The New York Philharmonic's Take Note!

http://www.symphonyworks.net/takenote/

An instructional resource funded by the Beatrice Snyder Foundation and provided by The New York Philharmonic, this site provides lesson plans for elementary school teachers, videos of musicians "backstage," as well as links to other resources. Under the same umbrella is KidZone, an extensive interactive site for young musicians with found-objects instrument designs, interviews with Philharmonic musicians discussing their instruments, music composing, and lots of other stuff!

ExploreMath's Gizmos

http://www.explorelearning.com/

These are online math environments in a variety of subjects and grade levels, many with lesson plans and teacher aids included. They're Shockwave driven, fully interactive, and completely free...for now! The site is threatening to go pay when it combines under the ExploreLearning dot-com umbrella, but hasn't yet. Use it now while you can! (It looks like it'll be cheap when it's no longer free.) For more advanced math students (upper high school), take a look at Maths Online, a product of the University of Vienna. [editor's note: As of 7/7/04, the migration to ExploreLearning is complete, but the resources are still free.]

The Newseum

http://www.newseum.org/

This resource is probably best for high school use. This, the online presence of the brick-and-mortar newspaper museum of the same name (previously in Virginia, in the process of moving to Washington D.C.), has a limited number of lesson plans on the First Amendment. What they're most famous for are reprints of the front pages of 254 newspapers from 34 countries...daily. They also have collections of front pages from several recent news events, including 9/11 and the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia. There's even a short feature on Pulitzer Prize winning Lexington Herald-Leader political cartoonist Joel Pett!

Nova Online Programs

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs.html

The award-winning PBS Series from WGBH-Boston maintains an excellent web presence in support of the series. However, in unusual fashion, NOVA offers several of their recent series offerings online in their entirety, broken up into smaller sections for easier browsing and viewing. The shows are in both Real and QuickTime format, and although the screen size is small, the videos are quite useable.

History Happens

http://www.ushistory.com/

This wonderful resource will hopefully expand. It includes songs about historical ideas and events in Real and MP3 formats for online play or download and "fair use." There's teacher guides available online, and links to other history/social studies sites. A project of dot-com Electron Farm Publications, the music (as music videos) are for sale on the site.  (Suggested by Fayette County TRT Kim Overstreet.)

High School Journalism

http://highschooljournalism.org/

Yes, this is high school. Sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, this website has a bunch of resources, including a featured lesson plan each week or so (with archives available). There are awards, links to student newspapers, scholarships, and other resources for journalism students and teachers.