What online resources have you used to improve your teaching, and how do you usually find them?
The resources that I use to improve my teaching in middle school science are:
NSDL-National Science Digital Library
NASA-Educators-National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NSTA- National Science Teacher Association
PBS.org- pbskids.org/dragonflytv/scientists/index
Discovery Education
Pearson-phschool.com (text book codes)
SciLinks
The Science Spot
Middle School Science - www.middleschoolscience.com
A few of these resources were given to me by my science methods teacher in University. The rest I have stumbled across when I was searching for topic based lesson plans during my first and second year of teaching science. These are excellent resources that I continue to revert to when looking for lesson ideas.
Another resource that I find to be extremely helpful in keeping up to date on science news and science blogs is Pageflakes. I love this way of organizing all of my resources in one place that I use for my classroom, including gmail, twitter, and my blog. Podcasts and latest science news videos can also be found right on my Pageflake.
Twitter is another social networking resource that helps me find even more sites that other science teachers around the globe use.
All in all, the internet is the place that helps me most in getting resources that I need, even science ebooks! I love it! However, the downfall is that there are way too many sites out there and I'm not really sure how to find sites that could be helpful for bringing in more virtual environments into the science classroom.
I can see why you were such a hit at the science education conference.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the fear of missing good resources goes, a lot of people suffer from this. The panacea I use is dash of peer and expert blog RSS feeds, a pinch of Twitter, and a smattering of Diigo user group suggestions along with Delicious. I tend to find if you have a reasonably diverse collection of sources in your professional learning network nothing of much value will escape your net.
Virtual learning environments have massive potential. With our connectivity in the MS next year, we'll be able to take full advantage of them.