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200 Free Kids Educational Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Websites & More

Free educational resources for kids
Free educational resources for kids

This col­lec­tion pro­vides a list of free edu­ca­tion­al resources for K‑12 stu­dents (kinder­garten through high school stu­dents) and their par­ents and teach­ers. This page is being updat­ed and cleaned up dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis. Please tell us if we’re miss­ing some­thing valu­able.

Below you will find free video lessons/tutorials; free mobile apps; free audio­books, ebooks and text­books; qual­i­ty YouTube chan­nels; free for­eign lan­guage lessons; test prep mate­ri­als; and free web resources in aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects like lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, sci­ence and com­put­ing.

Home School­ing Resources Dur­ing COVID-19

  • Amaz­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: A spread­sheet of 300+ edu­ca­tion com­pa­nies offer­ing free sub­scrip­tions due to school clos­ings. Addi­tion­al help­ful resources can be found in this arti­cle by Forbes.
  • Resources for Edu­ca­tors Dur­ing the Coro­n­avirus Pan­dem­ic: Com­mon Sense Media has cre­at­ed a col­lec­tion of remote teach­ing resources, fam­i­ly edu­ca­tion mate­ri­als, and research-backed strate­gies to ease stress and encour­age learn­ing at home. On this oth­er page, you can find Online Learn­ing Resources to Sup­ple­ment Home­school­ing, Free Edu­ca­tion­al Apps, Games, and Web­sites, and more.
  • Zoom’s Free Video­con­fer­enc­ing Tools: Dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, Zoom is pro­vid­ing K‑12 insti­tu­tions free access to their video­con­fer­enc­ing tools need­ed to run online cours­es. Get details here. Also here are tips on how to look your best on a web­cam.
  • Free Zoom Artis­tic Back­grounds: If you would like to cus­tomize your Zoom back­ground, you can find free art from Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li (the mak­ers of Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away, etc.) You can also get free art from world class muse­ums. Instruc­tions for cus­tomiz­ing the back­ground can be found here.
  • Engi­neer­ing Chal­lenges for Chil­dren Dur­ing Lock­down: Design­ers from the James Dyson Foun­da­tion “have come up with a series of chal­lenges to help kids learn at home dur­ing iso­la­tion. Com­prised of 22 sci­ence tasks and 22 engi­neer­ing activ­i­ties, the Chal­lenge Cards can be com­plet­ed by chil­dren using com­mon house­hold items such as eggs, string and bal­loons.” There’s a relat­ed set of videos on YouTube.
  • Free Online Resources for Schools Shift­ing Online Dur­ing Coro­n­avirus Pan­dem­ic: A col­lec­tion of resources curat­ed by SchoolChoiceWeek.com. It cov­ers com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form resources, math and sci­ence resources, social stud­ies resources and more.
  • Ideas to Steal: A New Zealand orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides free activ­i­ties you can do with your kids, using basic mate­ri­als at home.
  • Khan Acad­e­my: Khan Acad­e­my has cre­at­ed guides designed to help par­ents and teach­ers get through the COVID-19 cri­sis.
  • Google Teach From Home: A cen­tral hub of infor­ma­tion, tips, train­ing and tools from across Google for Edu­ca­tion to help teach­ers keep teach­ing, even when they aren’t in the class­room.
  • Google Learn at Home: Google has part­nered with Khan Acad­e­my and oth­er learn­ing cre­ators to bring par­ents & fam­i­lies resources and activ­i­ties to make the com­ing days as edu­ca­tion­al and fun as pos­si­ble. These resources won’t replace any home­work assigned by teach­ers — but they can com­ple­ment that work.
  • How Schools Can Start Teach­ing Online in a Short Peri­od of Time: Free Tuto­ri­als from the Stan­ford Online High School.
  • Nation­al Emer­gency Library: In the wake of our cri­sis, the Inter­net Archive has made avail­able online 1.5 mil­lion books. They’re ready to be checked out.
  • Net­flix Edu­ca­tion­al Doc­u­men­taries: Dur­ing this peri­od, Net­flix has made some of its edu­ca­tion­al doc­u­men­taries free to stream online. The list notably includes David Attenborough’s nature series Our Plan­et and Abstract, which looks at the art of design.
  • New York Pub­lic Library COVID-19 Resources: Need some good book rec­om­men­da­tions? Read aloud sug­ges­tions? NYPL has your at-home read­ing needs cov­ered for kids of all ages. See sec­tions on Pre‑K to 2nd Grade, 3rd to 5th Grade, Mid­dle School and High School.
  • Scholas­tic Learn at Home: Day-to-day projects to keep kids read­ing, think­ing and learn­ing. Goes from PreK to 9th grade.
  • Free Online Draw­ing Lessons for Kids, Led by Favorite Artists & Illus­tra­tors: Dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, some well known illus­tra­tors (Mo Willems, Wendy McNaughton, Wendy, etc.) are offer­ing free draw­ing lessons for kids.
  • The Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter: This orga­ni­za­tion is offer­ing dai­ly live con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions for mid­dle school, high school, and col­lege stu­dents, avail­able through Zoom, and acces­si­ble on home com­put­er, lap­top, or phone

Free Audio Books, eBooks and Text­books

  • Free Audio Books: Our col­lec­tion of 450 free audio books includes many chil­dren’s clas­sics. The Wiz­ard of Oz, Grim­m’s Fairy Tales, The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and Mark Twain, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis, The Swiss Fam­i­ly Robin­son, Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els, Anne of Green Gables, Aesop’s Fables, The Wiz­ard of Oz series, and much more. You can down­load audio files straight to your com­put­er or mobile device.
  • Free eBooks: This col­lec­tion includes many chil­dren’s clas­sics in ebook for­mat. You gen­er­al­ly have the option to down­load these texts to your Kin­dle, iPad, Nook or com­put­er. Video tuto­ri­als are includ­ed on the page. You may also want to vis­it our resource: Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books.
  • Audi­ble Sto­ries: Dur­ing the COVID-19 out­break, Audi­ble is pro­vid­ing free sto­ries to kids and teens.
  • Bartleby.com: Gives you access to free online clas­sics of ref­er­ence, lit­er­a­ture, and non­fic­tion, includ­ing Strunk & White’s Ele­ments of Style, The World Fact­book, The Oxford Shake­speare, and The King James Bible.
  • Cal­i­bre: Down­load free e‑book soft­ware that will man­age your elec­tron­ic library, con­vert e‑books from one for­mat to anoth­er, and give you online access to free e‑books. We have more on it here.
  • CK-12: This non-prof­it pro­vides “open text­books” for K‑12 stu­dents all over the world. It offers free high-qual­i­ty, stan­dards-aligned, open con­tent in the STEM sub­jects (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics).
  • His­toric Chil­dren’s Books: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Florida’s Bald­win Library of His­tor­i­cal Children’s Lit­er­a­ture has dig­i­tized 6,000 books. They’re free to read online from cov­er to cov­er. You can find oth­er col­lec­tions by The Library of Con­gress and UCLA.
  • Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library: Pro­vides free access to high-qual­i­ty chil­dren’s books from around the world in dif­fer­ent lan­guages, includ­ing Ara­bic, Afrikaans, Dan­ish, Eng­lish, Far­si and beyond. Hosts books for kids 3-5, 6-9, and 10-13. Start brows­ing the library here.
  • Lib­rivox: A favorite of ours, Lib­rivox pro­vides free audio books from the pub­lic domain. You will find 5000+ books in their cat­a­logue.
  • OER Com­mons: Free, adapt­able, open­ly licensed text­books and sup­ple­men­tal resources.
  • Project Guten­berg: The moth­er of all ebook sites hosts 40000 free ebooks, and makes them acces­si­ble for Kin­dle, Android, iPad, and iPhone.
  • The Har­vard Clas­sics: Harvard’s influ­en­tial pres­i­dent, Charles W. Eliot, said that if you spent just 15 min­utes a day read­ing the right books, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. He pub­lished a 51-vol­ume series, now known as The Har­vard Clas­sics, and they’re avail­able free online. Ide­al for the old­er stu­dent.
  • Free Text­book Col­lec­tion: Our site pro­vides a meta col­lec­tion of free text­books avail­able on the web. It cov­ers every­thing from Art His­to­ry to Biol­o­gy, Math, Physics, and Psy­chol­o­gy.
  • Physics Com­ic Books — Physic­s­Cen­tral, a web site run by The Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety (an orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing 48,000 physi­cists), has cre­at­ed a series of com­ic books designed to get kids excit­ed about physics. Among oth­er comics, you can can read Niko­la Tes­la and the Elec­tric Fair for free online.
  • Radi­o­Lab for Kids: Kid-friend­ly sto­ries curat­ed by Radi­o­lab. All in one binge­able spot.
  • Watch Stars Read Clas­sic Children’s Books: Bet­ty White, James Earl Jones, Rita Moreno & Many More: Sto­ry­line Online streams imag­i­na­tive­ly pro­duced videos fea­tur­ing cel­e­brat­ed actors includ­ing Vio­la Davis, Alli­son Jan­ney, Chris Pine, Wan­da Sykes, Justin Ther­oux, and Bet­ty White read­ing children’s books along­side cre­ative­ly pro­duced illus­tra­tions.

