Forums

I participate in several linkin groups. Recently in a STEM education group, this link to 101 websites for science teachers appeared - good stuff http://www.goedonline.com/101-websites-for-science-teachers?goback=.gde_1146517_member_138530587

A nice variety of websites to peruse through, many giving me new ideas for the upcoming year. A bonus under the actual Science tab was the “projectables”, I can’t wait to see how this section grows over time.

Here are a couple of other great website resources for teachers:
HippoCampus.org
and
Connected PD
Carolyn

There's lots of discussion about individualized professional development occurring at the connected educator conference

Also look at Peer to Peer University at https://p2pu.org/en/

What a fantastic collection Pam!

I like students to connect science to current events, so the National Geographic site is one of my faves. One that is not on the list that I think ought to be is ScienceDaily.com. It has some very interesting articles about current topics, especially for older students. I actually use it to have students prepare for the reading and science portions of the ACT test - it is written at a pre-college/college level, which I think is very important if our kids are to be ready for college.

Hi Pam, those are some great resources. Thamk you for posting them. The BBC web site specifically drew my intwrest because of the live interviews followed by a how to session. I wanted to share a web site for Elementary and Middle school Science and Math teachers. The IXL math site http://www.ixl.com/ is what I use, as a warm up to keep my students honed in essential math skills as they relate to the SI measurements. It also supports cross curriculum topics that their Math teachers are developing or introducing. DW

Dinah,

I have also used IXL for math interventions. The kids are engaged, and can use it at home. I like that it does teacher reporting, which is good when tying effort to performance with my students. There is a charge to use the software.

For those of you who are also math teachers, I also recommend the TenMarks website, which reaches a bit higher into the high school age groups. They have several different pricing programs, including a free version which allows access to the same materials, but limits the grade band capabilities. It also has some great reporting.

Mrs. Buzzell's Science Spot A collection of all things science - interactive websites, photos, and science news updates. http://buzzellsciencespot.blogspot.com/

Hi Jennifer and Patricia, Thank you Jennifer, for the awesome feedback. The math resource is ideal for one of my PLC math teachers. She is amazing and would welcome a resource of this type. Patricia, when school begins we plan on sharing resources with the other teachers. The science resource link you posted has a lot of various activities we can place in the resource matrix, we are creating. Thanks again, Dinah

Dinah,

Another website you might consider using for sharing links is Delicious www.delicious.com. This is a social bookmarking site, and would allow you to create a set of categorized links online, and available to all, from any location. It works a lot better than a sheet of paper!

So true Adah. We need to teach our students how to be good consumers of digital content. Just as some printed content masquerades as reliable, research-based content (in other words, not biased), websites typically have a bias, and our students should be able to critically assess the validity of a website and its contents. Anyone have a rubric for a website? How do you judge how biased the content is?

Very cool links! Thank you for sharing! Nice not to "recreate the wheel"!

www.sciencebuddies.org is a fabulous science site. I teach 5th grade & we use it to prepare for the Science Fair. It's very user friendly & could even be used to teach the scientific inquiry process from beginning to end. The explanation on variables is very well stated. The students enjoy this site & was surprised at how easy it was for them to find a science fair topic that interested them. In fact, they found so many it was hard for them to choose one. This site also compares STEM to Inquiry as well. I recommend this site for all teachers of all grade levels.

All of these websites have been useful. I wanted to know if anyone had any suggestions of websites that have labs. Specifically, labs that deal with climate. I have one creating hailstones, but I wanted to see if anyone had any other ones. Thanks in advance! -Alfons

Alfons, You might do a search of the resources in the Learning Center. There are many with data and specific information on climate changes and biological and environmental effects. You mention of making 'hailstones' may imply that you are looking for demonstrations on weather conditions, such as simulating diffraction in the sky etc. If you wish to be more specific, perhaps others could chime in with additional ideas to share.

A few sites with demonstrations on weather phenomena http://www.scienceinschool.org/2009/issue11/weather (cloud in a bottle; tame tornado) http://www.weatherwizkids.com/ Weather Wiz Kids kid friendly content with some interactive sites http://weather.about.com/od/lessonplanselementary/ht/air_volume.htm (show air has volume)

Are you exploring strategies and ready-made curriculum products for student short and long term research/inquiry? You might like to investigate the BCPS portal of Online Research Models for grades 6, 7, and 8. The Online Research Models (ORM), developed by Baltimore County Public Schools, represent an exciting way to guide student research toward higher-level thinking that fully utilizes technology and digital content resources. The research models were developed by teams of library media specialists, teachers, and content specialists at Summer Curriculum Workshops in the Baltimore County Public Schools since 1998. Students who use the self-guided online research lessons are challenged to employ thoughtful reading, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information to create answers, not just find them. The ORM are designed as web pages that present students with a clear research structure, including a research scenario, a learning task, rubrics and scoring tools, directions for use of various media resources, links to useful web sites, creation of a product or presentation, and reflection. Student collaboration is built in to the process. Internet access to the models serves to make curriculum information accessible to teachers, students, parents and the general public. http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/models/middle.html#science

I have been collecting some websites that I use for my 8th grade science students. http://www.hometrainingtools.com/science-projects/c/1072/ http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/funexperiments/quick/middlesch.html http://www.sciencebase.com/puns.html http://www.mysciencebox.org/ http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiments http://www.goedonline.com/101-websites-for-science-teachers http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/system/interactable/3/index.html hhttp://middleschoolscience.com/life.htm http://nature.ca/discover/gllrysc_e.cfm http://sciencespot.net/Pages/startersgensci.html http://www.teachervision.fen.com/tv/printables/Gummy_Bear_Genetics.pdf http://www.jasonproject.org/curricula http://chemistry.about.com/od/holidaysseasons/a/holidayscience.htm http://www.teachersdomain.org/ http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/models/middle.html#science http://weather.about.com/od/lessonplanselementary/ht/air_volume.htm http://www.weatherwizkids.com/ http://www.scienceinschool.org/2009/issue11/weather http://www.utm.edu/departments/cece/cesme/PSAM/PSAM.shtml http://buzzellsciencespot.blogspot.com/ ScienceDaily.com. http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx [email protected] http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas.shtml http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/ http://sciencefriday.com/

StarGenetics is a Mendelian genetics cross simulator developed at MIT by biology faculty, researched-trained scientists and technologists at MIT's OEIT. StarGenetics allows students to simulate mating experiments between organisms that are genetically different across a range of traits to analyze the nature of the traits in question. Its goal is to teach students about genetic experimental design and genetic concepts http://star.mit.edu/genetics/

Thanks for the Star Genetics link. It looks like I can use it at multiple levels, both in our 9th/10th Biology I class and in AP.