This excellent teacher resource, part of the wNetSchool
(sponsored by the Disney Learning Partnership), introduces educators to
the techniques of standards-based teaching.
Working "from concept to classroom," the on-line workshop explains
the rationale behind standards; demonstrates
how they're being used in real classrooms; and helps
teachers explore their own "best practice" and answer the
question, "how do I start using standards?" When you're ready
to try it yourself, the workshop's "Implementation" section offers
a framework to design your own lessons aligned with standards. Includes
a
discussion board, and links to other resources.
Video/audio clips enrich the presentations. And it's all free!
Explore
the rest of this great site and discover other active workshops, including:
multiple
intelligences, constructivism,
using
the Internet, collaborative
learning, inquiry-based
learning, assessment
and curriculum redesign, webquests,
and making
family and community connections
You know you're going to enjoy this site as soon as you see the photo of
English teacher Ray Saitz on the homepage. You shouldn't have any trouble
identifying Ray! When Mr. Saitz couldn't
find the lesson plans he was looking for on the Web, he decided to post
his own, complete with handouts. Saitz
has taught both junior high and high school students at varying levels of
achievement, and the lesson plans reflect his various assignments.
Saitz also encourages other teachers to contribute to the site -- and many
have. The lessons are divided into four main sections: Literature,
Poetry, Library,
and Writing. The
Literature and Poetry sections have a large number of writing assignments
included in them. Ray's site has a list of links to sites useful to middle
and high school teachers. (Ray's Canadian, so when you see "intermediate,"
think "junior high" or "middle school".)
We especially liked the Independent
Novel Study for middle school; Reading Group Tasks (which assigns roles
to each group member); the
Interactive "Scarlet Letter" (finally - it's interesting!);
all of the Poetry
material; and the
intermediate Biography unit, a good kick-off lesson for the beginning
of the year that requires students to write biographies of each other.
There's much, much more at this site -- and you're invited to add your favorite
lessons. It's a great example of the Web's power to extend the "learning
community" of teachers.
TeachNet.org is the website for IMPACT
II-The Teachers Network, a national nonprofit organization that supports
classroom teachers in the United States. TeachNet specializes in new-teacher
support, including access to 15
on-line mentors with specialities in every content area and at every
grade level. The service is free and TeachNet promises a response to your
question within 72 hours.
You'll find other resources at the How-To
page, including managing (and energizing) your classroom, implementing
standards and assessment, adjusting to students' learning styles, working
with families, using new media, and developing as a professional. Another
feature, Daily
Classroom Specials, covers topics like "Control 101," back-to-school"
night, managing parent-teacher conferences, and wrestling with paperwork.
There's much more at the TeachNet.org site. Go to the "about us"
page for an overview.
The Knowledge Loom is a best practices resources being developed by the
Northeast & Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University
for the U.S. Department of Education. Content is organized by themes that
users can easily access from the main page. Each theme has a cover page
that includes a top menu for navigating the entire site and a side menu
for exploring the theme. See, for example, the theme page for Professional
Development.
This new resource is still growing, but it promises to be one of the premier
sites for what works in the teaching and learning process. Teachers and
administrators can read about the best practices and view the research that
supports them. There is a
searchable database of resources as well as interactive discussion centers
where teachers can ask questions of experts in the field or post their own
success stories and ideas. This is a free site to anyone, but users must
register
in order to join the community and post questions or stories. (Based on
Education World review.)
The kids at P.S. 56 in Richmond
Hill, NY (Queens) are website wizards! Over the last several years, they've
racked up a display-case-full of awards for their Internet creations. We
were particularly intrigued by the "Arts
Rights and Wrongs" site, which explains copyright and trademark
laws in ways that sixth graders -- and even adults -- can understand them.
This site won a Silver Award in the 2000 ThinkQuest
Junior contest (arts and literature division). PS56'ers also won a Gold
Award in sports and health for their "Growing
Up with Epilepsy" site. In 1999, the kids won a Platinum Award
for this toothy site: "Yo,
It's Time for Braces." (And a
bunch of other awards, too!)
Fifth grade teacher Neme
Alperstein is the adult leader of this band of fifth- and sixth-grade
web wizards. She's put together a
list of resources for teachers on web-based learning.
You can see all the ThinkQuest Junior 2000 (grades 4-6) winners
here, including the "Best of Contest" winner, Rat
Tales (not from P.S. 56, but there's always next year!). Seventh and
eighth graders can compete in the
ThinkQuest Internet Challenge (for serious prize money).
This ThinkQuest project, developed by computer graphics students at high
schools in the Bronx and Sweden, explores the mystery
of the Mona Lisa through scientific inquiry, accompanied by original
music composed
by Leonardo daVinci. This popular site (nearly 600,000 visitors) includes
many daVinci resources
and has been written up at ZDNet
and in The
New York Times. Teacher Steve Feld says his "multiethnic inner
city students" created the site with 15-year-old computers. We hope
some generous computer company has corrected that problem!
And don't miss this new extension to the Learning About Leonardo web site
-- Arti FAQ 2100.
This new ThinkQuest project predicts how art will look in the next hundred
years, by examining art of the past.
Subtitled "Parents Dedicated to Children's Learning," this site
provides loads of information and opportunities for families and teachers
to work together. Find content on many education issues, such as School
Safety, Commercialism in Schools, and Bilingual Education. Other special
sections include Hot
Topics; Parenting
Challenges; Special
Needs; and a special middle
grades section.
