Last week I needed inspiration. I want to thank my friends on Plurk who had lots of ideas for me to get started with. As every one does at different times in life, I needed some help. Some of us have personalities that make it easy to ask for assistance. As silly as it might seem, other people see it as a weakness to have to ask others for a hand. In the past 10 years, the internet has grown to be "assistance that is just a few clicks away". In just a matter of minutes, my friends had helped get the ideas in my brain going once again.
The school year ended in June and throughout the summer I have been getting ready for the new school year, set to start in September. Many teachers look at their lesson plans from the year before and modify and repeat what has worked in the years past. This only makes sense. I have been thinking for months about this upcoming school year because things are going to be very different. My labs will be new this year. The software on the computers has changed and is limited. I'm having to start anew. All my students will be creating lots of "digital story telling" projects. In the past, my classes have done one project like this in the entire year! I have 31 classes total of kindergarten, 1st and 2nd graders. I know that what I think is going to be the plan on Monday ends up changed by the end of the day. Things must get revised because we are dealing with living human beings! How things look on paper are often different when working with the students.
Fortunately, the internet has made it easy to get creative ideas from talented teachers all around the world. A few minutes of searching and anyone can find websites that connect you not only to step by step lesson plans but also to the curriculum standards. You can get help in almost every aspect of your life. I personally have used it for finding information on financial, educational and medical questions. I have used it to get reviews of things that I want to purchase and places that I want to visit. I use it daily as a dictionary and to help me find new menu ideas for the family. I am in debt to the many exceptional educators that have shared their ideas with me and other teachers. Thank you to all of them for the help that is just a few clicks away.