For­eign Lan­guages

  • Open Cul­ture For­eign Lan­guage Col­lec­tion: This list cre­at­ed by Open Cul­ture offers free lessons in 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. You can gen­er­al­ly down­load the mp3/podcasts to your devices.
  • Duolin­go — Learn 30+ lan­guages online with bite-size lessons based on sci­ence.
  • Des­ti­nos: An Intro­duc­tion to Span­ish: This video instruc­tion­al series for high school and col­lege class­rooms teach­es Span­ish speak­ing and lis­ten­ing skills. Pro­duced by WGBH Boston.
  • Deutsch – warum nicht?: An exten­sive col­lec­tion of intro­duc­to­ry Ger­man lessons put togeth­er by Deutsche Welle. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
  • French in Action: Become flu­ent in French by explor­ing French cul­ture in this well-known video series for high school and col­lege class­rooms. Pro­duced by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and WGBH Boston with Welles­ley Col­lege.
  • Ma France: The BBC offers 24 video lessons that will teach you French.
  • Real Chi­nese: Pre­sent­ed by the BBC. A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese pre­sent­ed in 10 short parts with video clips from the Real Chi­nese TV series.
  • Talk Ital­ian: A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Ital­ian pre­sent­ed by the BBC.
  • Watch­KnowL­earn: This site has aggre­gat­ed YouTube videos that will teach stu­dents new lan­guages.

Video Lessons/Tutorials

  • Free Cours­es: Our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, con­tains count­less video lec­tures from cours­es offered by top uni­ver­si­ties. Some mate­r­i­al can be use­ful for high school stu­dents, or their teach­ers.
  • Khan Acad­e­my: The site famous­ly fea­tures K‑12 video tuto­ri­als cre­at­ed by Sal Khan and team. It cur­rent­ly gives stu­dents access to thou­sands of video tuto­ri­als that explain the ins-and-outs of alge­bra, geom­e­try, trigonom­e­try, cal­cu­lus, sta­tis­tics, finance, physics, eco­nom­ics and more. Videos can also be accessed via YouTube and iTune­sU, or on the Khan Acad­e­my’s web­site.
  • Crash Cours­es: Cre­at­ed by author John Green, this YouTube chan­nel pro­vides crash cours­es in physics, phi­los­o­phy, games, eco­nom­ics, U.S. gov­ern­ment and pol­i­tics, astron­o­my, anato­my & phys­i­ol­o­gy, world his­to­ry, com­put­er sci­ence, biol­o­gy, lit­er­a­ture, ecol­o­gy, chem­istry, psy­chol­o­gy, U.S. his­to­ry and more.
  • Learner.org: Run by The Annen­berg Foun­da­tion, Learner.org hosts mul­ti­me­dia resources for teach­ers, stu­dents and life­long learn­ers. You can browse their gen­er­al col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos here. Select­ed col­lec­tions are cat­a­loged below.
  • MIT-K12: Tak­ing a page from Khan, MIT is now pro­duc­ing ”short videos teach­ing basic con­cepts in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing” for K‑12 stu­dents. The videos are gen­er­al­ly cre­at­ed by MIT stu­dents. You can sort the videos by top­ic and grade lev­el. Find ver­sions of these videos on iTunes.
  • NeoK12: Des­ig­nat­ed a “Great Site for Kids” by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, this site pro­vides edu­ca­tion­al videos, lessons, quizzes and edu­ca­tion­al games for K‑12 stu­dents in var­i­ous sub­ject areas, such as sci­ence, math, health, social stud­ies and Eng­lish.
  • The Kid Should See This: This blog aggre­gates inter­est­ing, kid-friend­ly videos focus­ing on sci­ence, art, tech­nol­o­gy, and more. The videos weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly made for kids, but kids can get a lot out of them. That’s the premise of the site.
  • TED-Ed: The mak­er of TED Talks now pro­vides care­ful­ly curat­ed edu­ca­tion­al videos or “lessons worth shar­ing.” Top­ics range from Lit­er­a­ture and Lan­guage, to Math­e­mat­ics, to Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy.
  • School­house Rock: Ani­mat­ed musi­cal edu­ca­tion­al short films that aired dur­ing the Sat­ur­day morn­ing chil­dren’s pro­gram­ming on the U.S. tele­vi­sion net­work ABC. The top­ics cov­ered includ­ed gram­mar, sci­ence, eco­nom­ics, his­to­ry, math­e­mat­ics, and civics
  • Watch­KnowL­earn: This site has indexed over 33,000 edu­ca­tion­al videos from YouTube and placed them into a direc­to­ry of over 3,000 cat­e­gories. The videos are avail­able with­out reg­is­tra­tion or fees to teach­ers in the class­room and to stu­dents at home 24/7.
  • YouTube EDU: A curat­ed col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos from sources rang­ing from Sesame Street to Har­vard. Cre­at­ed by YouTube itself.

Art & Visu­al Cul­ture (Web Resources)

  • A Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World Class Muse­ums and 2 Mil­lion Works of Art: The page gives you access to col­lec­tions of dig­i­tized art from 30 world class muse­ums. It fea­tures more than 2 mil­lion works of art.
  • Google Art Project: A new tool that gives you access to more than 1,000 works of art appear­ing in 17 great muse­ums across the world. Using Google’s Street View tech­nol­o­gy, you can now tour col­lec­tions at 184 muse­ums world wide, includ­ing the MoMA and Met in New York City, the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the Her­mitage in St. Peters­burg, the Van Gogh Muse­um, and the Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam.
  • Art­Think: Cre­at­ed by the San Fran­cis­co Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, this site offers theme-based activ­i­ties in visu­al arts, lan­guage arts, his­to­ry and social stud­ies. The site lets stu­dents inves­ti­gate artists’ work, lives, and their his­tor­i­cal con­text.
  • Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums:World class muse­ums and libraries have made free col­or­ing books avail­able for down­load.
  • SmartHis­to­ry: Smarthis­to­ry pro­vides an exten­sive col­lec­tion of audio and video intro­duc­tions to works of art found in stan­dard art his­to­ry sur­vey texts. (See our post “An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry.”) You can find a com­plete col­lec­tion of their videos on YouTube.
  • Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel: Thanks to Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty, you can take an amaz­ing vir­tu­al, panoram­ic tour of the Sis­tine Chapel. Using but­tons in the low­er left screen en, you can move around the room and zoom in on the paint­ings, includ­ing those on the ceil­ing.

