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3 Fun Hands-On Lesson Plans For Teachers To Use

July 19, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

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Teaching kids of all ages can be fun and a learning experience for many teachers, but often times, teachers may end up stumped at how to reach their kids and get them to understand the lesson that they are trying to impart.

Children have complex minds, and even more complex attention spans, and oftentimes the regular lesson plans just may not cut it.Here are some fun hands-on ways for your students AND you to have a great time while learning the lessons you are trying to teach:

1. Film Canister Farming have your students explore what exactly it is that makes a seed grow, and what the life of a plant involves. Use film canisters to plant and grow seeds within the classroom for each student to learn from.

2. Live Butterfly projects this is a fun way to explore nature with your students and have them learn the cycles of butterflies and how they live, eat and migrate. Either take them to a friendly butterfly garden or order butterfly kits to supply each kid with their own caterpillar, and watch them grow in classroom, then set aside a day to set them all free outside when they finally become butterflies.

3. The Body’s Five Senses this lesson is a great way to explore each of the five senses that the body possesses. Have each student go to different stations that are set up with different smells, textures sounds and tastes to discover the ways your body learns about new things.

Filed Under: Online Study Tips Tagged With: Education, Learning, Lesson plan

Planning Your Lessons Around the Net

July 13, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

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The Internet has opened up innumerable chances to learn whatever you want. While your students might not take the time to really think about this power, it’s all around them and they undoubtedly know about it. The average school child can go online with a level of ease their parents should respect, and within an hour or so become virtual experts on their topic of choice. You can use this to your advantage in teaching them.

Part of the fun of going online is being able to learn through searching for things and finding other things. The entire process of the Web involves getting caught up in things, which can inspire a great classroom discussion of a student’s search pattern. It’srare that a search instantly finds everything. You can find basic facts like that, but trying to uncover anything really significant will naturally involve more than just a quick jaunt to the nearest search engine. Research is always going to involve some degree of thought, no matter how much technology automates the process.

When young children become involved in their educations beyond merely sitting there and being talked at, the process becomes a lot more effective for everyone. While some conspiracy theorists would think there’s an Orwellian motive behind the flaws in the educational system, it isn’t really in the world’s best interests to keep people dumb. You can contribute to making your students smarter by encouraging them to think independently, and use the vast power of the Internet to bring fresh insights and interesting perspectives into your discussions. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking kids aren’t smart enough.

Filed Under: Online Learning Resources, Online Study Tips Tagged With: Conspiracy theory, Education, Student

Overcoming Disabilities Online

June 20, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

The world is not always a kind place for a person who isn’t quite “normal.” While normalness is a slippery slope and is extremely hard to define, a lot of people have tried. If one doesn’t fall into a certain category, one will often find themselves marginalized and neglected as being something of a freak. It’s a short fall from “slightly eccentric” to “virtual leper.” Fortunately, being online can allow a person to overcome almost any disability.

A disability can be anything that somehow hinders one’s ability to function under normal circumstances. When such a circumstance occurs in someone’s life, they can have less options than the average. In a case of that nature, going online can be a tremendous boon to the person. On the Internet, physical disabilities don’t matter, and social disabilities can far more easily be worked around. While a person’s disability won’t go away online, disabilities don’t hinder a person from learning and working more like a normal person would. While one shouldn’t call such a person abnormal, such a distinction doesn’t apply oline.

The online world is one of the best things to ever happened to peopl who have disabilities and physical challenges. While this is no cure, it does allow a person who might otherwise find it difficult to function to do so effectively. A person can go from almost totally unable to take care of their own life to being able to learn, work and hire out functions they can’t personally perform. While the Internet won’t make a disabled person completely whole, it will do a lot to make the person able to function almost normally.

Filed Under: Online Learning Resources, Online Study Tips Tagged With: Disability, Disabled, Flickr

The Trouble With Blackboard

June 19, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Image by cromulent2k via Flickr

Blackboard is one more online operation that has successfully sold itself very well, but tends to function poorly in all but the most idealized circumstances. While it has improved over time and has a great idea behind it, often far better functionality can be achieved on an instructor’s own website. When an individual person can produce something superior to a large, nationwide network, it gives one pause to wonder how it can be publicly traded.

The Internet is a place where a lot of education goes on. Right now people all over the world are learning all sorts of things. A person can learn how to parallel park, how to disable an attacker in three easy steps, or even how to make a really mean quiche. The educational opportunities online are limited only by what you’re searching for. From that point onward, it really is all about how ambitious you are and what you want to find. Unfortunately, Blackboard has tried to take universities and align them with resources it has trouble delivering.

While the Internet has grown into a lush garden of knowledge, sites like Blackboard try to keep things contained. Instead of trying to have a tightly confined network, a site like Blackboard would do better to make more efficient use of the existing cloud. From there, it could even link into a teacher’s own website, and make use of materials it doesn’t have to maintain. Once a site adapts to using the Internet as the massive stockpile of information it is, there are typically a lot less problems with keeping it all together and properly functioning.

