| |
Item (linked) |
Rationale |
Listservs or
Forums
|
MIDDLE-L |
MIDDLE-L:
A listserv for middle school teachers. This
is the first of three extremely valuable listservs. This site narrows
educational topics to the middle school level. Most sites are heavy
in elementary issues. It has been tremendous to take part in discussions
that are narrowed down to that special animal called the middle school
student. Issues range from curriculum specific to classroom management
issues. Several discussions revolved around the fact that the site is very
inactive during the summer. From the variety of subject matters to
the many thoughtful responses, this listserv is an excellent resource for
middle school teachers. |
| ITFORUM |
ITFORUM: A listserv for
technology educators. This listserv is
an excellent resource for any educator incorporating technology in the
classroom. The discussions focus on technology, but are based in
curriculum. Although the site is constantly active, it appears to
have slowed down in the summer months. A wide variety of internet
based questions are posed by a wide variety of users. Most, but not
all, questions are responded to quickly and informatively. The discussions
are based on using the internet as a teaching tool. It is a little
difficult to get onboard, but there are a variety of options on listserv
participation.
This is a valuable tool for the average educator
who incorporates internet technology in the classroom. If technology
discussions are not of the utmost importance, you can subscribe to only
read and respond to the archives as you deem necessary. The responses
to questions on curriculum technology are quick and prolific. This is an
invaluable resource for any educator who uses the internet as a resource. |
| EDTECH |
EDTECH: A listserv for technology
educators of all levels. Don't let the
premise fool you. This site is for anyone who needs to know about
the nuts and bolts of technology education. This site is incredibly
prolific. Each topic proposed was trounced with an incredible amount
of responses, especially for the summer months. Almost ANY question
about technology or technology tools is fair game. Every topic from
suggested graphic sites to user concerns about soft and hardware can be
found here. Recommendations are made for classes and listservs and
newsletters on a regular basis. BEWARE- not all of the questions
are treated as kindly as they are at ITFORUM. The members expect
SOME technical proficiency. Many discussions are for advanced technology
educators and master students. The depth of the discussions is impressive.
There are quite a few active participants at all levels of technology use.
The readability of the messages lacks finesse and becomes annoying after
awhile. The sheer volume of mail is almost overwhelming. Despite
these foibles, I will keep this listserv active for a long time. |
Telecollaborative
Projects
|
Project:
The CommunityNet-Workers |
Community NET-Workers:A
project designed to inspire an instill community volunteerism. This
project is based in Canada. It is not a complex telecollaboration
in itself. The work is first completed by the students and then sent
to the project coordinator who will link it to other sites. There
are many guiding options as well as resources online. The quality of the
telecollaboration that ensues is up to the teacher. The objective
is for the student(s) to set up a telecollaborative communication with
a non-profit organization and work with them to create a USEFUL web page.
The project stresses communicating with the people who are the heart and
soul of the organization and translating their passion onto the web page.
I am excited about this project first because it is current through 2003.
As the queen of volunteers this is right up my alley. It also fits
in with the service portion of Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound program
we participate in our school. I like that there is enough information
to keep the project going and the freedom to select your own topics.
I could easily assign this to my advanced students and let them run.
I could also set it up as group projects. |
Multi-Media
Cultural
Exchange
Project |
Multi-Media Cultural Exchange
Project is an attempt to link cultures
together by having them produce mini movies of their culture. The
movies are not film industry run, but rather mini homemade movies intended
to show the real life and culture of any participants. The attempt
is to make this a global project. There are only a few participants at
this point, but it shows great potential. The participants e-mail
each other with personal/cultural questions and answers. The technology
needed is a little steep at this point for the average classroom.
Those who have it should check this out.
I think it is a taste of the future. It is also cute to see the translation
foibles and the cultural puzzlement over some questions. It is interesting
to note that the slant of the American questions were all about oriental
games and Pokeman, but the answers showed that these things were not as
major a part of the lives of the country that they came from as they are
in this country! There is a broad band of lessons and standards that
could be covered with this project. |
| Bugscope |
Bugscope: A project that allows
students to view bug specimens through a scanning electron microscope via
the Internet. A simple form and
a sound lesson plan can hook a school up via the internet to a very expensive
and very powerful electron microscope. The bare minimum is that the students
collect and select a few insects and send them of to The University of
ILlinois. Then they set up a date to have their insects placed
under the microscope. Then they get to manipulate the microscope
via the WWW. The beauty of this collaboration is that there are no
suggested lesson plans. It is as if you had a very expensive piece
of equipment that you could check out at a local science center to put
to use as you saw fit. The beauty is that multiple students can manipulate
it (by taking turns), but they don't really touch it! The images
are in gray scale, but there are colorization processes (for the black
and white phobic generations) that are astounding! The details of benefits
are clearly laid out at the web site. It allows the educator to involve
the student in the scientific process and use a microscope at a younger
age and in schools with low budgets. Any
teacher that does ANY work with insects should bookmark this site.
There are multiple links to insect families that are invaluable!
The only downside to this is that when I showed my middle school aged children
this site they thought it was gross! If bugs don't make you crow,
you can check their affiliated project:
Chickscope,
and that's no yolk! |
|
Search Tools
|
www.kidsclick |
KidsClick: A Web Search Tool for
Kids by Librarians The search engine portion
of this site is a simple, uncluttered search tool. It helps the students
focus on what they need to enter to search. It is useful for students
and teachers k-12, but it is not quite as kid friendly for k-2. Searches
are category or URL based. The categories have limiters for reading levels
and picture content. The limiters do yield very different search results.
This is extremely important in narrowing subject matter into three main
reading levels and minimizing adult content that may frustrating to students.