Geog­ra­phy (Web Resources)

  • Nation­al Geo­graph­ic: Pro­vides facts, pho­tos, videos, and more about coun­tries around the world — some­thing Nat­Geo knows a lot about.
  • World Atlas: An edu­ca­tion­al resource for world maps, atlases, and in-depth geog­ra­phy infor­ma­tion. Pro­vides teach­ers and stu­dents free maps of Europe, Asia, the U.S., Cana­da, Flori­da, the Caribbean Islands and much more.
  • World Data Atlas: Great source of world sta­tis­tics on every coun­try. Includes data on more than 2500 indi­ca­tors. Top­ics cov­er Eco­nom­ics, Demo­graph­ics, Health, Edu­ca­tion, Ener­gy and oth­er socioe­co­nom­ic infor­ma­tion. Includes inter­ac­tive visu­al­iza­tions like rank­ings, graphs and maps. All infor­ma­tion can be export­ed and embed­ded onto the web.

His­to­ry & Pol­i­tics (Web Resources)

  • 50States.com: Offers copi­ous infor­ma­tion about the fifty Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.
  • A Biog­ra­phy of Amer­i­ca: This video series for high school and col­lege stu­dents presents Amer­i­can his­to­ry as a liv­ing nar­ra­tive rather than a col­lec­tion of facts and dates. Pro­duced by WGBH Boston in coop­er­a­tion with the Library of Con­gress and the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion.
  • A Crash Course in World His­to­ry: Best-sell­ing author John Green gives you a play­ful and high­ly visu­al crash course in world his­to­ry, tak­ing you from the begin­ning of human civ­i­liza­tion 15,000 years ago through to our mod­ern age. The videos are ani­mat­ed and fun. We have a few more details here.
  • Abra­ham Lin­coln at the Cross­roads: An edu­ca­tion­al game for advanced mid­dle- and high-school stu­dents. Learn about Lincoln’s lead­er­ship by explor­ing the polit­i­cal choic­es he made.
  • Ben’s Guide to U.S. Gov­ern­ment: A primer on Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment for grades K‑2.
  • Bridg­ing World His­to­ry: Cre­at­ed by Learner.org, this site offers mul­ti­me­dia mate­ri­als designed to help learn­ers dis­cov­er world his­to­ry. The mate­r­i­al is orga­nized into 26 the­mat­ic units, which include videos and an audio glos­sary.
  • Democ­ra­cy Web: The site fea­tures an inter­ac­tive world map and an online study guide for teach­ers. Designed for use with upper sec­ondary- and low­er col­lege-lev­el stu­dents, this resource pro­vides an overview of the prin­ci­ples of democ­ra­cy and their ori­gins, as well as an exam­i­na­tion of how a vari­ety of con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal sys­tems func­tion.
  • Gilder Lehrman Insti­tute of Amer­i­can His­to­ry: The Gilder Lehrman Insti­tute of Amer­i­can His­to­ry is a non­prof­it devot­ed to the improve­ment of his­to­ry edu­ca­tion. The GLI web site fea­tures video/audio with experts dis­cussing var­i­ous top­ics in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Don’t miss their iTune­sU col­lec­tion with talks includ­ing: Famous Amer­i­cans, Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents, The U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, The Amer­i­can Civ­il War, The Great Depres­sion and World War II, Women in Amer­i­can His­to­ry, Lin­coln and the Civ­il War, and Slav­ery and Anti Slav­ery.
  • Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute: Google has built a robust, umbrel­la Cul­tur­al Insti­tute to house 42 new online his­tor­i­cal exhi­bi­tions. Each exhib­it fea­tures, in Google’s words, “a nar­ra­tive which links the archive mate­r­i­al togeth­er to unlock the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, nuances and tales behind these events.” Top­ics cur­rent­ly cov­ered include the Life and Times of Nel­son Man­dela, the Fall of the Iron Cur­tain, the Span­ish Civ­il War, the Life of Anne Frank, D‑Day, and Apartheid in South Africa. The Cul­tur­al Insti­tute also gives you access to super high res­o­lu­tion images of The Dead Sea Scrolls.
  • Google His­tor­i­cal Voy­ages and Events: This site is ded­i­cat­ed to the explor­ers, voy­ages, events, and his­tor­i­cal back­grounds of coun­tries through­out the world, and uses Google tech­nol­o­gy to bring this his­to­ry back to life.
  • His­to­ry and Pol­i­tics Out Loud: A search­able archive of polit­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant audio mate­ri­als for schol­ars, teach­ers, and stu­dents. It is a com­po­nent of “His­tor­i­cal Voic­es,” fund­ed by the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties in part­ner­ship with Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty.
  • His­to­ry Mat­ters: Designed for high school and col­lege stu­dents and teach­ers, His­to­ry Mat­ters serves as a gate­way to web resources and offers oth­er use­ful mate­ri­als for learn­ing and teach­ing U.S. his­to­ry.
  • iCivics: Found­ed by Supreme Court Jus­tice San­dra Day O’Connor, iCivics pre­pares young Amer­i­cans to become knowl­edge­able and engaged 21st cen­tu­ry cit­i­zens by offer­ing free and inno­v­a­tive edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als. iCivics has pro­duced 16 edu­ca­tion­al video games as well as vibrant teach­ing mate­ri­als that have been used in class­rooms in all 50 states.
  • Lib­er­ty’s Kids: An ani­mat­ed edu­ca­tion­al his­tor­i­cal tele­vi­sion series orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on PBS Kids. Teach­es 7 to 14 year olds about the found­ing of the Unit­ed States.
  • The Liv­ing Room Can­di­date: An archive of pres­i­den­tial cam­paign com­mer­cials from 1952 to the present, orga­nized by year, type, and issue, with teacher resources and playlists cre­at­ed by experts.
  • Teachinghistory.org: This site is designed to help K-12 his­to­ry teach­ers access resources and mate­ri­als to improve U.S. his­to­ry edu­ca­tion in the class­room. Pro­vides les­son plans and best prac­tices. Fund­ed by the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and the Cen­ter for His­to­ry and New Media.
  • The Inter­net His­to­ry Source­books: This site fea­tures col­lec­tions of pub­lic domain and copy-per­mit­ted his­tor­i­cal texts pre­sent­ed clean­ly for edu­ca­tion­al use. Host­ed by Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, this resource is bro­ken down into sub-areas: Ancient His­to­ry, Medieval, Mod­ern, Byzan­tine Stud­ies, African Stud­ies, East Asian Stud­ies, Glob­al Stud­ies, India, Islam­ic, Jew­ish, Les­bian and Gay, Sci­ence, and Wom­en’s Stud­ies.
  • What So Proud­ly We Hail: An edu­ca­tion­al resource about what it means to be an Amer­i­can, inspired by the anthol­o­gy of the same title. Through a series of online con­ver­sa­tions about clas­sic Amer­i­can texts, award-win­ning teacher-schol­ars Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass seek to edu­cate both hearts and minds about Amer­i­can ideals, Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty and nation­al char­ac­ter, and the virtues and aspi­ra­tions of our civic life.
  • World His­to­ry for Us All: A pow­er­ful, inno­v­a­tive cur­ricu­lum for teach­ing world his­to­ry in mid­dle and high schools. The site offers a wealth of teach­ing units, les­son plans, and resources. Ide­al for any­one think­ing about how to teach world his­to­ry to stu­dents.
  • World Won­ders Project: Cre­at­ed by Google, this valu­able resource lets stu­dents vir­tu­al­ly dis­cov­er some of the most famous sites on earth — for exam­ple, the ruins of Pom­peii, Stone­henge, Ver­sailles and more. It also lets you vis­it the Great Bar­ri­er Reef and Shack­le­ton’s Expe­di­tion in Antarc­ti­ca. The project offers an inno­v­a­tive way to teach his­to­ry and geog­ra­phy to stu­dents of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. Teach­ers can down­load relat­ed guides for using these resources.
  • Visu­al­iz­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion: A map of slavery’s end dur­ing the Amer­i­can Civ­il War. It finds pat­terns in the col­lapse of south­ern slav­ery, map­ping the inter­ac­tions between fed­er­al poli­cies, armies in the field, and the actions of enslaved men and women on count­less farms and city blocks.

