I often wonder what I would be like as a student in some of today's classrooms. Would I be a different type of learner than I was 50 years ago? I like to think I would be inquisitive, respectful, creative, cooperative in a classroom today, the same as I was years ago. However, I also remember times when I was not attending to what was happening in class, those were times when I was looking for something to occupy my mind, my time, my creative side. At any rate, here are some things I wish I had to investigate when I was in school years ago. I like to think that any one of these sites would have kept my interest for weeks.
The Newseum is Washington D.C.'s most interactive museum. I've not visited it, but I love and would spend a day searching, researching, comparing and contrasting the front pages of 744 newspapers from 73 countries that are online.
Spaceweather would be my next recommendation
I love to check out the weather and wind speed on top of Mount Washington here , the current conditions page has a wealth of information that can be tracked
Speaking of looking at data and interpreting data, check out David Warlick's sources for Raw Data. I wish I had been in a classroom where we looked at data, made a determination, analyzed, synthesized and drew conclusions about data.
TED Talks always has something I am interested in. This is a website gathering of "ideas worth spreading".
The rest of my time could have been spent with PBSkids with all the wonder that PBS presents each day.
Is your classroom engaging to all your learners? What else can you do to make your classroom come alive for some of your challenged and challenging learners? We should be leaving our students with a love of lifelong learning, the desire to create our own questions, the knowledge to come up with a good inquiry question and the stamina to search succinctly and summarize a great answer. The most important part in this process will be teaching our students how to share this information with others! Leave your favorite website and project to share with others.