Filed Under: Online Learning Resources, Schools Tagged With: Blackboard, Education, Providence Equity Partners

Using the Internet Like Montessori

June 15, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Montessori schools are a lovely idea that sometimes falls short. Simply put, they allow children to take their learning in almost any direction they want it to go in, and thus imposes far less limits on them than a traditional school would. However, the downside of this lack of limitations is that it doesn’t do much for the kinds of children who require a lot of structure to get anything done. Some people are just more oganized than others. The Internet is very similar in this regard.

Being online gives a person plenty of chances to search for whatever they want to know. If the person has an intense thirst for knowledge, they can do everything short of actually getting a degree online without spending money or even leaving their home. The average ten year old child can simply go online, if they have the basic skills of arithmetic and literacy, and find things their parents don’t even know about. This is an incredible and unprecedented power that take the concept of Montessori to a whole new level.

The best part of it is, this isn’t something elite or only accessible to a few people. Most everyone in society can access the Internet. All you have to do is find a computer that’s connected, and there you are. While the Internet takes some time to properly reveal its secrets, a lot of the time it has them so easily accessible it isn’t funny. All you have to do is tell the child to look for something they want to know, and within minutes they can be a virtual expert on all manner of different topics.

Filed Under: Online Learning Resources Tagged With: Child, Montessori, Montessori method

Choosing Your Desired Field through Online Degree Programs

June 15, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

When it comes to choosing a profession, it is important to consider many aspects to ensure that you make the decision that best suits your interests and situation. Additionally, it is equally important to look into the various programs that are available that pertain most to your specific career path. Unfortunately, not every profession has a particular program that provides the training needed to be successful.

The best way to get around this is to explore the possibilities of degree programs that are available online. Below are a few reasons why choosing a field through online degree programs is an easy and effective process.

Wide Range of Options

One aspect of finding a field through online degree programs is the wide range of options that are available to you. Unlike sifting through potential programs available at a brick and mortar institution, online institutions found at sites such as elearners.com have a wide array of easily to choose from options that can help eager students make the right decision pertaining to their career choice.

Convenience

An additional aspect of choosing a potential career through online degree programs is the level of convenience that is associated with going to school online. By opting to take classes online, students can enjoy the convenience of being able to log in to their classes at whatever time is most convenient for them. Due to this fact, people who were too busy to physically go to class on-site on a regular basis are able to obtain a degree in a field of interest to them without dealing with the stress of schedule conflicts.

Filed Under: Online Learning Resources, Online Programs Tagged With: Distance education, Education, online degree programs

Helping Children use Their Intelligence

June 12, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

There have always been students whose abilities overshadow their fellows. In some cases, these students even outshine their teachers, even from a young age. While most teachers feel honored to have such a brilliant student in their midst, a lot of times the student feels a lot worse about the arrangement than the teacher does. Typically, these are the students most likely to clown around in class and act the fool, just because they get bored.

This boredom tends to come about because a student isn’t being sufficiently challenged intellectually. A student in this boat will tend to see their education as nearly pointless, because they tend to grasp what their teacher is talking about immediately. At that point the teacher just keeps talking, trying to hammer home the point to the lowest common denominator. While the smart student might be fine with this for a moment, it won’t be long before they’re cracking wise and trying to get something more interesting to be talked about. A lot of times the subject is just too easy for them.

However, a wily teacher can use this intelligence to its greatest advantage through actually encouraging this student to do research on a challenging topic during class time. While it might at first seem like administering special treatment, if you set up a few challenges leading up to this, it can be a great way for other students to push themselves to perform at the top level, and be assigned difficult projects as well. You can even set it up so that the student reports in once they get what you’re lecturing about, and test their comprehension speed.

Filed Under: Online Study Tips, Schools Tagged With: Education, Student, Teacher

Enjoying the Benefits of Online Learning

June 7, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Online learning is becoming more popular, especially as people learn of the benefits that can be gained from doing this. A few of the benefits are listed below; you may think of others as well.

Online learning fits well into regular daily schedules. You can “attend” class whenever it’s convenient for you — before or after work, on weekends or whenever. Online learning is usually less stressful. Because you have so much control over your class schedule, and, yes, because you can go to class in your pajamas if you want to, it is easier to earn your master degree at earnmydegree.com. Online learning puts reference sources at your fingertips.

You don’t have to schlep down to a library or other reference buildings to get the information you need. You can pull it up on the Internet. When you use the sources provided by the website when you earn your master degree, you’ll know the information you are getting is correct and reliable.

Online learning lets you work at your own pace. You’re not “locked in” to specific class times or to the specific material that is currently being taught. Once you’ve mastered the material, you can move on to the next phase. Online learning can be more cost-effective. When you earn your master degree at earnmydegree.com, you may save more money than if you had attended a “traditional” college. Financial aid is still available to those who wish to take advantage of online education, so you still have this benefit, also.

Filed Under: Online Learning Resources, Online Programs Tagged With: Education, eLearning, Master's degree