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Summer is rapidly approaching. It is time to rest, relax, and leisurely explore new Web sites that offer timesaving tools and practical tips. Begin your next school year with a digital folder full of new ideas, worksheets, puzzles, and software tools that will liven up your lessons. Bulletin Boards The Internet is changing, and many sites that were free are now charging. At $29.95 per year, eBoard is still a bargain for posting notes, photographs, homework assignments, and lists of Web sites for your students. The step-by-step instructions are a snap. Schools can obtain discounted group pricing with a customized design. The service is hosted and managed by eBoard, but appears as a seamless piece of your existing Web site. All you do is add a link! Communicate with students and parents via SchoolNotes, a free bulletin board service for teachers. Use the Flashcard feature to add lists of reading words, foreign language words, chemistry words, math problems, and spelling words that students can review online. Edgate, a supplier of information technology and services, and its partners NASSP, ACTE, DECA, USA TODAY, Family Education Network, Encyclopedia Britannica, Smithsonian Institution, Flying Rhinoceros, and Griffin Publishing Group support SchoolNotes. Portable Bookmarks Store all of your bookmarks or favorites in one place. Begin by uploading your current bookmark file. Easy-to-follow instructions are provided. Then, access the files from any computer connected to the Internet. Registration is free. Features include adding, editing, sorting, moving, and deleting links and folders as well as setting passwords for visitors. This is also a great tool for creating safe sites for your students to visit. MyBookmarks began as a private service then expanded into the public sector in 1998. The site offers limited space for bookmarks. You can add, edit, sort, move, and delete links and folders. In addition, the site offers Remark, a utility for Windows. Remark runs in your taskbar and works MyBookmarks.com. It allows one click access to your bookmarks, exporting and importing to and from Netscape, Internet Explorer, and AOL, and an easier way to add bookmarks. This is another easy-to-use site for accessing bookmarks from a remote location. Teacher Tools Here is a slick tool for creating BINGO games. Select from 3x3 or 5x5 cards, insert words or math problems, and click on a button. The card is ready for printing. Shuffle the words and print a new card. Create certificates from pre-built templates or start from scratch. Save the finished product for later access or print it out. The cost of membership is $27.95 for 1 year. Try before you buy in the free area where there are a limited number of templates. Discovery School Teaching Tools Discovery School offers a variety of tools to help teachers in the classroom. At the Quiz Center, select from five options: short answer, true/false, essay, multiple choice, and mixed type. Produce your quiz and have your students complete it online. Generate your own crossword puzzles, math squares,word searches, and cryptograms with Puzzlemaker. Use them with a lesson, or in your newsletters or flyers. Make a worksheet in less than 5 minutes. Choose from an array of voca |