4teachers.org a Valuable Resource for Teachers

I recently spent an afternoon acquainting myself with the http://4teachers.org resource site. Sponsored by the Advanced Learning Technologies (ALTEC) Project through the University of Kansas, this site is designed to help teachers “locate and create ready-to-use web lessons, quizzes, rubrics, and other tools” for classroom use.



Links for professional development resources include:

• Video channel for UTube and Teacher Tube.
• teachstrong.org - online professional learning community for educators which is a NING with various groups based on interest.
• Profiler Pro – is a tool that evaluates the knowledge, attitude and skills of members of a group to help determine the best way to divide human resources.

The “Family of Tools” on the home page has links to:

• QuizStar
• RubiStar
• Arcademic Skill Builders - educational on-line games that help develop basic skills.
  
• PersuadeStar – gives students the opportunity to produce on-line persuasive essays.
• Classroom Architect – allows students to create floor plans of the classroom.
• Equity Index – a database designed to locate resources and tools to help meet the needs of a diverse classroom including rubrics, educational links, and web links by various categories including assessment, assistive technology, disabilities, English language learners, gender, grants, legal issues, multicultural and religious, and special needs including a place to nominate sites.
• TrackStar – On-line lesson and activity collection that allows teachers to create or select already created interactive online lessons and units.
• Assign A Day – teacher created calendars to help manage classes and assignments.
• Casa Notes (in English and Spanish) – provides templates for notes that go home such as permission slips, homework, and student contracts.
• PBL Checklist
• Teacher Tackle Box – provides links to WebQuests, ThinkQuests, and TrackStars on select topics.
• WebPoster Wizard – on-line tool for school projects and reports that allows teachers to create a lesson, worksheet or class page and publish it on-line and students can then create their own reports on-line.
• NoteStar – is a resource to help students with their research skills for projects.
• ThinkTank – helps students develop a list of topics and subtopics for reports and projects.
• KidsVid – is a site to help students and teachers use video production in class to support project based learning with links for scripting, making video, video editing, and presentation.

The page/tab for Integrating Technology offers Spanish resources, success stories from teachers and students, and technology assessment that provides resources to assess technology planning.

The page/tab for educator resources includes: assessment, assistive technology, grants, bilingual, professional journals, technology planning, and tutorials. There is also a tab for http://4kids.org a similar technology based page for kids.

4teachers.org provides resources that teachers can use at several levels. I encourage you to visit if you are not already familiar with it. If you have visited this site, how would you rate it? What are your favorite features? Have you ever used any of the tools and if so, how was your experience?

Criteria for the evaluation of web based materials.

Some of the basic criteria for evaluation of web-based materials include: authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, coverage, content, resources, and presentation. These criteria are important to consider when evaluating sites for personal, professional, and educational investigation and should be used by educators and students when using and/or creating Internet or web resources.

Here are some questions/information to consider:

• Is the author someone I have heard of or someone who was recommended or cited in a valid resource?
• Is the page sponsored by a reputable organization?
• Is the information reliable? This may be difficult to determine if the topic or subject is new to the reader.
• Does it address the topics of interest?
• How deep does the information, analysis or thought go based on the needs of the audience? Is the site appropriate only to present facts or to encourage new ideas and arguments?
• Is the content appropriate for me, my colleagues, friends or students, depending on the audience?
• Is the information presented in an objective or unbiased manner?
• Who are the advertisers and how might they influence the information?
• Is the information up to date, how often is the site updated?
• Are the links current?
• Is the information presented error free?
• Is the site attractive and engaging?
• Is the site interactive?
• Are sources and related resources provided on the site?
• Ultimately, is the information provided useful?

Now many of these questions are answered with little work on the part of the reader/visitor to the site. Others require deeper analysis and thought. Some determinations come from initial exposure and others may come after completely reading, revisiting, discussing and comparing the source to others. The evaluating of web-based resources is an ongoing exercise and one that must be presented to, modeled for, and taught to students through various web based learning activities.

The sources I used to compose this post were: Evaluation Criteria from "The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly or Why is it a good idea to evaluate web resources, Evaluation of Information Sources, and Evaluating Web Resources.

I am sure there are other criteria that I overlooked or may not know. What additional criteria do you use when evaluating web-based resources or what criteria do you find most important? What strategies do you use to help students evaluate these resources?

Reflections on Educational Internet Resources

When I consider valuable Internet resources for education it helps me to divide the various tools into:

 Resources to help students learn and teachers teach.
o Online images, shared video and audio files.
o Interactive educational web sites – especially those connected to text books and other in-class resources, classroom blogs, shared documents, chat, online encyclopedia and dictionaries, etc.
 Resources to show what students know or have learned.
o Electronic portfolios, Blogs, Wikis, student created web sites, youth media pieces, etc.
 Resources that can help with preparation and evaluation.
o Professional blogs, social networks for educators including Nings, book-marking sites, online assessment sites, and professional web sites.

I find the amount of Internet resources for education to be nearly unlimited and the value nearly priceless. One almost has to find a niche using specific resources of interest or spend countless hours experimenting with different tools. The former would be the optimal experience but sometimes difficult. Being a working wife and mother and graduate student, my “experimental” time is limited.

Blogs are currently the most valuable resource for me because of the format of providing information or sharing ideas and then receiving feedback from other interested parties. Classroom or student blogs give teachers and students experience in using this format to address concepts covered as part of the curriculum and other topics of interest. Students have an electronic forum to share their knowledge and opinions and read and evaluate those of their peers. Through blogs students develop and display their reading, comprehension, analysis, evaluation, and writing skills just to name a few. Educators participate in and/or create their own blogs to share information, opinions, ideas, resources, and sometimes, just vent. I have noticed in discussion with other educators who use Internet resources that they too prefer or find the most value in one or two specific tools such as Wikis, web site development, Google docs, etc. These resources are valuable and the teachers have become experts in using them and rely on them more because of the results and learning goals met by students.

Ultimately, the value of Internet resources in education is correlated to how effectively they are utilized and ultimately the result in student learning. I don’t want to blog my students to death and I believe that they should be exposed to several appropriate, relevant and valuable Internet tools that will positively affect their learning.

What do you consider to be the most valuable educational Internet resources and why? What successes have you had using them with students and how did you know your students learned from them?