There was one link that I immediately knew I would like to use in the future. The Knowing Poe website is an excellent resource that I would utilize if Poe were in the curriculum. I did a bit of exploring on the site and was very impressed with its extensive amount of content. There was an interactive game that taught me the various speculations about how Poe died (alcoholism, rabies, foul play, "congestion of the brain?"). I learned something from my brief foray into the content of the website, so I feel confident that my students would learn something too. The "It'll Be the Death of Me" game was reminiscent of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which made it fun and educational at the same time. The site contained information about different points-of-view that Poe used in his writing, as well as an interactive timeline detailing Poe's life. The website also is a source for some of Poe's work that students can read online. I did not have time to go through all of the excellent interactive games and other fun resources on this website, but I would definitely like to use it in a future classroom. I was very impressed with this website.
The second website that I feel I may use in the future is Thinkfinity because it seemed like a user-friendly search engine for lesson plans. When I am low on creativity, I would like to use this website for some lesson plan inspiration. I ran a simple search on "Jane Eyre" to pique my curiosity, and received a handful of excellent lesson plans. Another search for "Anne Frank" yielded a lesson plan that involved blogging from the point of view of Anne Frank. The lesson plan acknowledged how previous teachers taught the book - either as a historical document or as a literary work, and the plan encouraged students to think of it in both ways. So I will most likely use this resource in the future as it provides comprehensive lesson plans.
References
Knowing Poe. (2002). Retrieved June 27, 2011 from http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/default_flash.asp
Thinkfinity. (2010). Retrieved June 27, 2011 from http://www.thinkfinity.org
Sounds like you found many great resources on the Thinkfinity site! That's also a great place for students to post multimedia projects and have them viewed by their peers and other teachers. Knowing Poe is also another great resource! The only issue I saw with your post was that you were missing citations and your references were not correct. The first element of the reference needs to be the author/organization name. If you look on the Knowing Poe site at the bottom you will see that it was created by Maryland Public Television - so that is the organization... then in your post - you would include a citation - (Maryland Public Television, 2002). Thinkfinity was actually created or is owned by the Verizon Foundation - so that is your organization for that site.
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