LESSON PLANS E-MAILED from student teachers to supervisor for review and comments.  Supervisors at U of M-D make a minimum of four site visits to our student teachers' placement schools.  At least three of these visits are observations of their classroom teaching.  An important part of each visit involves reading their lesson plans (which they generally keep in a binder along with any supplementary materials, overheads,  Power Point presentations, Internet resource materials, graphic organizers, etc., used).  As we read, we write comments, suggestions, and questions which we also discuss with the student teacher while we are there.  A good deal of teaching/learning goes on in this process--especially at the first two visits.  (And supervisors learn, as well as our students.)  However, student teachers usually begin writing lesson plans and teaching 2-3 weeks before our first site visit.  So, this semester, the first four lesson plans were attached to e-mails from student teacher to supervisor during their first week of teaching.  I responded with comments and suggestions to give them immediate feedback, and, therefore, could monitor planning from the beginning.   Click here for samples.

LIST OF FAVORITE EDUCATIONAL WEBSITES recommended by teachers.  There are far more educational websites out there than any teacher could ever research her/himself and the task of finding good ones is time-consuming and quite daunting to beginning computer users.  To help teachers get to effective sites quickly, I am collecting ideas and building a list of favorite educational websites recommended by teachers.  The list is divided into general educational sites, social studies sites, English/language arts sites, and math sites.  The list will be available both electronically and hard copy, and my goal will be to continue to develop it through future semesters and pass it along to as many teachers as possible.  One of my hopes is that some teachers who would not otherwise use technology in their teaching will see this list already prepared for them, try it  out and find some sites they like, and then be interested in further integration of technology into their classes. Click here for details!

LIST OF FAVORITE TECHNOLOGY-INTEGRATED CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES that can be used to enhance learning/teaching.  One thing that a supervisor gets to do that hardly anyone else in education does is visit many classrooms and many different teachers.  We learn a great deal this way and we are able to pass along good ideas and information from teacher to teacher in many schools and districts.  With this in mind, I have begun to collect and develop a list of effective technology-integrated activities for use in secondary classrooms.  These are activities that have been successfully used by practicing teachers, have been practical to implement, and have proven to enhance learning.  So far, the list is limited to social studies classes.  I plan to expand into mathematics by December, 2003.  Click here for details! 

PREVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE FOR MATH TEACHERS.  Finding and evaluating software is time-consuming.  I hope to be able to research some of the math software that's available and share the information with other math teachers.  Specifically, I'm looking for productive software for basic math skills, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and statistics.  I'd like to provide information for teachers as to what the software claims to accomplish, where they can find the software, and how they can take advantage of free trial offers to determine if it would be an asset to their classrooms.  Click here. 

PREVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE FOR SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS.   Participation in several Social Studies NLC's piqued my interest in software available for teachers in this area.  As with the math software project above, I've provided information as to general purpose of the software, where it can be purchased, and free trial offers.  Click here.       

SOURCES OF VIRTUAL MANIPULATIVES FOR MATH TEACHERS.  As a result of discussions in the Math NLC group within the MITTEN project, I became interested in virtual manipulatives for use in math classrooms.  K-12 and community college math teachers all seemed to feel that virtual manipulatives have much potential to strengthen students' conceptual understanding and computational abilities.  My research resulted in a list of websites that will lead classroom teachers to many productive VM tools.   Click here to see the list.

DEVELOPMENT OF ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS FOR MY VIRTUAL LEARNING TOOL (VLT) COURSE SITE.   I plan to add several components to my VLT site for EDD304 Directed Teaching--Secondary.  Included among these will be suggested educational websites (similar to the lists above), a lesson plan template, and an ongoing discussion board for student teachers to use to share ideas among themselves throughout the semester.   Click here for the lesson plan template.