Blogs We’ve been scouring the web to find relevant and meaningful resources teachers can use to interact and connect with students.
We’ve put together this selection that will affirm and extend your online teaching skills, and perhaps, save your sanity.
- Faculty Focus: One challenge facing educators is finding ways to accommodate students with special needs in an online environment. Faculty Focus discusses ideas to identify and support these learners in an online environment.
- Education Week: Educators are skilled at building connections. This article from Ed Week focuses on how teachers rebuild those connections now that they are not in the traditional classroom. This article from Edutopia also offers strategies for maintaining connections.
- EdSurge: The overwhelming realities of online learning can be challenging to pilot. This advice for teachers, including “Let yourself off the hook,” is supportive and affirming.
- Wide Open School: Easy to search and sort, the professional and well-vetted material allows you to be sure the content is well-sourced, instead of digging through videos shot by someone’s Uncle Al in his basement (sorry Uncle Al).
- We Are Teachers: It’s becoming a repetitive message, and it’s critical. Taking care of yourself is not selfish. Taking care of yourself is paramount to everything. This article from We Are Teachers has ideas just for educators to practice self-care
There is a wealth of information to be had from some of the world’s finest museums and galleries. Check it out:
- The Smithsonian: Provides educator resources, such as a distance learning program, along with online learning opportunities for a plethora of content areas, including American Indian History, Air and Space Museum, and the Smithsonian Science Education Center, to name just a few!
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA): Provides a K-12 educator site, including ways to work with art as an extension of the classroom.
- The Field History Museum: Provides a learning resource site containing a wide range of collections for teachers and students, along with lesson plans sorted by age group and topic. Want to include SUE in your lessons? Here you go!
- Ellis Island Site: Get an intimate perspective of immigration via the Ellis Island site, highlighting both the Statue of Liberty and the ship manifests of 65 million passengers who have entered the US. MoMA has an exhibit too
- CDC Museum: Did you know that the CDC has a museum? Not only that, they offer a Disease Detective Camp
If you want more museum resources, Dr. David Childs of Northern Kentucky University composed this wonderful article via Democracy and Me, with specific highlights of online collections.
Educators as a group are one of our most important professions. These fantastic and credible resources, many including lesson plans and curriculum activities, are sure to enhance instruction. We’re with you, and we will keep on cheerleading. Be careful out there.
