository of American Civil War source documents from Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Included are newspaper articles, diaries, soldiers' journals, photographs, and other materials. The site includes an excellent search engine and it provides a way for students to research the Civil War as it impacts local communities.
Voting America Maps of the results of every United States Presidential election from 1840 to today is available on this site. The results are placed on several different animated timelines so students can see how the United States' vote changes over time.
Literature
American Rhetoric. This site chronicles the greatest (and not so great) moments in American speechmaking. It includes transcripts along with audio and video files where they are available.
Gutenberg Project. This project is an attempt to scan and make available the great literature. They claim to have over 30,000 books available online. These are all royalty-free books and are generally the classics, such as Shakespeare or Twain. Since they are available in an online format, these books could also be read by a screen reader, making them accessible to the visually impaired.
The Internet Public Library This site has links to more than 20,000 online books, magazines, newspapers, and other materials.
The Literature Network This site has over 2800 books and 3800 poems posted online. That, though, is not so unusual since many sites have that many books and poems. What sets The Literature Network apart is a forum where people can ask questions or chat about various literary works.
Spark Notes OK, maybe instructors wish students did not know how to find this site; but they will. Spark Notes has scores of their books available free of charge online. Anyone care to know what drove Iago in Othello?
Today in Literature This site has an interesting literary event (or two) for every day of the year.
Mathematics
Math Central This is a wonderful resource page for teachers of mathematics (especially K-12) from our friends north of the border.
NASA Math This is a wonderful site, but more appropriate for advanced Mathematics students (high school or college). The authors have put together a number of very interesting problems centered on NASA projects (for example, determining whether the shuttle should launch based on an analysis of wind vectors around the airfield). It’s infinitely more interesting than calculating the time it takes two trains to meet!
Miscellaneous Science
American Museum of Natural History This is the site for the New York landmark that’s hard to beat for information about dinosaurs and other science topics.
BBC Dinosaurs Speaking of dinosaurs, the British Broadcasting Company has a Web site with more dinosaur information than you can shake a proverbial stick at.
Boston's Museum of Science The world's largest Vandegraff generator can make some pretty impressive electrical sparks – about 20 feet long!
Null Hypothesis. This is the "Journal of Unlikely Science" and it's a great time-waster related to science. The site is full of articles about things like "The top ten things that experts said would never work" (television is number one). You'll like the articles on this site as a bit of a break in the serious business of science.
Music
Classical Archives - This site has an incredible collection of classical music performances (the homepage claims more than 620,000 tracks representing more than 8000 composers). The music is searchable by composer, performer, era, genre, and any other method you can imagine. This is a great one-stop spot to hear (and, optionally, purchase) any classical music you can imagine.
Dolmetsch Online This site is a complete music theory class online. It is very thorough and includes sheet music, listening exercises, and supplemental tools (like the "1000+ Scale Transposer"). This site should be a bookmarked supplement for any music student.
Mutopia This is a library of more than 1000 free classical music scores. If you are looking for music as it was written by the composer rather than some arrangement for modern students, then this is a good place to look.
IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library This is a library of more than 90,000 free classical music scores and about 40,000 other works. If you need a public domain score, this would be the site to check. (Note: the server for this site seems to be up and down rather frequently. I normally do not list sites that are undependable, but the library is so vast that I have made an exception for this one. If the link does not seem to work, please try again at a later time.)
Ricci Adams' Music Theory This site includes a number of tutorials intended to teach a music student various theory concepts. The tutorials are easy to understand and the site is well organized.
Teoria This is yet another music theory site. It includes exercises, ear training, and other types of music theory activities.
Physics
Physics Lab - This is a series of 80 physics simulators from the University of Colorado covering motion, sound and waves, work, heat, quantum phenomona, light, electricity, and more. These can be run online or downloaded to use in a lab and are excellent simulators.
Fermilab This facility has a site where children can explore high-energy physics with games and other activities. I made a baryon while I was visiting.
The Physical Science Resource Center This site (from the American Association of Physics Teachers) has information and activities to help children learn about physics.
Social Studies
Country Studies This is the Library Of Congress’ Country Studies site. For example, did you know the largest export product from Tajikistan is electric power (do you even know where Tajikistan is)? You can find all sorts of information about scores of countries at the Library of Congress.
The National Council For The Social Studies This organization provides information of interest to all social studies teachers.