Teacher Resources

This page is organized into three major sections:

• Ask the Experts
  These are online question-answering services for students.

• Online Projects
  Online projects connect your classroom with a larger community of practitioners and with students in other schools, nationally or internationally.

• Virtual Field Trips
  Virtual field trips often make use of Virtual Reality, which allows students to interact with an online environment.

Ask the Experts

• Educator's Reference Desk
  This site replaces the previous ERIC Ask and Expert site. This new site includes the 2000 lesson plans, 3000 value-added pointers to education information and organizations, and 200 question archives you have been accessing at askeric.org for over 10 years.
• Ask Jeeves: For Kids
  Kids can type a question into this venerable Web site and get answers back.
• Pitsco's "Ask an Expert"
  Askanexpert.com connects you with hundreds of real world experts, ranging from astronauts to zookeepers. These experts have volunteered to answer your questions for free!

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Online Projects

Online projects change frequently, and most require registration and dedicated time to participate. However, they are a wonderful way to facilitate collaborative learning and data sharing.

• Join an Online Project
  By Tammy Payton, Loogootee Elementary School. This site was last updated in 1997, so it is a bit out of date.
• Earth Day Bags
  Welcome to The Earth Day Groceries Project, one of the oldest and largest educational projects on the Internet. Happy Earth Day!
• Meet Amy, The Franklin Institute's resident science student.
  Amy investigates science and technology for us, from a student's point of view. This is part of The Franklin Institute Science Museum, an excellent Web site which offers a host of "Things to Do" for students.
• Educational CyberFair
  CyberFair has been described as the largest educational event of its kind ever held on the Internet. This program has brought together more than 550,000 students from over 85 countries. The next CyberFair starts in October 2004. CyberFair encourages youth to connect the knowledge they learn in school to real world applications. Youth are inspired to "take action" in order to improve their lives and unite their communities.
• The GLOBE Project
  GLOBE is a worldwide hands-on, primary and secondary school-based science and education program. Students take measurements, report data, create maps and graphs, and collaborate internationally with scientists. There are teachers' guides and workshops, and the activities are linked to standards. GLOBE is a cooperative effort of schools, led in the United States by a Federal interagency program sponsored by NOAA, NASA, NSF, and EPA, in partnership with over 140 colleges and universities, state and local school systems, and non-government organizations. Internationally, GLOBE is a partnership between the United States and 95 other countries.
• Journey North
  In this yearly activity sponsored by the Annenberg Project, students follow Monarch butterfly migrations, plant a tulip garden, report their sightings, and verify data with their online peers as signs of spring move north. Activities change with the seasons. Registration is required.
• Online Projects from Montgomery VA Public Schools
  As an educator for more than thirty years, Melissa Matusevich designed and implemented many interactive projects. In the past six years, most of them have included telecommunications. This Web site describes those projects and suggests ideas for implementing similar projects in your classroom.
• Project Harmony
  Project Harmony, a non-profit educational and training organization, presents the 2002-2003 School Connectivity Programs Online Collaborative Projects. There are four different projects for U.S. schools to choose from, which promote multicultural awareness, knowledge, and perspective: Social Justice and Change for the Future; Images and Perceptions; Conflict and Conflict Resolution; and Introductions and Interdependence. Your students will be involved in an online conference with students from around the United States and the Former Soviet Union, including Armenia and Azerbaijan.

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Virtual Field Trips

Virtual Reality is a new technology that allows students to interact with an online environment, such as a panorama of a historical site or a tour of a museum.

• Resources from Lehigh University
  • LEO EnviroSci Inquiry
    This is a new K-12 outreach project from the Lehigh Earth Observatory and the SERVIT Group in the College of Education at Lehigh University. EnviroSci Inquiry enables teachers, students, and the public to learn about environmental science content knowledge from Lehigh University LEO scientists and interns. Learning activities actively engage participants in data collection, analyzing data, working with GIS databases, and engaging in science-specific pedagogical practices that incorporate Web-based and other technologoies to be implemented in the science classroom. Environmental science curricular activities enable students to use microcomputer based and calculator based probeware, Web-based telecommunication tools, QuickTime Virtual Reality, and other Internet resources to learn about environmental issues. Curricular activities emphasize student-directed scientific discovery of their local environment aligned to the National Science Education Standards, the National Geography Standards, and the National Educational Technology Standards.
  • Which Way is North?
    Which Way is North? is an activity that allows students to develop skills in understanding location by exploring a variety of unique geological formations using QuickTime Virtual Reality panoramas and topographic maps.
  • Dino Inquiry
    This activity allows you to explore a variety of dinosaur fossil bones from the Dinosaur National Monument quarry using QuickTime Virtual Reality panoramas and digital still imagery.
  • Geologic Explorations
    Geologic Explorations allows you to explore a variety of unique geological formations using QuickTime Virtual Reality panoramas and digital still imagery.

• Resources from North Carolina State University
  • Science Junction
    The Science Junction is an interactive Web site that promotes inquiry and provides resources to promote teaching in the context of the National Science Education Standards. This Web site serves as a center for teaching, learning, and integrating science into daily life. Activities and resources include: network science projects in which students collect data to help answer science questions; a "Game Room" of science-based active games; a clearinghouse of online science education Web resources and lesson plans; an interactive discovery area of science ideas for students to try; an online meeting place for novice and veteran science teachers to share ideas; a "Collaborative Connections" database designed to help teachers find collaborators for classroom projects; a place to get information about research projects and research groups at NC State University; and a variety of other teacher resources that focus on professional development and technology skills.
  • Carolina Coastal Science
    Carolina Coastal Science is an innovative, inquiry-based, science resource that utilizes the interactive technologies of the WWW to explore science in coastal Carolina. Carolina Coastal Science was created based on the goals stated in the National Science Education Standards. While this Web site was designed specifically for an Environmental Science component of primary and secondary science curricula, it may be used in different curriculum areas. Teachers and students can use this Web site independently or as a class, using a number of different teaching strategies. These include: open-ended inquiries, guided inquiries, independent research, and cooperative gorup learning. Carolina Coastal Science contains an interactive photojournal that students can use to construct their own set of inquiry questions to explore; inquiry simulations; a section of "Inquiry Images"; and a Coastal Research Technology section. An educator's guide is provided with a variety of teaching suggestions to incorporate this site into primary and secondary school classrooms.
  • Learning to Make Panoramas and Object Movies
    This is a brief presentation of the concept of panoramas, with a tutorial that you and your students can use to make your own. To explore, click on the "sample panoramas" and "object movies" links.

• TALENT's Virtual Museum Project
  Project TALENT, a 2000 Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grant at CSU Fresno has sponsored an excellent collection of eight virtual reality tours of local museums in the Fresno area, including: Artes Americas, Fresno Art Museum, Kearney mansion, Kings County Museum at Burris Park, and Madera County Historical Society Museum. Some of these tours contain lessons and classroom activities.

• Virtual Library Museum Pages
  This site contains listings for hundreds of museums around the world. It is an excellent way to take a field trip without having to leave the classroom.

• Apple Computer's QuickTime Page
  You can find a number of Virtual Reality movies here. If your computer does not have the Quicktime player installed, you can download and install it just by clicking on the Download button toward the top left of the screen.

• Virtual Field Guides
  This site is divided into 4 main sections: the software, the virtual field trips, the book, and the training. It requires proprietary Tour Maker software.

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