AASL announces 2012 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning

CHICAGO — At the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2012 Annual Conference in Anaheim, Calif., the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced the 2012 Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning. In its fourth year, the list of websites honors the top 25 Internet sites for enhancing learning and curriculum development for school librarians and their teacher collaborators. The list is considered the "best of the best" by AASL.

The Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning were named so because they foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation and collaboration. The websites honored include: Projeqt, Gamestar Mechanic, Vialogues, Popplet, Jux, Comic Master, My Storymaker, Inanimate Alice, Quicklyst, Spidercribe, Stixy, Remember the Milk, Celly, Wiggio, Collaborize Classroom, Study Ladder, Historypin, Learn it in 5, ARKive, DocsTeach, IWitness, How to Smile, StudyBlue, NASA Kids Club and Springnote.

"The AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning Committee have reviewed over 100 sites this year to offer our current list that can be used to enhance student learning as well as librarian and peer educator development,” explained Heather Moorefield-Lang, committee chair. “These are strong sites, and the committee hopes users find them useful for library, classroom and personal use. This year, the committee will be recognizing the 100th site. This is quite a milestone!”

The Top 25 are free, Web-based sites that are user-friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. They also provide a foundation to support AASL's Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. The sites offer tools and resources in media sharing, digital storytelling, managing and organizing, social networking and communication, curriculum collaboration, content resources with lesson plans and more. 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.

Updated annually, the Top 25 Websites list is based on feedback and nominations from AASL members. School librarians can nominate their most used websites at www.ala.org/aasl/bestlist. 

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.