AASL announces 2013 Best Websites for Teaching & Learning

CHICAGO – The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced its 2013 Best Websites for Teaching & Learning at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Chicago, Ill. The annual list honors the 25 Internet sites which provide enhanced learning and curriculum development for school librarians and their teacher collaborators. Now in its fifth year, the list is considered the "best of the best" by AASL.

Sites named as Best Websites for Teaching & Learning foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation and collaboration. They offer tools and resources in the categories of media sharing, digital storytelling, managing and organizing, social networking and communications, curriculum collaboration, and content resources.

The websites honored in 2013 include:

• Media sharing:
  Pinterest, smore, easel.ly

• Digital storytelling:
  inklewriter, myHistro, FlipSnack

• Manage and organize:
  BiblioNasium, LitPick, padlet, edcanvas, WorkFlowy

• Social networking and communications:
  socrative, QuadBlogging, Marqueed

• Content resources:
  19Pencils, iCivics, Wonderopolis, Youngzine, Garbology

• Curriculum collaboration:
  Seriously Amazing, Edudemic, Science NetLinks, TEDEd, Codecademy, The Digital Public Library of America

Links, descriptions and tips for the 2013 Best Websites and previously recognized sites can be found at www.ala.org/aasl/bestwebsites.

“The members of our committee were inspired by the hundreds of high-quality, innovative sites that we investigated and explored before developing this year's list,” said Donna Baratta, committee chair. “The selected sites will support inquiry and project based learning while immersing students in learning.  We thank all those members of AASL who submitted interesting nominations via our webpage.”

AASL President Susan Ballard comments, “As we celebrate the fifth year of AASL’s Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, it is not only gratifying to see the level of quality exemplified by this year’s honorees, but it is breathtaking to review past lists and realize how effective the selection process has been in the identification of tried and true quality sites.  The sites chosen for 2013 are truly reflective of the continued tradition of a thorough and exacting review in order to recognize only the very best.”

The Best Websites for Teaching & Learning provide a foundation to support AASL's learning standards and each website is linked to one or more of the four strands of the “Standards for the 21st-Century Learner” – skills, dispositions in action, responsibilities and self-assessment strategies. Best Websites are free, Web-based sites that are user-friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover.

The Best Websites for Teaching & Learning list is based on feedback and nominations from AASL members. School librarians can nominate their most used websites at www.ala.org/aasl/bestlist.  Nominations to be considered for recognition at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference must be submitted by March 31, 2014.

The American Association of School Librarians, www.aasl.org, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), promotes the improvement and extension of library services in elementary and secondary schools as a means of strengthening the total education program. Its mission is to advocate excellence, facilitate change and develop leaders in the school library field.