Bubbl.us

Bubbl.us advertises itself as a "free web application for brainstorming online" and is another site that could be relevant to the world of education. My classmates used it for their music lesson plan, however, I believe it could be useful to many subject areas, particularly history. This would be a great website to show context of historical facts as well as cause and effect and chains of events.

Reflection on Discovery Education

Discoveryeducation.com is available for parents, teachers, and students use through most school systems. It is a fantastic resource for all things concerning education. Resources for teachers include puzzlemakers, videos, lesson builders and tip and tricks for a better classroom. There are resources for parents that help with motivating students and assisting them in homework. For students, there are links to videos that are designed to assist in all different subjects. There is even a store that sells DVDs covering in-depth lesson topics.

Discovery education is a must-use source for anybody involved in the world of education - especially teachers. That amount of resources available are unmatched by any other site. As mentioned, most schools have the Discovery Education subscription built into their budget, therefore this should be a no-brainer for educators.

Reflection on Blogging

Blogging has been a good experience so far. Although I don't have any followers and have no idea if anybody has even looked at my posts, it is neat to think I have the ability to make this compilation of thoughts and reflections to share and for others to be able to comment on them. A personal blog like this would be great for teachers to use in their classroom to convey homework assignments and reminders to their class, and also to display projects, reveal thoughts and reflections to parents and their students.

Before I was in Technology in the Classroom, I read several different blogs everyday. My favorite one is Talkingchop.com, a blog dedicated to Atlanta Braves baseball. If you do enough research there are thousands of blogs out there dedicated to different areas of interest. From my own experiences, blogs reveal a lot of insider information, that is otherwise not available through official websites. Posts, therefore, are fun to read and write and can be particularly useful, especially in the classroom.

Kidsastronomy.com

Kidsastronomy.com is another useful educational website that can be used in the classroom. The website deals with all things concerning space including interesting facts, videos, and interactive games. The free astronomy games for kids include "Make A Solar System" where you make your own solar system, and a "Virtual Star Explorer". You can also find puzzels, space word games and coloring pages.

The limit, of course, is this site is useful only to a science teacher or science lesson, and not relevant to many subjects like other sites highlighted on this blog. If you are a science teacher, however, this is one of the most thorough websites dealing with astronomy available.

Nourishinteractive.com

Nourish Interactive is fun websites that allows children and adults alike to see the importance of staying healthy by exercising and what you eat.

Its no secret that America is the most obese nation on the planet and childhood obesity is always on the rise. Media sources constantly stress the importance of eating right and exercising, however, it is those same media sources that often-times lead to children and adults not being near as active as they should.

Nourish interactive allows you to keep track of what you eat throughout the day while comparing it to what you should be eating based on you BMI. There is also links to fun nutrition-themed games, an online blog and other tools designed to help you live a healthier lifestyle.

For educators, this would be a great website to teach students, from an early or older age, the importance of what you eat and how much you exercise. The feature that allows you to record what you eat throughout the day really illustrates just how much we often times eat. This would be particularly useful in a health-related class but could certainly be incorporated into a primary school classroom's every day routine.

Fun, Educational Websties

Websites that incorporate games and other fun learning exercises into the learning enviornment were always the most effective type of lessons for me. It seems logical to say that any time fun is mixed with learning, a student will learn better.

Today, several of my classmates demonstrated how an effective lesson could be created using a game like Grandslam Math. This logic would be certainly effective in all subject areas, especially when most lessons could be very cut and dry. Websites like mathplayground.com engage the student so that they learn by doing.

Using Zefty in the Classroom

Zefty.com is a free online service that allows parents and their children to keep track of finances, such as allowance, without the exchanging of actual paper money, much like a bank.

This service advertises itself as a means for parents to be able to keep up with their childrens allowance and spending through automatic deposit and withdrawls. With Zefty you do not have to remember whether or not you have already given your children their allowance and transactions and deposits can be controlled with the click of a mouse.

While Zefty advertises as a service between parents and younger children, it could also be used by educators to teach kids finance-handling skills and good money management. In Tennessee high school you are required to take Personal Finance to graduate so this would be an effective website to learn by.