Teachers are great at finding new material, modifying it, and implementing it into their classrooms. But we all need new ideas and suggestions for easy to use, trusted resources that help us find new lessons, resources, and enrichment opportunities for students.
We’ve highlighted a few of our favorite online resources and have included a link, description, and suggestions for how to navigate these resources. Our Parent Section also offers ideas you might recommend to the parents of your students.
Better Lessons was designed to allow teachers to share, search, and plan their lessons based upon the grade level and subject that they teach. When you sign up, you register in a specific grade-band and topic area and your landing page is customized for your selections.
This is a great website for finding new lessons based upon specific topic areas. It is very user-friendly and has a built a large user base.
The BioBus is a mobile science laboratory loaded with research-grade microscopes and computers associated with a wide variety of lessons and labs led by PhD level scientists. As you could imagine from its name, the BioBus can come to your school, Museum, afterschool program, and science fair for fun, hands on labs and activities.
The bus itself is radically sustainable and carbon neutral with it’s daily energy needs met by solar panels, a wind turbine, and an engine that runs on waste vegetable oil. In addition, it uses low-environmental impact and salvaged materials for projects whenever feasible in an effort to reduce waste.
Connect a Million Minds Connectory
Looking for enrichment programs to recommend to your students? Enter in their zipcode and out pops tons of options to suit a lot of different age and ability levels.
Time Warner Cable and its partners have spent the past few years building a user-friendly, geographically diverse database of afterschool science, technology, engineering, and math activities. While the greatest number of postings apply to middle school students, they also have postings for a wider range of ages.
The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropic organization focused on support research and education on the brain. They’ve invested in a great set of scientifically rigorous yet readable material for kids, teachers, the general public, and researchers.
To brush up on content, teachers can look through a few resources available on their website Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts, and the Brain and Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report
For parents and teachers looking for engaging material for kids, they have materials for a range of ages:
- It’s Mindboggling Workbook (.pdf) (for elementary students);
- It’s Mindboggling! (.pdf)(for middle school students); and
- More Mindbogglers! (.pdf) (for high school students)
As a complimentary activity, You too can have a brain come to your school by contacting the scientists at Columbia University Neuroscience Outreach program.
The SciDo collaborative is an international affiliation of teachers of the sciences. At its core, SciDo is a resource sharing site. Through the use of collections in Google docs, teachers can share and collaborate. The advantage that SciDo has over other resource communities is the ability to organize resources as members see fit. Coupled with the power of Google search, the need to adapt to a foreign file system no longer applies. Along with lesson plans, the SciDo community shares screencast lessons, Flickr and Diigo groups, and a Youtube channel to supplement their already rich content base.
Beyond resource sharing, the SciDo Collaborative connects teachers and classrooms. Member volunteers assist one another and veterans establish mentoring relationships with those new to the profession. Scido is a model for connected teaching, with the contributions of the membership giving the collaborative its value.
Those interested in joining the SciDo Collaborative may do so at SciDo.wikispaces.com. Members also connect via twitter using the #SciDo hashtag and via #scichat at 9pm Tuesday nights.
If you’re looking for short films that translate current scientific research into visually stunning education resources, start with AMNH’s Science Bulletins. Playing on the Museum’s strengths, there are Astronomy, Earth Science, Biology, and Human Health Bulletins and an easy-to-use Educator’s Guide. While they are all worth a look, they provide much needed visualizations and focus on topics in astronomy and astrophysics for high school teachers.
Once you’ve reviewed the Educator’s Guide, use the Archive to scroll through the different topics that are available and see which ones fit with your lesson plan. Like many of the other resources, this isn’t an encyclopedic list of topics but it is a great place to start to inspire a research topic, highlight an area of the world, or explore career options with your students.
In 2010 the Virtual Scientist Guest Lecture Series was launched by the producers of the award-winning science news series SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT®, and brings scientists into America’s classrooms in real time via the Internet.
For more than 40 years, SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT® (www.ssrvideo.com) has been a trusted resource of objective science news for schools. The programs examine the most recent developments and discoveries in science and technology and help students understand the vital role science plays in our everyday lives, as well as being an economic driver that creates well-paying jobs. The Virtual Scientist Guest Lecture Series extends the scope of the SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT® by arranging for guest presenters to make “virtual” in-classroom visits without leaving their lab or research facility.
Leveraging existing videoconferencing technology or Skype, virtual visits provide a forum through which scientists and students experience an interactive dialogue that inspires and engages students about dynamic technologies and cutting edge research.