Lit­er­a­ture (Web Resources)

  • Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books: Gives you access to clas­sic texts fre­quent­ly taught in the class­room. Includes works by Mark Twain, George Orwell, Aldous Hux­ley, Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzger­ald and more.
  • A Crash Course in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture: A new video series by best-sell­ing kids author John Green cov­ers Shake­speare, Fitzger­ald, Salinger, and Emi­ly Dick­in­son and more. See our post on this series.
  • Fol­ger Shake­speare Library: Offers a world of online resources for teach­ers — from les­son plans to study guides to videos — for teach­ing Shake­speare on the K‑12 lev­els.
  • Google Lit Trips: This site pro­vides free down­load­able files that mark the jour­neys of char­ac­ters from famous lit­er­a­ture on the sur­face of Google Earth. We offer more details here.
  • Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library: Pro­vides free access to high-qual­i­ty dig­i­tal books from around the world. Offers books for kids 3-5, 6-9, and 10-13. Start brows­ing the library here.
  • Lit2Go’s Audio Books: The Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da pro­vides an exten­sive col­lec­tion of free audio books along with mate­ri­als to help K‑12 teach­ers present lit­er­a­ture in the class­room. Find more infor­ma­tion on our blog here.
  • Poet­ry Archive: Search the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion’s archive of over 10000 poems. Search­able by poet, title, first lines and more.
  • Shakespeare’s Plays: If you’re look­ing for Shake­speare’s plays on the web, MIT offers the Web’s first edi­tion of the Com­plete Works of William Shake­speare. If you’re look­ing for a nice col­lec­tion for the iPhone/iPad, Oxford has you cov­ered. They offer the first com­plete col­lec­tion of Shake­speare’s plays, from the First Folio of 1623, in their orig­i­nal spelling and orthog­ra­phy. You can also read all of Shakespeare’s plays free online, cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library.
  • Shakespeare’s Plays Ani­mat­ed: The Ani­mat­ed Shake­speare brings to life famous Shake­speare plays. Leon Garfield, a well-known British children’s author, wrote the scripts, main­ly using Shake­spear­i­an lan­guage. And some tal­ent­ed Russ­ian artists did the ani­ma­tion. You can find free copies of Shake­speare’s plays in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books & Free eBooks.
  • Shmoop Learn­ing Guides: Shmoop’s learn­ing guides break down some of the texts most fre­quent­ly taught in high school class­rooms. Every­thing from Mark Twain to Ayn Rand to Shake­speare.
  • Invi­ta­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture: A mul­ti­me­dia course for stu­dents, teach­ers, and lovers of lit­er­a­ture. The course moves from ancient to mod­ern lit­er­a­ture, and is taught by David Dam­rosch at Har­vard. Find more details here.

Math­e­mat­ics (Web Resources)

  • AAA Math: Fea­tures a com­pre­hen­sive set of inter­ac­tive arith­metic lessons. Unlim­it­ed prac­tice is avail­able on each top­ic which allows thor­ough mas­tery of the con­cepts. You can sort by grade lev­el. K‑8.
  • Against All Odds: Inside Sta­tis­tics: This resource shows stu­dents the rel­e­vance of sta­tis­tics in real-world set­tings. Video series for high school and col­lege class­rooms.
  • IXL: Site fea­tures thou­sands of exer­cis­es designed to help young stu­dents (K‑8) prac­tice math. Fea­tures prac­tice ques­tions, step-by-step expla­na­tions, engag­ing awards and cer­tifi­cates, easy-to-read progress reports, and more.
  • Khan Acad­e­my Math: You can dive into the Khan Acad­e­my’s math tuto­ri­als using the fol­low­ing links: Arith­metic and Pre-Alge­bra, Alge­bra, Geom­e­try, Trigonom­e­try, Prob­a­bil­i­ty, Sta­tis­tics, Pre­cal­cu­lus, Cal­cu­lus, Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions, Lin­ear Alge­bra, Applied Math, Brain Teasers, and Vi Hart Ani­ma­tions.
  • Math Shack: Cre­at­ed by Shmoop, Math Shack allows stu­dents to prac­tice an infi­nite num­ber of auto-gen­er­at­ed math prob­lems in Pre-Alge­bra, Alge­bra, and Geom­e­try. It’s Com­mon Core-aligned, and stu­dents can see how they’re performing—by top­ic and subject—through an easy col­or-cod­ed sys­tem.
  • NRICH: The Nrich Math Project (based at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty) offers math­e­mat­ics resources for chil­dren, par­ents and teach­ers to enrich learn­ing. It pro­vides resources for stu­dents of all ages.
  • STEM From The Start: Designed for PreK‑2 learn­ers, SFTS uses the pow­er of edu­ca­tion­al video to help lay the ground­work for STEM sub­jects by engag­ing chil­dren in learn­ing that is fun, engag­ing and long-last­ing. Pro­duced by New Hamp­shire PBS & Lear­ni­verse Edu­ca­tion­al Media.
  • Wol­fram Math­World: Bills itself as the web’s most exten­sive math­e­mat­i­cal resource. Designed for more advanced stu­dents, this col­lec­tion is pro­vid­ed as a free ser­vice by Wol­fram Research, mak­ers of Math­e­mat­i­ca. Top­ics cov­ered include: Alge­bra, Applied Math­e­mat­ics, Cal­cu­lus and Analy­sis, Dis­crete Math­e­mat­ics, Foun­da­tions of Math­e­mat­ics, Geom­e­try, His­to­ry and Ter­mi­nol­o­gy, Num­ber The­o­ry, Prob­a­bil­i­ty and Sta­tis­tics, Recre­ation­al Math­e­mat­ics, and Topol­o­gy.

