Both of these sites are featuring lectures from the likes of Yale, Harvard, and MIT. But each have their own layouts, organizations, and niches. YouTube for example, features the well known “YouTube” interface that most of us are familiar with by breaking it down into “Most Subscribed” “Most Viewed” “Channels” and a Directory which is a staggering list of  the schools. Breaking it down by school is probably more useful if you are a student at a particular university, the rest of us will probably be hitting up the search. Regardless, it appears that YouTube is more of a casual lecture by lecture viewing.

Academic Earth, while not appearing to have as many schools on board, really shines when it comes to checking out lecture series and courses. Hit up the playlist and you will see what I mean. It also seems to do a better job at helping you find what you want by allowing you to narrow it down to topic, speaker, and university. Academic Earth also makes everything open meaning it is all able to be downloaded and embedded.

Living in the times we are in, a lot of content tends to be condensed, and broken into bite size pieces for the casual viewer. Since both of these sites are focusing more on the raw lecture and entire courses, it really lends itself more to the TED crowd, or those looking to down entire subjects. Regardless, they should be checked out.

They work by users marking their posts with the appropriate hashtag so the other users can easily follow what’s happening. Twitterers talking about things in the realm of education/technology will often use the #edtech tag. The neat part is that someone doesn’t even need to have an account to follow the action. Try it here http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23edtech. Currently there is a lot of noise regarding people joining certain groups such as the ed tech twitter group, and registering at wefollow, but if you sort through it you can find some good resources, tips, etc…

Thinking of joining twitter? You won’t be alone. You can start by getting an account and adding @teachertechblog. Then you can visit wefollow.com and add some of the top ranks for the #edtech group. By then you should be well on your way to a timeline full of… stuff… hopefully good resources and the like.

Looks like they have a fee based Schools version that gives you a more secure, private setting for making them. I’ll check it out later and report back on the difference.

Kevin MacLeod over at www.incompetech.com has produced tons of high quality music segments that served as a priceless resource for adding great music to each of the projects. Since scoring films/commercials etc… require fitting music to the feel of whatever is taking place visually, the search by mood feature allows you or your students to find exactly the sound they need. There is of course a search by genre option available if a certain style is required. Price? Just give credit where credit is due according to his faq.

Budget Idea

Consumer grade video cameras are cheap these days, and most schools will have one on hand. What most schools won’t have is a production level way of recording the audio. The solution? Silent Film. Windows Movie Maker actually puts together quite a nice little silent movie, and armed with the tracks from Kevin here is what you can do.

Video the students acting out whatever scene you wish.

Dump it into Windows Movie Maker.

Apply the Gray Scale and Film Age Filters to the video(which not only adds to the style, but covered for the fact that we had a really cheap camera.)

Slice the video and place plain black screen titles with an Old Timey font.

Head over the incompetech and download the appropriate tracks, and you’ve got yourself a nice little silent film.

Let me know if you and your students put one together. I’ll post it for all to see.

Curriki

If you’re deciding to go without new textbooks this year(or if it was decided for you) Curriki could offer you some good options for new supplemental materials. Recently covered Curriki, is a free online community for educators and boasts 15,000+ teacher created resources that are being shared freely. Their content includes tests, single lessons, units, and even full courses. Considering that a lot of their content is reviewed by Curriki staffers as well as users like yourself, you can pretty much guarantee finding something new to polish up your old content.

Open Office

Office software like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint come with a fairly hefty price tag, and that doesn’t include the yearly licence. Fortunately there’s a high quality free alternative. Open Office offers Word, Excel, and PowerPoint-like programs that feature many of the same bells and whistles that their high priced brethren include. A tighter budget might be a good reason to switch and save some money in the classroom, or even more if it could be done throughout an entire lab.

ePals

Since prices on gas alone will keep many buses from heading out for field trips, maybe a “staycation” style field trip would suit your classroom needs. ePals features a vast network of classrooms across the world and a platform needed to connect them for a wallet-loving $0. Which means that your students can communicate with other students all across the world without ever getting up from the computer. Their platform includes the necessary tools for secure communication, blogging, and collaborative projects that are just about ready to go right out of the box.

Whether you’re on a budget or not, ePals will complement just about any classroom. It just makes it better that it’s free.

Blogs and Wikis

Blogs and Wikis are two other free resource that will benefit students in any classroom whether your on a tight budget or not. Both will allow students to have a voice beyond the walls of the classroom, giving them ownership of their content and solid motivation to write. A couple sites you can score a free one include wikispace and edublogs. Both offer the security needed to get it done safely.

Check out TTB’s guide for setting up a student blog using Edublogs.

Free Content from Universities

Several colleges and universities already offer a lot of free content. Life Hacker posted a fairly large list of some of the better resources out there. You can find art galleries, virtual microscopes, and even some free courses to complement what you are doing in the classroom.

If you are still in a bind for cash you could always:

Sell your original lesson plans

Beg for money.

How are you saving money in your classroom next year? Let us know in the comments.