Internet
Journal & Evaluation
Susan Milovich
Education World - http://www.education-world.com/
Intended Audience: Teachers Grades K – 8
Ed World has some of everything: Lesson plans, technology ideas, and connections to journals, printable worksheets, and “5 minute” ideas. The site is easy to navigate and always includes a wide variety of topics. There are some interesting web scavenger hunts that are a good jumping off point for teachers who want to introduce children to researching on the web without doing a lengthy Webquest. Core Curriculum Standards are included.
Wild Wild Weather - http://www.wildwildweather.com/teachers.htm
Intended Audience: Teachers Grades K – 12 and kids
This site was created by Meteorologist, Dan Satterfield, Chief Meteorologist for WHNT-TV in Huntsville, Alabama. It is a great place to start when putting together a unit on all aspects of weather. This page is the teacher’s page, which links you to a huge amount of information to use with classes. Other pages on the site are for kids to use. There are experiments, projects, and activities.
The Rainforest Alliance
http://www.rainforestalliance.org/programs/education/teachers/curriculum/index.html
Intended
Audience: Teachers Grades K – 6 and Kids
The
Rainforest Alliance is a non-profit group that is “trying to protect ecosystems
and the people and wildlife that depend on them by transforming land-use
practices, business practices and consumer behavior.” The website has a curriculum with about three
activities for each grade (k – 6) with info about animals, geography, stories,
products from and ideas about the rainforest ecosystem. There are additional links to other related
websites.
Intel
Corporation
http://www.scsite.com/tdc2/default.cfm?module=integrate&chap=6
http://www97.intel.com/education/exemplary_planning/SelectPlans.asp
Intended
Audience: Teachers Grades K – 12
The first
link is through the Intro to Ed Technology Textbook, Chapter 6, Integration
Corner. The second link is Intel
itself. Both offer lesson plans that
include technology (no, duh?, it is Intel after all) and gave some interesting
project ideas, like having the children create a taped weather forecast as the
assessment of the unit on weather.
Channel Thirteen
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/lessons/index.html
Intended Audience: Teachers Grades K – 12
This teacher section has
activities that can be used in concert with the shows on Channel Thirteen or
with other materials. There are links to
other websites and the information was interesting. There was a lesson on “blubber” as an
adaptation for keeping warm with a great experiment that used Crisco as
blubber! Lessons include math, science,
social studies, art, language arts, technology education and
multi/disciplinary.
On This Day
Intended Audience: Anyone
A funky history site that includes general information about sports, music, presidents, states, quotes of the day, World Wars, Civil War, Superbowl. For funny facts and trivia.
San Diego Zoo
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/index.html
Intended Audience: Zoo goers and kids ages 12 and under.
This is a good website for some basic information of types of animals (amphibian, reptile, etc.), habitats, ecosystems, and other animal related information. There are games for the children that I enjoyed. My favorite part has live “zoocams” that let you watch some of the animals in the zoo in real time!
Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov/teachers/curric-index.htm
Intended Audience: Teachers and anyone interested in the environment, Separate pages with stuff for kids - http://www.epa.gov/students/fun.htm
This is a clearinghouse type of site that contains links to sites about the air, water, ecosystems, human health, energy, and waste & recycling. Each of these categories has over 30 sites to look at and seven or eight activities from their kids and students pages that teachers can use.
The students/fun section (2nd link) is to the fun activities under the kid’s club section with. Games and other on-line learning opportunities. This site also connects the user to several parts of the NASA site – one about studying water and one about a global photo of the biosphere.
Enchanted Learning
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html
Intended Audience: Teachers & Students
This site has many free pages to download and reproduce but also contains a large amount of information that they ask $20 per year for. I usually use the free information. There is information about holidays, crafts, Spanish to English words with pictures, animals, the world, jokes, artists, etc. It is worth a look.
The Franklin Institute on Line
http://sln.fi.edu/tfi/units/energy/whatwind.html
Intended Audience: Teachers & Students
Site has interactive activities for kids, lesson plans, and printable pages. There are 16 “pieces of science” that have information, games, and teacher materials for each. Mars, human heart, Wright Brothers, Titanic, Money, Weather. Lesson plan I liked was to create wind in an aquarium with a bright light and some ice.
