Assignment 3: Toolbox

I have been gathering sites that I thought looked even remotely useful since the beginning of class when we went over the assignments. The sites on this list cover a range of topics and most of them I have used with in the last few weeks. Basically, I just gathered sites that I have used and know to be useful to teachers and complied them by category. I found sites for making websites or blogs, gathered sites that I've used in the past to learn subject matter, sites that are helpful in teaching, sites that I found through bigger resources like the library.

I think that just by working to compile this list, I discovered the most useful part of this and that is learning how much is really out there for me to use as a teacher. I have some friends who've taken the course in the past and we are going to swap our lists so that we have even larger lists of websites to use that have been complied by people we trust. I think that the way I have set it up, my toolbox is pretty navigable, and just letting other teachers know about it is the best way to share the wealth. I certainly don't have everything, but the things that I do have I have found useful, and that would be enough for if I were on the receiving end. I think that also having the toolbox on my website, or a teacher chat or bulletin board could be a cool way to spread the knowledge. If a school just had a blog or wiki dedicated to resources like these, that would be a great way to share these things, too.

My three favourites:

1) Sheppard Software

I have personally used this site to learn information and I have found it extremely useful. I really like the set up, the wide range of subjects, the easy navigability, the overall ease of the whole site. I think that for mathematics, sciences, and geography in particular, this is a really useful site. There are games with varying levels of difficulty, informational material, and history within subjects. I really like the geography games because they provide a brief history of the countries, regional information, introduce the maps, provide three levels of play with the maps, and have every country in the world incorporated in their system.

2) Wordle

This is a cool site that allows you to input words and it outputs a word cloud. I created a Wordle for a writing lesson to help provoke thoughts and give the students a base of words. It could be used to group vocabulary--spelling or subject, resources, brainstorms, months, jobs, etc. for a variety of uses. It's a fun way to present material that can engage students so much more than a simple, black and white list.

3) TED.com

This is a really cool site with an extensive gamut of videos of professional speakers on an extensive gamut of topics (I even found a video of the collision of Chinese and American food tastes creating a whole new culinary genre). This can be useful in hooking the students or educating the students. I found a video of Aimee Mullins, a woman with prosthetic legs, that could cover a wide range of topics. She talks about how children are naturally curious and not afraid of new and different but rather inquisitive; she talks about what beauty is; she talks about what a disability is; all of these topics among many others. There are so many opportunities for education within her one one ten minute speech on Ted.com. (There are few images within her presentation that would need to be screened within the classroom.) One short clip has left me inspired on a number of different lessons!