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Web Sites (all sites will open in a new window)
21st Century Community Learning Centers from the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Provides a gateway to resources that will help you design and manage a top-quality learning center. These learning centers may provide extended learning opportunities for students before or after school, on weekends or during the summer.
Active Learning Practice for Schools (ALPS) A Harvard Project Zero Resource from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. ALPS is an electronic community dedicated to the improvement and advancement of educational instruction and practice. The mission of ALPS is to create an on-line collaborative between teachers and administrators from around the world with educational researchers, professors, and curriculum designers at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and Project Zero. ALPS features "learning regions" for users to explore the various ideas and research performed by Harvard's Project Zero.
Captured Wisdom CD-ROM Library This CD-ROM Library is made up of stories about teachers who are making meaningful and creative uses of technology in their instruction. These CD-ROMs contain video descriptions and demonstrations of how technology is used in teachers' classrooms and provides inspiration and insight into what technology can accomplish in your school.
Ed's Oasis now sponsored by Classroom CONNECT. This useful site lists a staff of 20 volunteers whose mission is to help teachers use the Internet as an integral tool for teaching and learning. It offers teachers dozens of useful on-line lesson plans and stories of teaching experiences; the opportunity to participate on the site and communicate on-line; and links to high-quality, curriculum-aligned, standards-supporting, student-centered web sites.
EdSTAR (Educational Standards, Technology, Applications and Resources) from the Minnesota Dept. of Children, Families and Learning and NCREL. The developers of this web site have anticipated at least three major uses for the site. Classroom teachers will be able to use it to locate a wide array of subject-specific resources to supplement their classroom instruction. Teacher trainers can use it for their professional development workshops. Finally, curriculum design teams can use it to develop in-depth standards-based curriculum, complete with a library of relevant resources for instruction.
Educational Software Previewing Service from the Educators' Technology Center of Indiana. Click on "Software Database." You can then search their database of educational software by subject area, grade level, media type, etc.
Education with New Technologies (ENT): Networked Learning Community The extensive ENT site is a networked learning community designed to help educators develop, enact, and assess effective ways of using new educational technologies such as computers and the Internet. You can learn more about Teaching for Understanding and the use of new technologies, find tools to support the use of new technologies and new processes for integrating new technologies, find resources related to improving education with new technologies, and see examples of classroom practice using new technologies and new processes.
First in the World This site was developed in response to the national perception that American students do not compete effectively with their international counterparts. The web site declares "We intend to become first in the world in the areas of mathematics and science. In order to achieve our goals, we have formed a strong consortium of school districts, the US Department of Education, other governmental agencies, and local and national businesses." The international bench mark used are the results from the 1996-98 Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) for 3rd and 4th graders; 7th and 8th graders; and 12th graders.
Integrating the Internet into the Classroom from the Corporation for Educational Technology in Indianapolis. Provides an excellent online tutorial on the topic of technology integration.
Keirsey Temperament Sorter II A Myers-Briggs type psychological self-assessment instrument shared by the author. A summary of the 16 temperament types is also available from ibiblio.org.
North Central Regional Educational Laboratory The web site of NCREL specializes in educational applications of technology to improve learning. It contains an impressive 22 web sites. The NCREL home-page presents the web resources it has developed listed under three main headings: Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment; School & Community; and Policy Evaluation & Research.
Teacher's Planning Guides for Integration of Technology into the Classroom and into Units of Instruction from WestEd. Provides several tools in PDF format to assist you in designing technology use that is appropriate for school curriculum and student learning goals.
Teaching and Learning Strategies from New Horizons for Learning. This is a great source for articles and links on a variety of relatively new instructional strategies.
Teaching for Understanding (TfU) This site addresses four central questions: What's Understanding?, What's Teaching for Understanding?, What's the TfU Framework?, and What dos TfU look like? Over the course of five years, members of this group talked together, developed curricula, tried them out in classrooms, watched and talked with students, wrote case studies, and eventually solidified a framework that identifies the central aspects of planning and teaching for understanding.
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Books
Brainstorms & Lightning Bolts: Thinking Skills for the 21st Century by David Thornburg, 1998. Today's pace of change is incredible. We are drowning in information that seems to double every two years. Amidst this chaos, educators are struggling to help students acquire skills for survival in a world moving at light-speed. We all need to master new thinking skills, strategies and tools to help us become flexible, creative thinkers who are able to find order in the chaos. Through Thornburg's exploration of the changes taking place today that are likely to impact the short-term future, several thinking skills have emerged. Each of these skills makes use of tools that can help us all "future-proof" our thinking.
Taming the Beast: Choice and Control in the Electronic Jungle by Jason Ohler, 2000. Jason Ohler gets it. Twenty years and 100 billion dollars into the computer and information revolution, most people are still consumed with cards and cables, hardware and software, RAM and ROM. Ohler moves well beyond technolust to take a hard look at the critical issues that confront us. He shows us that only by getting beyond the tool to the context of the tool and its application to the task can we ever hope to understand and control the Beast. Taming the Beast casts a cold eye on our love-hate affair with technology; reveals 27 ways to see, evaluate, and gain control over the electronic and mechanical extensions that have become such vital parts of our lives; and shows how we can choose new machines wisely for educational, business, and community use.
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