Music (Web Resources)

  • A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz: In 1961, Julian “Can­non­ball” Adder­ley, the jazz sax­o­phon­ist best known for his work on Miles Davis’ epic album Kind of Blue, nar­rat­ed a children’s intro­duc­tion to jazz music. Fea­tures music by Louis Arm­strong, Duke Elling­ton, Cole­man Hawkins, Thelo­nious Monk and Can­non­ball him­self.
  • Free Music The­o­ry Flash Cards: Doc­tor Mozart pro­vides free music flash­cards for stu­dents of all ages.
  • Clas­sics for Kids: Intro­duces ele­men­tary and mid­dle school chil­dren to clas­si­cal music in a fun and enter­tain­ing way. The site gives you access to famous pieces of clas­si­cal music online and also relat­ed lessons plans and activ­i­ty sheets. Plus it has a page with oth­er help­ful teach­ing resources.
  • Explor­ing the World of Music: Learn the essen­tials of music the­o­ry and how music express­es cul­ture in this instruc­tion­al video series for high school class­rooms.
  • K‑12 Resources for Music Edu­ca­tors: Valu­able resources for music edu­ca­tors and music stu­dents at all edu­ca­tion­al lev­els. Care­ful­ly researched and com­mer­cial free.
  • The Alan Lomax Sound Archive: This huge trea­sure trove con­tains folk songs col­lect­ed by the leg­endary folk­lorist Alan Lomax from the 1940s to the 1990s, as well as inter­views record­ed by Lomax. The col­lec­tion has been dig­i­tized and made avail­able online for free lis­ten­ing. Gives you access to 17,000 songs. More details here.
  • The World Music Archive: Run by the BBC, this archive allows you to sam­ple the musi­cal tra­di­tions of more than 40 coun­tries. India, Cor­si­ca, Chi­na, Cuba, Iran, Brazil, Mozam­bique, Turkey — they’re all rep­re­sent­ed in this eclec­tic col­lec­tion of indige­nous music.

Phi­los­o­phy (Web Resources)

  • 350+ Ani­mat­ed Phi­los­o­phy Videos: A meta col­lec­tion of ani­mat­ed phi­los­o­phy primers cov­er­ing phi­los­o­phy, from ancient to mod­ern.
  • Phi­los­o­phy for Kids: Ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing adults con­duct philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion with ele­men­tary school chil­dren, this site uses well known pic­ture books to raise philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions — for exam­ple Harold and the Pur­ple Cray­on, Har­ry the Dirty Dog, The Cat in the Hat, var­i­ous Frog and Toad sto­ries and much more. The site is run by Tom Warten­berg at Mount Holyoke.
  • Phi­los­o­phy for Kids!: This site giv­en the same name as the one above is run by Gary Matthews, Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts, Amherst. It also uses chil­dren’s sto­ries to intro­duce stu­dents to philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions.
  • Phi­los­o­phy for Chil­dren: A non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion affil­i­at­ed with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Depart­ment of Phi­los­o­phy, the North­west Cen­ter for Phi­los­o­phy for Chil­dren pro­vides les­son plans for using chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture to intro­duce phi­los­o­phy, activ­i­ties for engag­ing chil­dren in phi­los­o­phy, and tips for suc­cess­ful pre-col­lege phi­los­o­phy ses­sions.

Sci­ence (Web Resources)

  • 100,000 Stars: An inter­ac­tive visu­al­iza­tion of—you guessed it—more than 100,000 stars. 100,000 Stars was cre­at­ed by Google using data from NASA and the Euro­pean Space Agency. Before you expe­ri­ence the map, you will need to down­load the Chrome brows­er. We have more on it here.
  • Ask an Astronomer: In video for­mat, sci­en­tists answer ques­tions about the uni­verse. For exam­ple, where is the cen­ter of the uni­verse? What hap­pens when galax­ies col­lide?
  • Atlas of the Uni­verse: Con­tains maps of the uni­verse zoom­ing out from the near­est stars to the entire vis­i­ble uni­verse.
  • BioED Online: An online edu­ca­tion­al resource for edu­ca­tors, stu­dents, and par­ents. Ded­i­cat­ed to biol­o­gy, the site offers access to stream­ing video pre­sen­ta­tions and a slide library that fea­tures, among oth­er things, excit­ing les­son plans and activ­i­ties.
  • Bugscope: Lets K-12 stu­dents view bugs under a scan­ning elec­tron micro­scope over the web. From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois.
  • Built­ByKids: Encour­ages next gen­er­a­tion of mak­ers to tack­le the do-it-your­self projects of their dreams. Engi­neer­ing very 101.
  • CELLS Alive!: Brings togeth­er 30 years of com­put­er-enhanced images of liv­ing cells and organ­isms for edu­ca­tion and med­ical research.
  • Chem­istry Activ­i­ties for Kids: Fea­tures chem­istry demon­stra­tions, crafts, and projects that are suit­able for kids. Some activ­i­ties require adult super­vi­sion. Assem­bled by Anne Marie Hel­men­stine, About.com Guide to Chem­istry.
  • Dig­i­tal Uni­verse Atlas: Devel­oped by the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry’s Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, with sup­port from NASA, this dig­i­tal atlas makes avail­able the most com­plete and accu­rate 3D atlas of the Uni­verse from the local solar neigh­bor­hood out to the edge of the observ­able Uni­verse. Down­load it for free!
  • Dis­cov­er Space: The Space Foun­da­tion Dis­cov­ery Cen­ter in Col­orado Springs hosts STEM and space-themed edu­ca­tion­al lessons, videos, and activ­i­ties. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est are les­son plans fea­tur­ing Snoopy and the Peanuts Gang that are fun and easy for every­one to enjoy.
  • Dynam­ic Peri­od­ic Table: An inter­ac­tive Web 2.0 peri­od­ic table with dynam­ic lay­outs show­ing names, elec­trons, oxi­da­tion, trend visu­al­iza­tion, orbitals, and iso­topes.
  • Impact Earth!: An inter­ac­tive tool that lets any­one cal­cu­late the dam­age a comet or aster­oid would cause if it hap­pened to col­lide with our plan­et. You can cus­tomize the size and speed of the incom­ing object, among oth­er items.
