Saturday, March 5, 2011

Kan-ed Reflection

As I explored the Kan-ed website, I discovered several resources.  The first is Grant Wrangler.  This seems like a great website to find grants.  They are organized into different categories by subject, and you can even search for grants by grade level, subject, or deadline. 
The next resource I explored was KERC.  This is a really nice resource helps you align assessment and instruction.  I am working on a lesson plan for another class, so I decided to look up the subject and standard I am working with.  When you click on the standard and benchmark, it brings up lesson plans and resources that align with each.  Some of the links were broken to some of the resources and lesson plans, which was a disappointment.  I did find two lesson plans that align with the standard and benchmark, and they are the Globe Game and Sharing African Culture.  I like how the KERC website is so easy to use and search for aligning lesson plans.  Also, I think it would be a good place to start to get ideas for a lesson plan. 

Another resource I explored was netTrekker.  This is another academic alignment tool, but this one has a search engine.  Also, under each subject, there are concepts organized alphabetically,  and there is three tabs which show the subjects for elementary, middle, and high school.  I think this site would be helpful in exploring a specific subject more in depth and finding resources for students to view.  It is also helpful that each site under each category is rated and shows the readability level.  When searching, you can filter by learning aids, multimedia, readability, language, collection, and subject.  I can this tool being very useful in finding specific resources to a subject and lesson. 

Thinkfinity is another great resource I explored.  Thinkfinity is a resource for teachers, parents, and students.  For teachers, there are several lesson plan ideas, interactive activities, and websites that will be helpful.  I like how the website is organized because it is very easy to navigate.  From Thinkfinity, I stumbled upon ReadWriteandThink.  This is another great site which you can find resources by grade.  You can then see the featured and most popular resources. 

Connected Kansas Kids is a great resource for parents, students, and teachers.  There are mental health diagnoses explained there.  I think this could be a very helpful website for teachers and especially parents.  The website contains some different ideas about how to work with students with special needs.  I think these could be really helpful to first year teachers on how to work with and help those with special needs in the classroom.

Overall, I think the Kan-ed site is a very useful website and one I will use throughout my education and teaching career.  There are so many useful sites in one place, which makes it a convenient place to start. 

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