Teachers interested in requesting a “virtual visit” should register at: http://www.ssrvideo.com/virtualscientist.html . Technology requirements are minimal but your classroom or lecture hall should be equipped with the following:
- Classroom or lecture hall with high speed internet access
- Computer with high quality monitor. Depending on room size it is recommended using a minimum 17” monitor.
- Webcam. Skype recommends:
- Notebook/laptops: Logitech Quickcam Pro for Notebooks (est $30) high-performance webcam with autofocus.
- PC’s: Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 Razor Sharp Video with Autofocus (est $75)
- MAC: Logitech® QuickCam® Vision Pro for Mac® EST. $130
- Speakers
- Microphone
- Skype software – can be downloaded from www.skype.com free of charge.
Science Training Directory for Teachers and Students
Teachers struggle mightily to find research placements for their students. The Science Training Directory for Teachers and Students lists research programs by geographical area that work with high school kids preparing for science research activities.
Unlike the Connectory, these programs are designed for students interested in completing research to enter into competitions like Intel, and are competitive. If you’re not sure if a student is ready for lab research, consider programs that offer a wider range of scientific activities such as volunteer programs at local zoos and museums.
The Directory offers options for elementary, middle, and high school students and will also sort by funded/unfunded and by specific groups of students that they are trying to attract.
Teachers’ TalkingScience is an online collection of free science lesson plans that can help you spark your students’ excitement about science. Every month, two new lessons based on Science Friday’s popular Web videos are created by the education staff at the New York Hall of Science. Lesson plans feature hands-on activities, and cover a wide range of topics in biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. The lessons, which are aligned with national teaching and learning standards, are aimed at middle school students. But teachers at all levels K-12 have told us that they find them useful.
The Science Friday videos that start each lesson draw students quickly into the topic, and help build students’ interest in science. In each video, students are able to see real scientists at work in the lab or the field, sharing their wonder at what they observe and their passion for their research. The lessons’ engaging hands-on activities are student-friendly, and they require only inexpensive, easy-to-find supplies. The lesson plans also include links to additional online resources and offer suggestions for classroom discussion or extensions of the activity that can be assigned as homework.
Think of TED talks as interesting people talking about interesting things. They are a great resource for teachers and students but are often so interdisciplinary in nature that it is hard to find one if you’re looking for an exact topic. A teacher could incorporate them into a classroom by using the actual videos as multimedia resources, showcasing the featured presenters as a library of interesting people, or employing the talks as a research tool, allowing students to find someone or something interesting that they want to research further. Since the talks also include information about the speaker, they are a good first stop to find inspiration for a research project.
Like many of my favorite things, TED talks show us how to tell a great story even if the subject area seems boring. They show real people talking about their own work, with academics, authors, and entrepreneurs sharing the same venue. Ideally, one could use them to demonstrate a much truer range of science careers.
Here are a few resources to get you started:
A spreadsheet that lists good talks, their links, speaker, and a short description.
There is no sorting mechanism but it is a good place to start.
There is a search function on TED.com and a quick search of some science topics yields some good results. There are many talks about human health, innovation and medicine, and climate change.
The blog www.historyteachersattic.com has a good post on “demystifying TED talks for teachers.” It gives a good overview and highlights some scientific topics in their list.
Thinkfinity serves as a digital outpost for teachers looking for lesson plans, multimedia resources, and colleagues for all grade levels and subject areas. Teachers can align the different content with a wide variety of standards and 21st century skills. In addition to great interdisciplinary resources, the site posts timely topical information to help teachers find resources for “teachable moments” when they occur.
They’ve also curated a great community-nominated set of resources for science, technology, engineering, and math teachers through their “Groups” function, a discussion board and resource-sharing community that is thoughtfully moderated to provide assistance to teachers.
In addition to all of the great virtual resources and community, they’ve also provided a list of Professional Development activities and resources for teachers searchable by state.
The Young Naturalist Awards is a scientific contest designed for 7th through 12th graders that focuses on writing and the natural world. Students form a hypothesis, collect data, and document their findings in a first-person illustrated narrative.
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) provides teachers, students, and parents with detailed instructions about how to structure a project. In addition to recommendations for project structure, their website also includes past essays that are both excellent resources for research and project ideas and great examples of scientific writing.
I’m looking to connect my blog, the Daily Bird New England to east coast science teachers looking for quick, up to date information about bird watching and migration for their students. Do you have any thoughts where I could connect my blog to science teachers?
Many thanks,
Alex Dunn