  • Khan Acad­e­my Sci­ence: You can explore the Khan Acad­e­my’s sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy lessons using the fol­low­ing hotlinks: Biol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Cos­mol­o­gy and Astron­o­my, Health­care and Med­i­cine, Organ­ic Chem­istry, Physics, LeBron Asks, MIT+K12, Projects.
  • NASA for Stu­dents: Amer­i­ca’s space agency pro­vides edu­ca­tion­al media for dif­fer­ent age groups. See Grades K‑4, Grades 5-8, and Grades 9-12.
  • Eyes on the Solar Sys­tem: A 3‑D envi­ron­ment lets you explore the cos­mos from your com­put­er, hop on an aster­oid, fly with NASA’s Voy­ager space­craft, see the entire solar sys­tem mov­ing in real time. Cre­at­ed by NASA.
  • NASA Gate­way to Astro­naut Pho­tog­ra­phy of Earth: Brings togeth­er all images and videos of the Earth tak­en by NASA astro­nauts from space.
  • NASA Pho­to Archive: NASA curat­ed a big archive of his­tor­i­cal images into Flickr Com­mons, giv­ing users access to more than a half cen­tu­ry of NASA’s pho­to­graph­ic his­to­ry. The images are divid­ed into three neat sets – “Launch and Take­off,” “Build­ing NASA” and “Cen­ter Name­sakes” – and they’re all copy­right-free, mean­ing that you can share and use these images how­ev­er you like.
  • Ocean Defend­er Online Cours­es: Kids can learn from home with the Ocean Defend­er online cours­es that are devel­oped and deliv­ered by Sea Smart’s high­ly trained team of marine biol­o­gists and envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tors! Stu­dents in Grades 2-4 (or enthu­si­as­tic younger learn­ers) start their jour­ney to become an Ocean Defend­er through a series of inter­ac­tive and engag­ing vir­tu­al lessons with hands-on activ­i­ties to learn about the amaz­ing ani­mals that live in our oceans and what we can do to pro­tect our ocean.
  • Pale­on­tol­ogy Por­tal: This site is a resource for any­one inter­est­ed in pale­on­tol­ogy, from the stu­dent in the class­room, to the inter­est­ed ama­teur scout­ing for fos­sils, to the pro­fes­sion­al in the lab. Fund­ed by the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, the site was pro­duced by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Muse­um of Pale­on­tol­ogy, the Pale­on­to­log­i­cal Soci­ety, the Soci­ety of Ver­te­brate Pale­on­tol­ogy, and the Unit­ed States Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey.
  • Physics to Go: A col­lec­tion of web­sites where you can learn physics on your own, through games, web­casts, and online exhibits and activ­i­ties. Fea­tures a col­lec­tion of more than 950 web­sites with physics images, activites, and info. Pro­duced by the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety.
  • Robot­ics: Cre­at­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, this web site is designed to help K‑12 teach­ers and oth­er edu­ca­tors in devel­op­ing or improv­ing cours­es that use robot­ics as a tool for teach­ing STEM top­ics or robot­ics itself. Robot­ics is a great way to get kids excit­ed about sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math.
  • Roy­al Insti­tu­tion Christ­mas Lec­tures: Back in 1825, Michael Fara­day, the ven­er­at­ed Eng­lish sci­en­tist, estab­lished The Roy­al Insti­tu­tion Christ­mas Lec­tures for Chil­dren, hop­ing to get a younger gen­er­a­tion inter­est­ed in sci­ence, and the tra­di­tion has car­ried on ever since. You can watch the lec­tures pre­sent­ed by famous sci­en­tists online, includ­ing Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan.
  • Sci­ence Kids: Pro­vides edu­ca­tion­al resources for teach­ers and par­ents to help make sci­ence fun and engag­ing for kids. Fea­tures fun activ­i­ties, facts, projects and exper­i­ments that pro­mote a desire amongst kids to learn more about sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.
  • Sci­ence News for Kids: Helps kids (mid­dle school and above) stay up-to-date on sci­en­tif­ic trends. Pro­vides crisp, con­cise cov­er­age of all fields of sci­ence dai­ly.
  • STEM From The Start: Designed for PreK‑2 learn­ers, SFTS uses the pow­er of edu­ca­tion­al video to help lay the ground­work for STEM sub­jects by engag­ing chil­dren in learn­ing that is fun, engag­ing and long-last­ing. Pro­duced by New Hamp­shire PBS & Lear­ni­verse Edu­ca­tion­al Media.
  • TeachEngineering.org: A search­able, web-based dig­i­tal library col­lec­tion pop­u­lat­ed with stan­dards-based engi­neer­ing cur­ric­u­la for use by K‑12 teach­ers and engi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty to make applied sci­ence and math (engi­neer­ing) come alive in K‑12 set­tings.
  • The Hab­it­able Plan­et: A Sys­tems Approach to Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence — A mul­ti­me­dia course for high school teach­ers and adult learn­ers inter­est­ed in study­ing envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence. The Web site pro­vides access to course con­tent and activ­i­ties devel­oped by lead­ing sci­en­tists and researchers in the field. Joint­ly cre­at­ed by Har­vard and the Smith­son­ian.
  • The Known Uni­verse: This video takes view­ers from the Himalayas through our atmos­phere and the inky black of space to the after­glow of the Big Bang. The film is made with the Dig­i­tal Uni­verse Atlas (down­load it here) that is main­tained and updat­ed by astro­physi­cists at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry.
  • Under­stand­ing Evo­lu­tion: Cre­at­ed for K‑12 teach­ers, this online resource pro­vides a one-stop, com­pre­hen­sive resource on evo­lu­tion. This site is a col­lab­o­ra­tive project of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Muse­um of Pale­on­tol­ogy and the Nation­al Cen­ter for Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion.
  • USGS Sci­ence Resources: Assem­bled by the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, this site brings togeth­er lots of resources that will teach stu­dents about Biol­o­gy, Geog­ra­phy, Geol­o­gy, Water, and more. The site is divid­ed into sec­tions: K‑2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.

