It's mid-March, which means it's time for our most popular newsletter of the year. Welcome to the Spring Break edition of the Big Fresh, where we highlight the favorite sites beyond Choice Literacy featured in the Big Fresh over the past year. You voted with your clicks over the last 12 months - these were the links you visited most often when they first appeared in the newsletter.

Even if your spring break isn't bringing you anywhere near sand and surf this year, I hope these fun and thought-provoking links take you to new corners of the web. Enjoy!

Brenda Power
Editor, Choice Literacy

Free for All

1. Vocabulary Enrichment

Wouldn't it be great if someone created an online game that builds student vocabulary in a way that has kids clamoring to play? And wouldn't it be great if we could solve the problem of world hunger? Free Rice combines these two worthy (if disparate) goals. Each word defined correctly builds your tally of grains of rice donated to poor communities, and the game is designed to scale the difficulty of the words up or down depending on your responses. This feature allows students of almost any age or ability to enjoy it:

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

2. Team Building

If you're always on the hunt for team-building activities and icebreakers for meetings, the Teampedia Wiki is a site you may want to bookmark. It includes dozens of options for everything from name games to diversity exercises:

http://www.teampedia.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

3. Literary Calendars

ReadWriteThink publishes monthly calendars packed with author milestones and links to literary resources on the web. ReadWriteThink is a joint venture of IRA, NCTE, and Thinkfinity:

http://www.readwritethink.org/calendar/

4. Social Networks for Literacy Leaders

Social networks online couldn't be more popular, and new tools are available to help literacy leaders harness the power of these networks to foster discussions around reading and writing instruction in their own schools and districts. A Ning is one example of an online social network and resource bulletin board you can design and tailor for curricular discussions in-house. If you want to browse a Ning in action, Jim Burke has created the English Companion Ning for literacy educators:

http://englishcompanion.ning.com/

5. Book Recommendations

This is a fun site if you are growing impatient with waiting for your favorite author to publish their next book. At What Should I Read Next?, you type in a favorite title and author, and the search engine gives suggestions for closely related books you might enjoy:

http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/search

6. Video and Audio

Teacher's Domain is an online library of more than 1,000 free media resources from the best in public television. These short digital videos, podcasts, and lessons are sorted by grade level, topic, and content area. Registration is required, but all the materials provided are free - there is plenty available for literacy educators, and the site is especially strong in science and math:

http://www.teachersdomain.org/

7. Music for Meetings and Study Groups

Unfortunately, we discovered after posting these links that music rights restrictions only allow access to these sites in the United States, so we apologize in advance to Big Fresh subscribers from other countries.

This recommendation comes from the teenage kids of Choice Literacy staff, who turned us on to a website with an amazing amount of free music. Our first thought was teens + free music on the web = something totally illegal, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover this site is legit. Playlist scours the web for legal music (from artists' official sites, promotions, and approved blogs), and allows users to create mixes for streaming of favorites. If you have web access at your school and can stream music, you can create a playlist of festive tunes for background music at literacy celebrations of any kind. We've found all kinds of obscure tracks from favorite artists here:

http://www.playlist.com/

We've also enjoyed Pandora, which creates a playlist for you based on a favorite artist or song:

http://www.pandora.com/

8. Family Involvement

The National Center for Family Literacy has worked with the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center to produce a wonderful series of podcasts on family involvement. These free 7-10 minute programs include listening guides and transcripts, and would be great to highlight in school newsletters or for staff discussions of family literacy programs:

http://www.arcc.edvantia.org/page/ParentInvolvementPodcasts/

9. New Authors

If you're wondering what the next big thing might be for young readers, you may just discover it at this site. The Class of 2009 features children's and YA literature authors with their first books coming out this year. It's always fun to get a peek at what's new, as well as the enthusiasm of real people experiencing the joy of publishing their first book:

http://www.classof2k9.com/

10. Book Exchanges

Of all the online book swapping services, Bookmooch is probably the most useful one for literacy leaders. They use a point system rather than one-to-one exchanges. It's a great way to clear out the books on your shelf you aren't reading (or found disappointing):

http://www.bookmooch.com/

11. Name Blog

If you've ever mumbled your way through the pronunciation of an author's name, you'll want to bookmark this website - it's a blog focused solely on the correct pronunciation of authors' names. And it's the authors themselves reading their names and explaining the origins, so you know it's accurate:

http://www.teachingbooks.net/pronunciations.cgi

12. Visual Search

Move aside Google - if you are a visual learner, you are going to love the new "Search Me" search engine. Type in any phrase like "literacy coaches" or an author like "Jane Yolen," and up pops a stack of actual web page images, rather than a linear text-based list. There are also icons below the search box to narrow your findings. The engine is still in beta testing, but you really have to try this one out to appreciate the WOW factor:

http://www.searchme.com/

13. Virtual Bulletin Boards

I'm still getting the hang of using Stixy, a free virtual bulletin board tool, but I'm already seeing the possibilities for literacy leaders are almost endless. If space is tight in your school, and your staff is weighted down by too much email, this is a wonderful resource for posting links to professional development articles, short graphic organizers and protocols, even photos from Open House or projects on the web for your teaching community:

http://www.stixy.com/

14. Vocabulary Minute

The Princeton Vocabulary Minute is great goofy fun - catchy quick tunes which teach words related to different themes. The "minutes" are sorted according to age-appropriateness (from K-12), and the downloads are free:

http://www.princetonreview.com/podcasts.aspx?uidbadge

15. Author Video and Audio Podcasts

If you're beginning to explore video and audio resources on the web for teachers and students, the free video and audio podcasts from Reading Rockets are a terrific place to start. Features include video and audio chats with favorite authors, as well as advice from education experts and videos of best practices from classrooms:

http://www.readingrockets.org/podcasts/

16. Book Previews for Struggling Readers

Bookwink is a terrific web resource with video previews of children's books and young adult literature. It's great for kids who are visual learners and need a little more background information for understanding books (as well as teachers who need some quick information on new titles):

http://bookwink.com/wink_about_us.html

17. Computer Programming for Beginners

Scratch is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's web initiative to build computer programming skills for students and teachers, and it's a delight to play with the materials they provide on the web:

http://scratch.mit.edu/

18. Designing Summer Literacy Programs

The Indiana Department of Education's Buddy Project has a terrific summer resources page for teachers and literacy coaches, the "Top Ten Ways to Help Parents Prevent Summer Brain Freeze." Besides an amazing number of links, the page includes a terrific simple parent newsletter template:

http://www.buddyproject.org/jfy/teachers/articles/summer.asp

Reading Rockets never disappoints with their resource compilations - their weblinks for summer reading preparation include tips, booklists, and research summaries:

http://www.readingrockets.org/calendar/summer#booklists

19. Visual Literacy

This is one of those brilliant freebies on the web that makes you instantly feel smarter - a "periodic table" of visual literacy. If you're confused about the difference between a "radar chart" and a "concept fan," you can click on the related links and view examples. This is a useful site to bookmark for reference when you're designing graphic organizers, with over fifty different visualization methods provided:

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html#

20. Free Photo Editing Programs

Many teachers wish they had access to the editing features of Photoshop, but can't afford the steep software price or learning curve for its more complex functions. There is good news - the free Photoshop Express has been launched on the web. It includes the most common features from Photoshop, plus a hefty amount of free storage space. You can give it a test drive here:

https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

It will be interesting to see if Photoshop Express can compete with Google's Picasa, the free photo editor and on-line storage service which I've used for the past couple of years. Picasa requires a Gmail account (also free), but couldn't be easier to use when it comes to posting and sharing albums or slideshows. I use the simple fixes like red-eye correction and cropping all the time:

http://picasa.google.com/index-new3.html

Plus a few bonus links beyond the top 20:

21. Author Visits

Scholastic offers a comprehensive planning guide for author visits, with everything from author contacts organized by geographic regions to checklists for coordinators:

http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/tradebooks/inviteanauthor.htm

22. Tech Tools Online for Students

T.H.E. Journal on technology in education recently posted the Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners:

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23898_1

23. Free Materials and Recycling Help

It's spring cleaning season in many homes and schools, in the midst of a tight budget cycle for many. The Freecycle nonprofit organization is a terrific resource for schools looking to recycle materials or pick up some free used books, materials, or furniture in their areas. You simply type in your location, and you're linked with local recyclers:

http://www.freecycle.org/

That's all for this week!

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