Smithsonian Institute
http://americanhistory.si.edu/hohr/buffalo/matching/index.html
Intended Audience: Teachers & Students
There is lots of neat stuff on the SI website, but this part of their Hands On History section was fun for those studying Native Americans (particularly the Plains). This is a game where the children can match the part of the buffalo to the item that the Native Americans made out of it – such as matching the ribs to a picture of a real sled that they used. There is also a section on painting on buffalo hides with a template of a hide for the kids to cut out and decorate.
Allen Coopers Homonyms
http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym.html
Intended Audience: Teachers & Students
This site has a list of every homonym that I could possible
think of (even as specific as coax, cokes) with the definition of the
words. There are 706 sets of homonyms with
1529 words! If you’re ever teaching
this, the list is great.
A Pocketful of Rhymes
http://members.aol.com/Bvsangl/pocket.html
Intended Audience: Students
Kid friendly poems
to read. Kids can play a "Guess
What?" and "Guess Who?" game to figure out what type of object
or person the poem is about. Also a game called "Finish It Off" where
the kids read the first three lines of the poem and create the fourth line.
National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration |
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02monitor/monitor.html
Intended Audience: Teachers (grade 5 and up) & Students
The NOAA site is great! You can find out about their projects, explorations, and all the different technology they use. There are virtual fly-overs of undersea areas to view. The lesson plans are for hands-on experiments that kids can do in conjunction with info from the site. I found a great one on whether sewage dumped in the ocean years ago can contaminate the ocean floor that uses layers of play-doh and sand in eggcups. The kids then take a core sample with a straw to see the layers. Lesson plans have National Science Education Standards, objectives, websites included for additional research on topics.
The Media Awareness
Network
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/lesson_search_results.cfm
Intended Audience: Parents, Children, & Teachers
This is an
informational site about the media that discusses marketing to children and
teens on the Internet. There are
sections about the media and violence, stereotyping, on-line hate and
information gathering. There are
sections for parents and kids. It is
very thought provoking.
The Monster Exchange
http://www.monsterexchange.org/
Intended
Audience: Teachers & their classes
I just found this
site. The project is underway this
year (9/15/04-12/15/04) so we couldn’t
join, but I’d like to try something like this in my classroom and then maybe
with another class in the school.
“Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading
and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom
curriculum. Students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which
designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a
description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their
descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to
use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them
into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture
as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original
and using only the written description of the monster.” Lots of kids have done it. There are great monsters on the site!
Teach Nutrition
http://www.teachnutrition.org/ie/index.html
Intended
Audience: Teachers – Grades 1-6
Some simple
materials and lessons on nutrition and exercise. There are sections on fruits & veggies, a
story about going to Mars and what the astronauts must take to create a
sustainable community, and a neat printout with 20 ways to love your body.
Internet Resources
for Special Children
http://www.irsc.org:8080/irsc/irscmain.nsf
Intended Audience:
Anyone who deals with special children
This is a huge
listing of all types of disabilities and hundreds of articles, groups, and
resources available.
Fun Brain
http://www.funbrain.com/kidscenter.html
Intended Audience:
Kids up to age 10
Math games, word
games, arcade type games, games for memorizing, matching games, etc. I use this at the end of our computer lab
time when everyone is done with the lesson.
There is something for everyone in my class….even silly Sponge bob
popping bubbles.
Environmental Kids
Club
Intended Audience:
Kids and Teachers
This Environmental
Protection Agency site has stories, games, coloring pages, information about
endangered species, recycling and more.
There is an area on the site for high school children. It includes links to many topics that could
be used for research. The teacher
section has lesson plans, grant information, awards, workshops, and info on
community service projects. There are
lots of additional links.
The Magic School Bus
http://www.scholastic.com/magicschoolbus/home_2.htm
Intended Audience:
Teacher & Students
This site supports
the Magic School Bus television show and videos that many elementary schools
use. There are fun science activities
that teachers can do in the classroom with reproducible sheets and lots of
games for kids to play on line. Also a
section with a weekly science experiments.
This scholastic site can send you to information about their other book
series, Captain Underpants, Dear America, Goosebumps, Clifford, etc. I’m using a food chain activity that has my
class eating popcorn as producers, plant eaters and meat eaters to show where
energy comes from and how living things are linked.