Activity Reflection 1_Searching with a Purpose

Googol: noun. A cardinal number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros (ten raised to the power of a hundred) (http://www.definitions.net/definition/googol).

That is A LOT of zeroes, and an equally overwhelming amount of search results to wade through. While I am an avid Google user on an everyday basis, when it comes to finding a reading lesson focusing on main idea, I dread the mounds of virtual “crap” I undoubtedly must sort through to find a single quality educational resource I can use in my classroom. I would visit the returned sites and weed them out one by one, until finally I would be able to find a reputable teacher’s web page or a site created by experts in the field. But then another search begins! I must then search through the site to find the most relevant and applicable lesson or activity for my classroom purposes. After all, just because the activity had the words “main idea” peppered within its description does not mean it is age appropriate or meeting the intended standards. We spend more time as educators sifting through the irrelevant information than actually delving deeper into a truly well-crafted and useful resource.

As a new teacher, researching more effective educational search tools and resource pages is a helpful and time-saving task (ironic in that it takes quite a bit of time to do thoroughly). While I found several applicable resources, a few that really stuck out to me were Education World (www.education-world.com), FirstGov for Kids (kids.gov), and Learning Page (learningpage.com). Each of these sites offers an efficient means of searching for ready to use classroom resources readily organized into a variety of subject areas. While Education World offers student activity and lesson ideas, it also has a section dedicated to Technology Integration, School Issues, and Professional Development. This site is geared toward the teacher building her own lesson, whereas FirstGov offers resources for building lessons, but also provides ready to use activities. At FirstGov, teachers, students, and parents are able to search by subject area for interactive educational activities. Many of the activities on this site are online, so students can extend their learning beyond the school day, a continuous goal for many teachers. FirstGov also has a page linking to each state’s website, which I found spectacular, partly because geography is an easily ignored topic nowadays, and partly because I secretly love well-organized and visually pleasing educational information. What teacher doesn’t dream of a list of educator-reviewed resources with a to-the-point summary of each one’s academic value and a listed source for the activity… in alphabetical order OR sorted by subject? I can’t think of a single one.

Clearly, FirstGov is extremely well-organized, as is my final favorite site, Learning Page. This site is not geared toward students, but educators, in that it offers resources to accompany your lesson plans such as work sheets and ready-made educational packs. Many schools do team lesson plans, in which each teacher on the grade level shares the same lesson plan. While it is convenient, it is unrealistic to believe that the students in every class have the same needs and learning interests. This is where sites such as Learning Page come in to play. Teachers are able to search by the topic of their lesson, and they can then choose any supplemental pages they would like to add to their lesson in order to differentiate for their students. The fantastic thing is that this is also a free site, and registered members are able to download mini books and vocabulary books for use in their classroom. You can never get enough books, and this is a great way to choose books based on your students’ levels and send them home for students to utilize. I know many of my students do not have access to books at home, so these books would be a great weekly giveaway in my classroom.

Another great resource is Renzulli Learning, and while it is not free, I thought it was worth mentioning. Renzulli is not only an educational search engine, but a differentiated search engine. Each student must complete a learning profile when they first log in, but then when students search for a topic, it returns results geared toward their learning interests. Teachers are also able to go in, search for activities by topic or standard, and assign activities to specific students or groups of students based on their interests. With differentiation being such a hot word in education right now, this has been a necessary resource for attempting to integrate more individualized technology into the classroom. There are numerous quality resources available to educators, but we must put in the time to search through them intitially. Once we bookmark the sites offering the most consistent and well-organized educational resources, we can simply return to those proven sites for a much more directed and less time-consuming search. I can officially say that my Favorites list has grown by at least five these past couple days, and I'm a better person (at least a better educator/resource searcher) for it. Happy searching!