The internet is the new "mans best friend', sorry to all the dogs and puppies of the world. The internet can provide a teacher, student, and administrator with any type of information needed. If a teacher needs a lesson plan, there are thousands of websites geared towards tried and true lessons.
www.theteacherscorner.net
www.lessonplanspage.com
Teaching a Science experiment on "Rocks" there are many websites geared towards interactive science experiments.
www.kids-science-experiments.com
www.sciencebob.com
A student has a research project on the Civil Rights Movement, there are thousands of websites that will provide information on the Civil Rights Movement, its beginning, struggles,victories, and the end of the movement. www.socialstudiesforkids.com
www.historychannel.com
Do you want to communicate with others about educational topics, lessons,and activities? Blogs, Wikis, and Skyping are the new and trendy forms of communicating via internet resource. www.blogger.com, www.cuipblogs.org
All of the these reources are great, but what's most important is determining which resource holds the most value. Because there are a plethora of internet resources that are helpful, which site holds the most value to a student or teacher. Which of the thousands of sites have the best lesson plans that will meet the needs of all learners in a classroom? Which site provides that best factual information to complete a research paper? Internet resources in education is by far valuable and an asset to the eductional process, but narrowing down the search to resources that hold the GOLDEN information, site friendly usage, and meeting the needs of the user. The most valuable part of internet resources is to ensure that students can explore and navigate the large range of information to discover important facts, principles, and concepts, in doing research. The best value for teachers is to find great resources that provide lesson plans, experiments, interactive lessons that will be beneficial to various cognitive styles and learning behaviors.
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4 comments:
I agree with you Lisa about teachers making the most use out of sites that offer lesson plans and interactive lessons. Using these sites not only help teachers bring in new ideas but it also keeps them aware of what is available on the internet & also it they learn what happens when they type in search queries in a search engine. That way they can help students learn how to search the internet for valuable resources.
How often have teachers tried to reinvent the wheel? There are so many lessons, ideas and resources for teachers available that no teacher should ever voice the complaint, "I don't have any ideas of what I should do about that subject?" I also think that the students should be taught about real and bogus sites, so they can make decisions concerning the validity of information. Maybe we should be asking for two references for the same thought, making sure that the information gathered is accurate. We often look at the internet's value from a student or teacher viewpoint. With so many of ous providing professional development, there are, of course a huge number of resources to assist us in providing that service.
There are so many Internet resources out there for teachers and students and as Ed says, no teacher should ever complain that he or she does not have any ideas or resources around a subject. It is great to not have to reinvent the wheel every time we need to teach a lesson. Yet, teachers too have to learn about real and bogus sites, resources, and lessons. We may not have to do all the work but we do have to put some work in - in regard to carefully reviewing the resources that we use and critically considering lessons before we implement them. This also sets a valuable example for students when we can show them how we evaluate and use the same tools we are teaching them to utilize, as Tracey pointed out in her comments.
Thanks for posting examples, Lisa. I'm going to add them to my collection. The beauty of so much choice is it allows the educator to gain knowledge him or herself; which in turn may trickle its way down to the students. It also allows for much more differentiation. Not only within one classroom, but from year to year. Often I would have one or two "go to" sites for lessons I had taught in previous years, but yet I still spent many hours looking for more.
I appreciated Stella's comment about putting the work in. That is spot on. All too often I'm seeing teachers 'dump' kids onto sites just to keep them busy. There are far too many options out there to keep allowing them to do this! But....it requires work on their part, and we all know there are outstanding AND lazy educators out there. How do we change that???
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