Tech­nol­o­gy (Web Resources)

  • Codecad­e­my: This ven­ture gives stu­dents the abil­i­ty to take free com­put­er sci­ence lessons online. Teach­es every­thing from HTML basics to Python in a “user active” style. We have more details here.
  • Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: The more advanced stu­dent can watch lec­tures from com­put­er sci­ence cours­es pre­sent­ed at great uni­ver­si­ties.

Khan Acad­e­my Tech­nol­o­gy: Find lessons in Draw­ing & Ani­ma­tion and Pro­gram­ming Basics.

Edu­ca­tion­al Apps (Most­ly for iPhone/iPad)

  • Aesop’s Fables Inter­ac­tive Book: The Library of Con­gress has released a free app for use on iPhones, iPads and Android plat­forms. This inno­v­a­tive read­ing expe­ri­ence has been adapt­ed from the 1919 book The Aesop for Chil­dren, and includes out­stand­ing draw­ings by Milo Win­ter, a not­ed illus­tra­tor.
  • Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry: Cos­mic Dis­cov­er­ies: Take a ride with the Museum’s astro­physi­cists through our Solar Sys­tem, the Milky Way Galaxy, and beyond. Cos­mic Dis­cov­er­ies is the first app to col­lect near­ly 1,000 stun­ning astro­nom­ic images.
  • Babbel: Sup­port­ed by the Euro­pean Region­al Devel­op­ment Fund, the Babbel apps are avail­able for 11 lan­guages, and con­tain 2,000-3,000 vocab­u­lary words per lan­guage. All words are accom­pa­nied by images and pro­nounced for you by native speak­ers.
  • Brain­Pop Fea­tured Movie: This well-respect­ed app presents a dif­fer­ent ani­mat­ed movie every day cov­er­ing sub­jects relat­ed to his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent events, and then lets young­sters test their new knowl­edge with an inter­ac­tive quiz.
  • 3D Brain: Dis­cov­er how each brain region func­tions, what hap­pens when the brain is injured, and how it is involved in men­tal ill­ness. Each detailed struc­ture comes with infor­ma­tion on func­tions, dis­or­ders, brain dam­age, case stud­ies, and links to mod­ern research. Use your touch screen to rotate and zoom around 29 inter­ac­tive struc­tures.
  • Col­or Uncov­ered: Beau­ti­ful app teach­es you the basics of col­or sci­ence using smart, inter­ac­tive opti­cal illu­sions.
  • Dictionary.com: Pret­ty sim­ple, but handy. A good dic­tio­nary in your pock­et.
  • Earth­lapse: Turn your iPad or iPhone into a win­dow aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. Expe­ri­ence stun­ning views of plan­et Earth cap­tured by NASA astro­nauts. Touch the views and con­trol the plan­et with your fin­ger.
  • Edu­Cre­ations: This app will turn your iPad into a white­board where you can do screen­cast­ing.
  • Ever­note: A handy app for tak­ing notes.
  • Exo­plan­et: This app offers a com­pre­hen­sive visu­al data­base of all known exo­plan­ets (plan­ets orbit­ing oth­er stars) dis­cov­ered so far. It is fre­quent­ly updat­ed as new dis­cov­er­ies are con­firmed.
  • Foto­pe­dia UNESCO World Her­itage Site: Draw­ing on 20,000 curat­ed pho­tos, this free iPhone/iPad app lets you vis­it (at least vir­tu­al­ly) 890 UNESCO World Her­itage sites. In a mat­ter of min­utes, you can move from Notre Dame in Paris, to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, to Machu Pic­chu in Peru, to the Great Pyra­mid of Giza in Egypt. Foto­pe­dia offers a num­ber of oth­er great apps relat­ed to for­eign trav­el here.
  • Gene Screen: A fun way to learn how reces­sive genet­ic traits and dis­eases are inher­it­ed and why cer­tain dis­eases are more preva­lent in dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions. Gene Screen also pro­vides infor­ma­tion on some reces­sive genet­ic dis­eases and genet­ic screen­ing pro­grams.
  • Google Sky Map: Sky Map enables users to iden­ti­fy stars and plan­ets by point­ing their devices towards these objects in the sky. Users can zoom in and out, and switch var­i­ous lay­ers such as con­stel­la­tions, plan­ets, grids, and deep sky objects. Users can also deter­mine the loca­tions of plan­ets and stars rel­a­tive to their own cur­rent loca­tions.
  • iTune­sU: The iTunes U app gives you access to com­plete cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er schools — plus the world’s largest dig­i­tal cat­a­log of free edu­ca­tion con­tent — right on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You can find many of these cours­es on our list 550 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.
  • Khan Acad­e­my: This new app for the iPhone and iPad gives users access to near­ly 3,500 videos cov­er­ing K‑12 math, sci­ence top­ics such as biol­o­gy, chem­istry, physics, and the human­i­ties.
  • Let­ter­press: The high­ly rat­ed app lets young stu­dents find words, steal tiles, and col­or the board!
  • Lou­vre Muse­um: From the most impor­tant muse­um in Paris, this app pro­vides a vir­tu­al tour of the Lou­vre’s gal­leries and lets users check out the works of every­one from DaVin­ci to Michelan­ge­lo. The app gets you up close and per­son­al with paint­ings, draw­ings, prints, sculp­tures, and even the French Crown Jew­els.
  • Mol­e­cules: An app for view­ing three-dimen­sion­al ren­der­ings of mol­e­cules and manip­u­lat­ing them using your fin­gers. You can rotate the mol­e­cules by mov­ing your fin­ger across the dis­play, zoom in or out by using two-fin­ger pinch ges­tures, or pan the mol­e­cule by mov­ing two fin­gers across the screen at once.
  • Mind­snacks Span­ish Lessons: Award win­ning app teach­es stu­dents the lan­guage skills they need: get­ting direc­tions, order­ing food, meet­ing new friends, shop­ping, relax­ing. The intro­duc­to­ry lev­el is free, although more advanced lev­els require pay­ing for the app.
  • Moon: The per­fect resource to help stu­dents learn about the moon.
  • Moon Globe: This free app puts the moon in your pock­et with 3D graph­ics and touch screen nav­i­ga­tion.
  • Muse­um of Mod­ern Art: The MoMA lets you take a close look at art by Abstract Expres­sion­ists, includ­ing Jack­son Pol­lock, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Willem de Koon­ing and many oth­ers.
  • Name It: “Name It” is a biol­o­gy learn­ing app for the iPhone. It will teach you to rec­og­nize species by pic­tures. Pro­vides access to 1,117,900 species pages and 1,914,317 pic­tures. Based on the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life, the open source pro­jet to doc­u­ment all liv­ing organ­isms on earth.
  • NASA: Dis­cov­er a wealth of great space trav­el infor­ma­tion on this free app. The NASA App col­lects, cus­tomizes and deliv­ers an exten­sive selec­tion of dynam­i­cal­ly updat­ed infor­ma­tion, images and videos from var­i­ous online NASA sources in a con­ve­nient mobile pack­age. Avail­able for Android, iPhone and iPad.
  • Offi­cial SAT Ques­tion of the Day: Cre­at­ed the Col­lege Board, this app gives you a new offi­cial SAT ques­tion every day. It also gives you a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of your per­for­mance.
  • Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments in HD: Cre­at­ed by Mer­ck, this chem­istry app has received lots of praise.
  • Plan­ets: A 3D guide to the solar sys­tem for aspir­ing astronomers. Down­loaded over 8 mil­lion times, the app lets kids locate plan­ets with a flat view of sky in 2D, or a plan­e­tar­i­um style view of the sky in 3D.
  • Poet­ry from the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion: From William Shake­speare to César Valle­jo to Heather McHugh, the Poet­ry Foundation’s app turns your phone into a mobile poet­ry library.
  • Project Noah: A great tool to explore and doc­u­ment wildlife and a plat­form to har­ness the pow­er of cit­i­zen sci­en­tists every­where. Avail­able for Apple devices and the Android.
  • Quick Graph: A pow­er­ful, high qual­i­ty, graph­ic cal­cu­la­tor that takes full advan­tage of the mul­ti­touch dis­play and the pow­er­ful graph­ic capa­bil­i­ties of the iPad and iPhone, in both 2D and 3D.
  • Sci­ence 360: The Science360 for iPad app, cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, pro­vides easy access to engag­ing sci­ence and engi­neer­ing images and video from around the globe and a news feed fea­tur­ing break­ing news from NSF-fund­ed insti­tu­tions.
  • Shake­speare: A nice app that puts the com­plete works of Shake­speare on your iPhone. As you will see, the app comes with some handy func­tion­al­i­ty: you can search the text by key­word and also increase/decrease the fonts. Plus the app auto­mat­i­cal­ly remem­bers the last page you read.
  • Sight Words List: Sight Words, also known as the Dolch List, are an inte­gral part of learn­ing how to read. The Dolch Word list con­tains 315 words that are bro­ken down into appro­pri­ate age groups. Ide­al for kids 1 — 5 years old.
  • Space­craft 3D: NASA’s Space­craft 3D is an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty appli­ca­tion that lets you learn about and inter­act with a vari­ety of space­craft that are used to explore our solar sys­tem, study Earth, and observe the uni­verse.
  • Spar­kNotes: Spar­kNotes — the pub­lish­er of pop­u­lar lit­er­ary study guides — offers a free iPhone app that fea­tures 50 pre-installed study guides. And it also gives you access to hun­dreds of study guides avail­able for view­ing online.
  • Stan­za: Anoth­er good app for down­load­ing free e‑books on the iPhone. Once you down­load the app, nav­i­gate to the “Online Cat­a­log” sec­tion and then focus on the “Project Guten­berg” mate­ri­als, which con­tain a long list of free clas­sics.
  • Street­Mu­se­um: This free iPhone app from the Muse­um of Lon­don over­lays 400 years of his­toric images on today’s city streets.
  • TED: TEDTalks need no intro­duc­tion. They’re per­haps the most pop­u­lar video lec­tures on the web, fea­tur­ing talks by “the world’s lead­ing thinkers and doers.” Now you can access these talks on your mobile phone too.
  • The Ele­men­tals: Intro­duces chil­dren to the dif­fer­ent ele­ments of the peri­od­ic table. High­ly rat­ed and free.
  • Today in His­to­ry: Lists notable events in his­to­ry and when impor­tant peo­ple were born/died. Includes over 100,000 events.
  • USA Pres­i­dents: A flash card app that teach­es you cool facts about the his­tor­i­cal line of Amer­i­can pres­i­dents.
  • Yours, Vin­cent The Let­ters of Vin­cent Van Gogh: Pro­vid­ed by the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam, this appli­ca­tion uses the artist’s own let­ters to explore the life and times of the great painter. Includes videos and images of Van Gogh paint­ings.

