Thursday, September 13, 2001
tech.life@school | Joyce Kasman Valenza
Online curricular resources growing
Educators can turn to the Web to find assistance on teaching everything from current events to film.
Each year, the number of Web-based curricular resources grows, and it's easy to get lost. I aimed to create a Top 10 list of useful sites but got carried away.
1. GEM: The Gateway to Educational Materials http://thegateway.org is the first place I go to shop for activities to support curriculum. This highly selective consortium effort is searchable by keyword, subject and grade level, and provides access to "thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, nonprofit, and commercial Internet sites."
2. If current events is part of your program, the New York Times Learning Network at www.nytimes.com/learning/ is one of the most impressive and growing sources of materials for teachers. Each Daily Lesson Plan, for Grades 6 through 12, is based on a Times article and written by a member of a team of well-qualified educators. Don't miss the News Snapshots for Grades 3 to 5, the timely Quote of the Day, the Who's Who and What's What News Quiz, and the thematic crossword puzzles.
Newsweek's Teacher's Guide at http://school.newsweek.com/ also offers excellent curricular materials in current events and history each week, and CNN Daily Classroom Guide at http://turnerlearning.com/newsroom/guide.html offers extraordinary daily content.
The Teacher Guides of the Professional Cartoonist Index at http://cagle.slate.msn.com/teacher/ offers lesson plans for using editorial cartoons for Grades 3 through 12.
3. Blue Web'n Learning Sites Library at www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/bluewebn links teachers to more than 1,000 tutorials, lessons, hot lists, references and tools in major content areas. Using a five-star ranking system, Blue Web'n identifies the "cream of the crop."
4. Discovery School's Teacher Channel at http://school.discovery.com/teachers/ offers a "library of curriculum resources." In addition to curricular materials gathered by Kathy Schrock, a Teacher Tools area features clip art, and puzzle, quiz and worksheet generators. Discovery hosts the useful Science Fair Central and features hundreds of lesson plans.
5. The educational publishers are encouraging teachers to move the prescribed curriculum beyond the textbook. Teachers of Grades K through 8 will want to visit the Scholastic site at http://scholastic.com/ to find lesson plans, reproducibles, professional resources, and online activities. Scholastic News Zone features readable news for younger students. The Authors and Books area links to author studies and ideas for incorporating literature into the curriculum. Houghton Mifflin's Education Place at www.eduplace.com is packed with links to activities and resources in language arts, science, social studies and math to support and extend the publisher's popular textbook series. If you're a Harcourt program user, check the Learning Site at www.harcourtschool.com/ for enrichment ideas.
6. If you use feature films, consider screening Teach With Movies (http://teachwithmovies.org/). The site's Learning Guides describe the benefits of using the film with students and possible problems, and offer background information, discussion questions, "bridges to reading," projects ideas, and links.
7. If you are planning to teach a book this year, a visit to the SCORES Cyberguides at www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/in/intg.html is likely to offer a novel idea. These standards-based, online instructional units are based on the most widely studied works of literature, K through 12.
8. If you value teaching with documents, the Learning Page of the Library of Congress American Memory Collection at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/ offers ideas for incorporating the rich images, media and text of these collections.
Don't miss Teaching With Documents maintained by Peter Pappas at www.edteck.com/dbq/. The site gathers an exceptional collection of student worksheets and guidelines, many created by National Archives and Records Administration, which offers its own Digital Classroom at www.nara.gov/education/classrm.html.
9. My pick for the all-around most practical material goes to the About.com Educator sites. Two excellent sites are About.com Elementary Educators at http://k-6educators.about.com/ and About.com Secondary at http://7-12educators.about.com/. Guides Beth Lewis and Melissa Kelly will connect you with columns, lesson plans, icebreakers, rubrics, clip art, and back-to-school advice.
10. The Marco Polo program at http://marcopolo.worldcom.com/ gathers expert-developed, standards-based Internet content for the K-12 teacher and classroom in economics, geography, the humanities, mathematics, science and art.
10 1/2. I'm cheating here. Microsoft's Encarta Lesson Collection at http://encarta.msn.com/schoolhouse/default.asp offers a variety of detailed lesson plans and units designed by teachers and updated often.
11. Please check some of my other favorites in an area of my Web page I call "teacher tools" at http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/tools.html. The page will get you started. If your back-to-school plans include setting up a class site or an e-grade book, broadening your clip art collection, setting up a mail group or discussion lists for parents or students, take a look.
A "clickable" list of my picks for educators is available at http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/inqlinks.html.
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Joyce Kasman Valenza is the librarian at Springfield High School in Erdenheim, Pa. Her column appears each week in tech.life.
Her e-mail address is joyce.valenza@phillynews.com
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