Technology applications in the classroom

Hot Web Sites

This month's hot web sites focus on geography and history. Whether you're looking for a current events lesson, resources for history or a classroom project to do in geography, these sites will have you and your students excited about social studies.

WHAT ON EARTH: Ingenius http://www.ingenius.com Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Daily cross-curricular use of current events is easy when you log on at this subscription site for the top news story of the day.

A lesson plan with enrichment activity ideas, related literature and Internet sites is available each evening so teachers can prepare for the next day's story. An After School button has activities to complete at home. You'll find Internet links for research and related data, as well as a Did You Know button to provide background information for the topic.

Twelve interactive games include Viewpoint for e-mailing opinions; BrainPower with its real-world math; Lander, a multiple choice quiz game; and Under Construction, in which students build a graph from a data table. After a week, stories are archived and searchable by curricular area and news category. The spinning globe links to mapping activities.

As an educator, I love the special options. Preferences selects fourth or eighth grade reading level. Hypertext glossary words are defined and pronounced. Online Help has practical tips for using the news stories; comprehensive cross-curricular activities in all content areas; a calendar of monthly themes and education events; and navigation tips.

Don't miss the Ingenius home page with Ask AN.D.LE. for news and research, and Kidstation with its cyberarcade and cool links.

Try WHAT ON EARTH free for 30 days. A single-user license is $99 for three months and $175 for nine. Contact: 800-772-6397.

SEEDS OF CHANGE GARDEN: Smithsonian http://horizon.nmsu.edu/garden/ welcome.html

This garden project can be food for your multicultural theme all year long. Sponsored by the Smithsonian, this site uses the history of Columbus and his discoveries to develop a study of foods in the New World and the people and countries from which our foods originate.

Students can prepare picture books or multimedia presentations using the database of information about Old and New World foods and spices. There are more than a dozen activities for studying the diversity of people and what we can learn from each other. Students can write about food legends, create a class cookbook, make a heritage banner or quilt, or study the languages from which the names of our foods come.

Along with planting and caring for a real garden, you'll find many lessons and activities for working with the garden theme during each of the autumn, winter, spring and summer seasons.

A special educators' link provides the option of working through all activities with enhanced teacher or parent notes throughout the online activities.

There's a link to recipes that can be easily made in the classroom. Teachers can also order seeds for a class garden. The Garden Ring button provides additional resources on foods and gardening and will take you to dozens of additional links.

Copyright Early Years, Inc. Oct 1997
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