YouTube Chan­nels

  • Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry: This chan­nel fea­tures the excel­lent “Known Uni­verse” video, which gives you a six-minute jour­ney from Mt. Ever­est to the far­thest reach­es of the observ­able uni­verse.
  • Bad Astron­o­my: Bad Astron­o­my is all about astron­o­my, space, and sci­ence. The videos are cre­at­ed by Phil Plait, an astronomer, writer, and some­times TV-sci­ence-show host.
  • HooplaKidz: This chan­nel is ded­i­cat­ed to ani­mat­ed nurs­ery rhymes and sto­ries designed to enter­tain and edu­cate chil­dren between the ages of 2 and 8.
  • Edu­topia: Offers inspi­ra­tion and infor­ma­tion for what works in edu­ca­tion. Edu­topia is run by The George Lucas Edu­ca­tion­al Foun­da­tion.
  • Khan Acad­e­my: This chan­nel fea­tures thou­sands of videos that will teach stu­dents the ins and outs of alge­bra, geom­e­try, trigonom­e­try, cal­cu­lus, sta­tis­tics, finance, physics, eco­nom­ics and more.
  • Minute Physics: Cool sci­ence videos that are all about get­ting peo­ple into learn­ing physics.
  • NASA Tele­vi­sion: NASA’s mis­sion is to pio­neer the future in space explo­ration, sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and aero­nau­tics research. This chan­nel helps explore fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about our place in the uni­verse.
  • Num­ber­phile: Videos about num­bers — it’s that sim­ple. Videos by Brady Haran.
  • Peri­od­ic Videos: Your ulti­mate chan­nel for all things chem­istry. A video about each ele­ment on the peri­od­ic table.
  • Sick Sci­ence: Videos and cool sci­ence exper­i­ments from Steve Span­gler and SteveSpanglerScience.com
  • Space­Lab: Can plants sur­vive beyond Earth? Can pro­teins observed in space reveal the mys­ter­ies of life? These ques­tions and more get answered by Space­Lab, a YouTube chan­nel cre­at­ed by Google and Leno­vo, in coop­er­a­tion with Space Adven­tures, Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA), the Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aero­space Explo­ration Agency (JAXA).
  • YouTube EDU: YouTube hosts a sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to aca­d­e­m­ic videos. It’s a lit­tle bit of a mixed bag, but it fea­tures some qual­i­ty videos.

Test Prep (Web Resources)

  • Khan Acad­e­my Tuto­ri­als: SAT Math, GMAT, CAHSEE, Cal­i­for­nia Stan­dards Test, Com­pe­ti­tion Math, IIT JEE.
  • Offi­cial SAT Ques­tion of the Day: Cre­at­ed the Col­lege Board, the iPhone/iPad app gives you a new offi­cial SAT ques­tion every day. It also gives you a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of your per­for­mance.
  • SAT Prac­tice: The Col­lege Board (the mak­ers of the SAT exam) also hosts free prac­tice exer­cis­es on its web site.

Gen­er­al Ref­er­ence (Web Resources)

  • Bartleby.com: Gives you access to free online clas­sics of ref­er­ence, lit­er­a­ture and non­fic­tion, includ­ing Strunk & White’s Ele­ments of Style, The World Fact­book, The Oxford Shake­speare, and The King James Bible.
  • Convert-me.com: Pro­vides instant con­ver­sions for thou­sands of var­i­ous units and mea­sure­ments, both com­mon (e.g., U.S. and met­ric) and quite exot­ic, such as ancient Greek and Roman mea­sure­ments.
  • Dynam­ic Peri­od­ic Table: An inter­ac­tive Web 2.0 peri­od­ic table with dynam­ic lay­outs show­ing names, elec­trons, oxi­da­tion, trend visu­al­iza­tion, orbitals, and iso­topes.
  • Ency­clo­pe­dia Smith­son­ian: The Smith­son­ian pro­vides a set of handy online resources across many dis­ci­plines. From Art & Design to Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy.
  • Inter­ac­tive Time­lines: This site allows peo­ple to cre­ate inter­ac­tive time­lines, which they can share any­where on the web.
  • Unz.org: This right-lean­ing archive gives users access to Amer­i­can peri­od­i­cals going back to 1821. The archive also has a col­lec­tion of free books and videos & film. We have more on the archive here.
  • World Atlas: An edu­ca­tion­al resource for world maps, atlases, and in-depth geog­ra­phy infor­ma­tion. Pro­vides teach­ers and stu­dents free maps of Europe, the U.S., Cana­da, Flori­da, the Caribbean Islands and much more.

Teacher and Par­ent Resources

  • Cli­mate Class­room: A Nation­al Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion ini­tia­tive that focus­es on cre­at­ing age- and devel­op­men­tal­ly appro­pri­ate cur­ric­u­la and projects that edu­cate youth about the caus­es of and reme­dies for glob­al warm­ing. The NWF also offers a great num­ber of les­son plans.
  • Com­mon Sense Media: Non prof­it ded­i­cat­ed to improv­ing the lives of kids & fam­i­lies by pro­vid­ing the trust­wor­thy infor­ma­tion about edu­ca­tion, media and tech­nol­o­gy. Includes reviews of movies, games, apps, & more so par­ents can make informed deci­sions.
  • Cur­ri­ki: The site hosts an online com­mu­ni­ty for cre­at­ing and shar­ing cur­ric­u­la and teach­ing best prac­tices. Cur­rent­ly the site offers over 46,000 free K‑12 lessons, units, assess­ments, and mul­ti­me­dia learn­ing resources across all sub­ject areas, and the plat­form enables edu­ca­tors to build their own cur­ricu­lum by assem­bling Cur­ri­ki resources, as well as their own, into col­lec­tions.
  • Edu­topia: Run by The George Lucas Edu­ca­tion­al Foun­da­tion, Edu­topia empow­ers teach­ers, admin­is­tra­tors, and par­ents with inno­v­a­tive solu­tions and resources to bet­ter edu­ca­tion. You can access mate­ri­als by grade lev­el: K‑2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.
  • EDSITE­ment: A free high qual­i­ty K‑12 edu­ca­tion­al resource from the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties. The col­lec­tion has over 450 lessons plans in the human­i­ties writ­ten by schol­ars and teach­ers cov­er­ing the fields of his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, art and cul­ture, and for­eign lan­guages. The site also fea­tures guides for teach­ers.
  • Learner.org: Run by The Annen­berg Foun­da­tion, Learner.org pro­vides mul­ti­me­dia resources for teach­ers, includ­ing video series designed to help teach­ers improve their instruc­tion in spe­cif­ic areas.
  • Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Class­room Resources: A diverse col­lec­tion of lessons and web resources for class­room teach­ers, their stu­dents, and stu­dents’ fam­i­lies. Cov­ers Astron­o­my & Space, Physics, Biol­o­gy and much more.
  • PBS Teach­ers: PBS Teach­ers serves up edu­ca­tion­al resources, les­son plans, and activ­i­ties for the K‑12 class­room.
  • Share My Les­son: A site where edu­ca­tors can come togeth­er to cre­ate and share their very best teach­ing resources. Devel­oped by teach­ers for teach­ers, the free plat­form gives access to high-qual­i­ty teach­ing resources and pro­vides an online com­mu­ni­ty where teach­ers can col­lab­o­rate with, encour­age and inspire each oth­er.
  • Teach­ing Chan­nel: Teach­ing Chan­nel is a video showcase—on the Inter­net and TV—of inspir­ing and effec­tive teach­ing prac­tices in Amer­i­ca’s schools. The video library offers edu­ca­tors a wide range of sub­jects for grades K‑12. The videos also include infor­ma­tion on align­ment with Com­mon Core State Stan­dards and ancil­lary mate­r­i­al for teach­ers to use in their own class­rooms.
  • Teach­ing For­eign Lan­guages K‑12: Annen­berg’s Learner.org pro­vides lessons appro­pri­ate for K‑12 teach­ers of for­eign lan­guages.

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