Failed searches prompt a connection to an on-line dictionary/thesarus tool
(www.dictionary.com). In addition,
there is a link to a kid's search tool pages that includes a variety of
active search engines geared to teachers and students. This search
engine is basic with very little distractions. This enables the student
to focus and get age appropriate research materials. |
| http://dmoz.org/ |
dmoz open directory project
is
a different type of search engine. It is designed to not rely on
commercially sponsored yields. It is designed to yield category results
based on sites recommended by the community of WWW users. The categories
request searchers to log on as editors if they feel they have expertise
in the subject area. The site asks you to become and editor to, "help
build the largest human edited directory of the web." You search
by category and are given results recommended by editors. There are also
other search engines available if the results are not satisfactory.
Unlike a web encyclopedia, the links are to active sites on the web.
It is more like a card catalog of web sites. It inspires sites you
may find valuable, but might not have discovered at a generic search engine.
At this point the positive outcome is avoiding multiple commercial listings
like Amazon.com. There are collections geared at teens. This is more of
an enrichment site than a serious research tool, but don't rule out the
possibility of gaining valuable information. |
| CrazooWazoo |
CrazooWazoo:A Multi-Search
Engine Tool CrazooWazoo, as fun as its
name sounds, is a typical tool. It searches with a variety of common
engines such as Goto, Netscape, and Yahoo. The typical search generally
yields a dozen or so commercial sites that loosely relate to the topic.
Beyond these the yields are varied. There are no age level filters,
although the engines used filter out "adult" sites. It is commercially
run and therefore it is anyone's guess as to the educational relevance
of the results yielded. This is a same old, same old search engine.
It is of minimal practical education value. |
Lesson Plan
Sources
|
Teach-nology
-Computer Lesson Plans |
Teach-nology:Sub category
computer lesson plans.Since I am on my
own in developing a technology curriculum and lesson plans, I am always
searching to see what is being taught elsewhere. Unfortunately, Teach-nology,
like most other broad based lesson plan sites, is geared at the general
or core curriculum classroom teacher. This site offers a little more, but
not much. Elliot Seifert found the prolific site Technology Lessons that
I sometimes refer to. Several of the lessons at Teach-nology are interesting,
but most of them do not stand well alone. I did not review the whole
site because little of it is of value to me and since the subjects are
quite diverse I cannot discourse intelligently on the content of the other
subject area lesson plans. |
| Virginia's
Site for Educators |
Now
here is a lesson plan site to behold!
It's got lesson plans. It's got computer and technology lesson plans (worth
using!) It's got standards. It's got lessons with standards
assigned. There is news, there are resource links, there are community
connections. There are even success stories and accolades to teacher
and students. DELAWARE should do such a good job! Don't mind me,
I am a little prejudice- my husband and I spent a lot of time in the Virginia
education system. When we were there some of the schools even used ditto
masters. Imagine! All kidding aside, I highly recommend this lesson plan
site, both as a lesson resource and as an example. |
Data Sets or
Online Tools
|
Ask
Dr.Math |
Ask Dr.Math is
an online homework help tool. The assistance is divided from elementary
level to beyond college. It consists of a large data base of frequently
asked math questions, explanations of math concepts and terminology, and
classic problems. If this vast data bank does not help, you can submit
your question and you will receive a response. This is for students
AND teachers. I have been using it to bone up on forgotten math.
There is also a Teacher2Teacher
service which is a math discussion group between teachers and parents.
It is also archived. All questions are posted in the archives to help others.
This requires consent and it is mandatory to have the question answered.
This is extremely comprehensive. The format is a little dry and wordy.
The student who is great at reading comprehension can use this site well.
It has been a great parenting tool for me because I can brush up on a problem
that my kids stump me with and work with them to solve it. It will
be my demonstration site for students selecting homework help tools for
their web pages. |
| Ted's
Guitar |
Play Ted's Guitar Ted
Matthews has created a java applet in the form of an acoustic guitar.
The tool focuses on fret board and the body. It is connected to 30
midi files which represent pitches created by selecting the fret position(s)
on each string on the cord. You can also select buttons that have
the names cords written on them. There are also selections that will
change the cords from major to minor to 7th. There are blue dots
that show the selection and the changes you apply. These represent
finger placement on a guitar for the chord you want to play. This
will come in handy for the general music teacher at our school who teaches
a unit on guitars. She can connect the computer to the interactive
tv and clearly demonstrate both how to play and also demonstrate the music
theory visually and aurally. It can also be used by individuals as
guided practice and for review. It can be accessed at home as well. This
is far more interactive than fingering charts, and piles on those wonderful
Gardner learning attributes. I may dust of my guitar! |
| Whatis?com |
Whatis?com:an online technology
encyclopedia and dictionary. This is part
of a larger site called TechTarget.comNetwork. The site has two internal
search engines. One is for searching for definitions and the other
is a category site index. To say that this site returns only definitions
would be to simplify it to an online text. The definitions search gives
links to multiple answers as well as related web sites and current global
news. There are also linked reference sites. The update is
current. The category sites are full developed web sites that go off in
a vast number of directions. This site should be referenced in every
debate on how the web referencing is so far beyond book referencing.
I'd love to put together a Smithsonian Exhibit that places an active computer
at this site and a display room that shows the equivalent of what it would
take to track down all of this material on foot. Aside from the trails
you can follow on this site, the "dictionary" tool will be perfect for
my computer lab. I have students with a wide range of technology
experience. As they search the web they can refer to this tool to
answer even the simplest of questions such as what is an applet to more
complex programming questions. The load in is slow, and the page is more
business friendly than middle school friendly. The good part is that
most of the definitions are in clear and simple terms. The reading
level for what they will be curious to know should not be beyond them. |
