Teaching sites

After looking at the various websites, I feel less discouraged than I did last time I posted. There were actually things here that I could use.

Learn NC was particularly helpful. The ideas about collaborative teaching, blending lessons in English and Social Studies, made a lot of sense. The lesson plans were more comprehensive than I had anticipated, and it looks like they expected a decent term paper to come out of the lesson. Of course, this was for an AP class but I think it could be used by all levels of teaching.

Turner Learning did nothing for me -- as in the page didn't move, there were no connections to any ideas anywhere.

TrackStar took a minute to figure out, but once I did I found great connections. I especially enjoyed the track on the Salem trials. I love the idea that teachers can share lessons that worked well in their classrooms.

The CDE website seemed to be all about internet safety, filtering, and giving guidelines to safe surfing. Time for a rant, so brace yourself. We can put all the safety systems and filters we like on the computers, we can warn students to stay away from trouble, but it's all for nothing if there's nobody looking over a shoulder occasionally. Students will find ways around the filters, and they've more time to devote to the task than we as adults do. Filters also seem likely to block the "good stuff" that we want our students to get at.

The Journal had an interesting piece about a program to control student computers from a teacher's main computer. This looks good, and might address some of my concern with the CDE articles as a teacher could monitor an entire classroom from one screen. My only thought is that I'd better be very familiar with the system before I used it in front of students. I can't think of anything worse than having to ask one of my students to help me work the system.

But then, that's why I'm taking this class. :-)