Chap. 8, 9 TWT

This video highlighted a program the brought library books on laptops to Omaha City School children as young as kindergarten. Now these kids can check out and read any book from an app/website called overdrive. I have personally used overdrive and find it to be a great resource for pleasure reading. While it is a good thing to have children engaged in reading from a young age, some of the things I saw in this video made me feel this is going to have to opposite effect. The children being interviewed did not look up from their devices while speaking. I am not sure if giving pre-literate or emerging readers another device to stare at is the best thing for their developing brains. I'm sure these children enjoy this opportunity and it is presented with the best of intentions but I think children will benefit from finding books they enjoy at their school library.


I have been tasked with viewing and reporting on these resources

 
The first link is to Nasa.gov. On the home page is some thrilling news.

Which felt a little like this:

 

I could see this as being a great resource in the classroom to keep kids up to date on the latest scientific achievements.

The next site is https://www.usgs.gov/ - the U.S. Geological Survey. This site was similar to NASA but the information was more geared towards how we interact with the Earth under our feet (earthquakes, volcanoes, oil and natural gas, etc.). This would also be a great school resource for a topic that related to this field.

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient/ is the next site. I spent way longer in this site than I needed to. This. was. so. cool. I am remembering ten years ago when my astronomy professor was extolling the virtues of google earth when it was first launched. This could inspire an earth science class. 

https://www.globe.gov/ this site was interesting to peruse but the "news" section was the most interesting part. I think this would be a useful resource for researching current events for a science project. 

https://www.nsta.org/publications/freebies.aspx this was an interesting site, the first thing that drew my attention was the "lexile analyzer" published Oct. 18th 2019. This is a tool that helps educators determine the level of a text based on common core standards. This would be incredibly useful to use in the classroom. If you were to use any of the other resources above, you would need to know if the article vocabulary is appropriate for your students levels. I'm sure this resource is filled with useful things like this.

http://www.viewpure.com/ this site helps educators remove ads from youtube videos in order to enhance the viewing experience and not distract from the content of the video. Some ads may be inappropriate for school viewing, but the video could be a vital resource. This is a great tool to use.

Next, I was asked to sleuth out some fake sites. Here's the list:

 

The first one looked fake from first click. The pictures were broken, the images were distorted and low quality. Also, this website is offending to genetically modify your baby. NOT REAL.

Next up: Dog Island: NOT REAL. no one offers anything for free. 

Exploratorium: Real. This place has an address that is fact check-able. The site is easy to navigate (ie someone was paid to make it). This place exists.

lastly, Science kids: this one is real, I've downloaded content from this site before.