Do we really get credit for having so much fun?

There have been quite a few days in my teaching career where I have had so much fun that I felt guilty about getting paid. (Of course, that is balanced out by the days where it is less than fun and I feel as though they could never pay me enough.)

As I have spent the week exploring new ways to teach using the Internet, I am starting to feel like I'm having too much fun to get credit for a class! I know that we are supposed to be focusing on the Write aspect of the Read/Write Web, but call me a ludite if you will ... I am excited about some of the things I've found for the good old-fashioned, old-school Read Web. My assignment focus has changed five times so far (did I mention that I'm indecisive?) so I've been able to learn quite a bit about many different strategies. I am currently working on Option #2 - developing a resource to inform my colleagues about various strategies. My morning has been spent looking for examples of Digital Resource Centers, Simulations, Virtual Field Trips and Webquests. I have found some amazing stuff! Don't worry ... of course I'm going to share with you all. Just be patient ...

Even though I have been teaching computer technology classes for eight years and thought I knew it all, I learned about some great new strategies this past week. Since my class is integrated so heavily with Social Studies and Language Arts, the tools that I learned about will be immediately useful. I wish I would have known about some of these two weeks ago when we developed our final projects for the semester. Although the upfront time would have been tremendous to prepare Knowledge Hunts or even just Topic Hotlists for their research projects, it would have been worth it in the end to not have to watch them flounder aimlessly around the Internet. Over the past couple of years I have used a form of each of these strategies, but I am excited to formalize and organize them into something even more useful for my students.

Although I am excited by the Knowledge Hunts, I have to say that I spent a large chunk of time this morning playing around with Virtual Field Trips, Digital Resource Centers and Simulations. Man I found some cool stuff! Did you know that there is a site that provides 360 degree views of the Great Wall of China? Or how about visual representations of various physics topics? Then there are the Digital Resource Centers which provide a ton of digital information about a multitude of topics in American History and another that contains beautiful images of Tibet. Not only do they provide extensive libraries of digital images, but they also contain video and audio clips.

I always knew the Internet was an amazing tool for the classroom, but I'm finally beginning to see all the parts of it that I've been missing!