Looking for an exciting and imaginative way to plan lessons that fit with the ways kids already think? Our school district is involved in Kieran Egan's Learning in Depth program which is a great fit with the udl principle Multiple Means of Engagement. Examples of lessons and downloadable lesson planning frameworks for imaginative education at this site.
Scratch cards provide a quick way to learn new Scratch code. The front of the card shows what you can do; the back shows how to do it. Click to view and print each card.
These free tools remove the obstacles to learning for all students and offer opportunities for struggling learners that promote academic success. When material is digital or electronic, it is flexible and accessible. It is our responsibility as educators to provide materials that promote success. Please encourage all educators to consider using these free tools.
This is the classroom blog of John Mundorf, a fifth grade teacher with a universally designed classroom. He presented a fabulous session at Harvard's 2008 UDL summer institute.
This site introduces you to the options for using technology in your classroom, e.g. webcasts, webcams, current news sources, inquiry-learning. Even more important, it explains why it's important to make instruction meaningful, current, and engaging for today's students. This is a great place to start exploring your options for integrating technology in the classroom.
Engineering Interact is a new and exciting free educational resource for primary school children aged 9 to 11.
The resource provides fully interactive, engaging game environments and high-quality learning material tailored to the National Curriculum. Information about real world applications and cutting edge research motivates children and introduces them to the exciting subject of engineering.
This resource has been created by the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering, with a grant from the HEFCE Aspirations Fund and the University of Cambridge Active Community fund.
This is a Ning Social Network all around SMARTBoards. Great resource collection and sharing potential. All smart board educators, unite Let's share ideas, tips, and lesson files maximize learning children They our future Let's teach them well and let them...something other can't think anything right now.
Two-page starter-sheets with practical ideas for getting started with web 2.0 apps in the classroom. Format is consistent for all the sheets and learning objectives are indexed to Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. Includes several Google apps, Voicethread, Mindmeister, Mixbook and others.
Phenomenal set of lessons which use Google Earth to teach real world math. There are several lessons under each of 4 main topics: concepts, measurement, project-based learning, and exploratory. The author provides a screenshot, objectives and description of the lesson with a downloadable .kmz file and downloadable .doc worksheet. Probably more suitable for middle school or high school. If the Lessons link doesn't work from the main page, go to the resources page and click on lessons.
Incredible collection of flash to teach middle and high school math. The flash is interactive, allowing you to change a variable such as the value of an exponent and then see how that changes the value in an equation. For example, kids can experiment by altering the value of exponents to learn why we keep the base and add exponents when we're multiplying two powers with the same base. Jim teaches in Alberta.
Great resource for secondary students. Summary, notes, guides, and analysis of themes and characters for English Literature homework. The aim of this website is to make learning more relevant and fun for students in the digital age. Graduate students have compiled some excellent units.
Excellent engaging and educationally sound instructional videos. This science site for grades 1-6 also has great accessibility options including visual, auditory and keyboard shortcuts. I learned about this from Paul Hamilton's October 20, 2008 post. According to Paul, Many of the activities include captioned video where the "captions" can be read aloud. Other activities use diagrams and interactive images to present material. All text can be read aloud, and can be repeated upon request.
This section of flikr teaches social studies by inviting you to comment or tag photos. I searched for Titanic and found some very poignant images with comments by the people who had viewed the picture already. This could be a very powerful learning tool.
Go directly to the 4 t2 Explore tab, search by curriculum unit, and you'll be hooked. There are more curriculum resources than you could possibly use under each topic. The articles in the Activate: The Journal of Technology-Rich Learning tab are also great.
Created by students in a Grade 6/7 class.