Free Resources from the Net for (Special) Education

Welcome to this Treasure Chest of Free Stuff.

Here’s another terrific “find” shared by Kevin Jarrett of NCS-Tech! If you haven’t been to Kevin’s site, I highly recommend a visit. Kevin puts up a new post almost every day, and if you are interested in using technology in education, those posts are well worth reading. I’ve learned a great deal and found numerous priceless treasures on Kevin’s site.

School Time Games (online resource) This site is a veritable vault of quality online games and activities that re-enforce curriculum content while providing a great deal of engaging fun. There are currently nearly 100 flash and shockwave activities housed on the site, as well as an impressive library of online videos. The site has targeted students aged 8 and older.

School Time Games has been created by a teacher named Jason Miller. All activities are chosen by his students. The students also test each one to ensure that it is completely appropriate in a school setting, that it is easy to learn, that it provides a reasonable degree of challenge, and that it is fun to play.

The games are helpfully organized by subject area: Social Studies (not unduly focused on the US); Language Arts; Science; Math; Sports; Logic; Art & Music; Arcade. The games require Shockwave and Flash players that can be easily downloaded and installed. The site is ad-supported, but exclusively with text-only Google adsense. Some of the games can be downloaded and played offline. In a few instances, the developoers of the games want you to purchase an offline version.

As a significant bonus, School Time Games also offers a collection of links to short online videos. The videos, too, are categorized by subject area: science; math; language arts; social studies; music & art; entertainment. I checked out several of the videos and found all to be of goood quality and from three to five minutes in length. The video content was invariably well worthwhile.

The screenshots below demonstrate the manner in which activities are organized and presented on School Time Games.