Thursday, March 1, 2012

Websites that may help with Technolog Integration

Over the course of the last eight weeks, I've discovered a plethora of useful resources. Most of the resources I found are websites. As a way to organize these new found resources, I categorized them into groups. Below is the link to my organized discoveries:

Erin Gaunce's Bookmarks

Due to the fact that I'm a science teacher, many of the websites bookmarked have to do with science; however, there are a great deal of other resources that may be beneficial to other contents and other educators. Within my bookmarks, there are over 100 resources; however, I have five sites that happen to be my favorite: Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators, Quia, Middle School Science Lesson Plans, WebQuests, and GoAnimate. Each of these sites are my favorite for different reasons.

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators is a wonderful link because it can help any educator come up with ways to integrate technology into lesson plans. Along with lesson plans, there are assessment links with a variety of different rubrics or other tools that may assist any educator. When redesigning some of my own "old" lesson plans into "new" ones with a technical component, I found myself always looking to Kathy Schrock for some guidance!

Quia is another great resource. This website allows you to create a safe "educational" website for your students. You can create review games or online quizzes. This website also has a sharing component which allows you to "borrow" from other educators that may have designed a review game or quiz that may work for your class. It is worth the subscription!!

Middle School Science Lessons has been a favorite website of mine since I was a first year teacher! This is a great resource for science teachers that may be struggling with lesson plan ideas. Although some of the lessons are outdated, it still has some great plans. I like this website as a place to start, then I've been able to find other links or ideas to make the lesson plans fit within my teaching style. This is one that is great for those "first year teacher moments!"

WebQuests is something new that I've discovered while redesigning lessons to integrate 21st Century Skills and technology. Web quests can be a great way to develop students critical thinking and problem solving skills. There are tons of quests to choose from, our you can create your own. I actually created my own web quests for the digestive system using another Free WebQuest Maker.

GoAnimate is another website that I recently discovered. This website is a particular software that is fairly new, yet a great way to integrate technology and 21st Century Skills into curricula. I've had the chance to see some students play with this and LOVE it! I loved it for the possible to develop students critical thinking skills!

Overall, websites are great resources!! Since we now live in this new "digital era" that is constantly evolving with hardware and software, it is always possible to look to the web! As an educator, my lesson plans get better and better because of websites like these. As a science teacher, it is my job to teach my students the most up to date science facts. With new discoveries all the time, the quickest place for me to find information is through the internet. Now, with my new found knowledge on technology integration, I plan to incorporate websites like some of those listed in my Protopage into more of my curriculum. I hope some of these resources can work for you as well!

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