This lesson was developed as part of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools'
Virtual Schoolhouse
Project. The teachers involved in this project come from various disciplines:
Language Arts,
Computers, Library/Media and Business Education.
Students investigate the effects of the stock market crash of 1929, using
WWW links identified by the authors. The goal: gaining an understanding
of the stock market, life in the late '20's and early '30's, and the financial
struggles of Americans due to the crash. Upon completing the webquest,
students create a newsletter reporting on different aspects of the time.
Geared to eighth grades students, this lesson covers the four core content
areas. It's a three-week unit, and the authors have linked the project to
Florida's academic standards in several subject areas.
"We don't ask ourselves where languages come from because they just
seem to be there," begins this excellent activity from San Francisco's
Exploratorium museum. "French
in France, English in England, Chinese in China, Japanese in Japan, and
so forth. Yet if we go back only a few thousand years, none of these languages
were spoken in their respective countries and indeed none of these languages
existed anywhere in the world. Where did they all come from?"
Social studies and English teachers -- and their students -- can find out
the answers by exploring a series
of exercises that demonstrate similarities and differences between words
of several languages. Students can also find out about the
histories and origins of words. The section on the
development of regional dialects is fascinating (at least to this English
major!). Great for tying geography lessons into language arts curriculum.
Activities can completed either online or offline.
This helpful resource site has been developed for middle schools in school
districts supported by the Champion company. But every middle grades school
will be delighted to find it. The focus is staff development and school
restructuring, built around standards. "The most effective way to meet
the challenge of curriculum standards in the middle grades is by assuring
that the school's curriculum is aligned with mandated standards, and in
cases where they exist, with the state's testing program," writes the
website's managers. "It is easy to imagine this becoming a grim task
in which teachers doggedly pursue the objectives specified by state requirements
after purging all of the exciting, interesting, and engaging topics and
instructional approaches they have used successfully
in the past." Not so, they say.
Check out these features: Lesson
plans (choose from the lists at the homepage); student
behavior resources; and special materials for teachers
and administrators.
National Geographic is proud of its redesigned website for teachers. "In
the course of designing it," says NGS director Ford Cochran, "we
showed different versions to teachers, then made modifications based on
what we heard." The site features several ways to navigate through
the lesson
plans database: by subject, by type, and by grade level. You'll also
find maps
and geography materials, online
adventures, and a "teacher
community" where teachers can exchange ideas.
When we visited in late January 2000, the featured lesson plan was "Build
a Brand New Town with Your Middle School Students." Probably they
don't mean that literally.
The "Welcome"
at the American Memory Learning Page website says this resource is "designed
to help teachers, students, and life-long learners use the American Memory
digital collections from the Library of Congress. The site provides guidance
to finding and using items within these primary source collections."
Social studies and language arts teachers (this is a great place to find
ideas for interdisciplinary lessons) will love this site.
Feature
Presentations bring together items from across the American Memory collections
to investigate a common theme. Current topics include elections,
immigration,
inaugurations,
presidents,
Thanksgiving,
and women
pioneers, with more in production. Lesson
Ideas offer strategies and lesson plans developed by education professionals
to help integrate primary sources, especially those in American Memory,
into the classroom. Activities
introduce students to American Memory and are designed for students to build
information literacy skills. The "First
Ladies Bowl" is a good example. Learn
More About It focuses on an individual segments of the American Memory
collection, with curriculum suggestions by educators and historians from
across the country in the subject areas of U.S. history, social studies,
and language arts. See, for example, The
Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920 and Small
Town America.
This is a terrific resource that will continue to grow as middle and high
school teachers involved in the American
Memory Fellows program post additional ideas for their colleagues across
the U.S.
Designed to help Oregon science teachers met the state's academic standards,
the Earth and Sea website is a great resource for any middle grades science
teacher. The home page includes links to archived discussions about teaching
and assessing
science inquiry; a valuable page of researchers'
data (data sets, photos, simulations, models) in life, earth, space,
and physical science; lesson
plans and guided learning; links to on-line
collaborative experiments and connections with scientists and amateur
researchers; and other science weblinks.
Simple, straightforward, and well-selected .
The next generation of Web site developers are finding inspiration, encouragement
and some financing from the ArsDigita
Foundation, which sponsors an annual competition for teenage programmers.
The Web sites have to be useful to a community of people, have no advertisements,
and must distribute their source code on their sites so that other programmers
can build on their work.
The winner receives a $10,000 cash award, use of a professional Web server,
an all-expenses-paid trip to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and a free three-week software engineering "boot
camp." Runners up get cash prizes and professional server access,
too.
Applications are being accepted now (deadline is May 15.) The award will
be presented in June 2000. Applicants must be no more than 18 years old
as of March 1, 1999, and the Web service entry must be non-commercial and
contain no banner ads or subscription fees. It must be comprehensible to
someone who understands only English, it must be tasteful (the sponsors
provide some pretty basic, non-restrictive guidelines here), and it must
be used by others.
In the mid 1850s, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a letter to his publisher angrily
lashing out at the "damned mob of scribbling women" whose books
often sold in the thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, driving more
deserving writers (such as Hawthorne) out of the literary marketplace. At
the beginning of the twentieth century, the novelist Frank Norris proclaimed
that women lacked the necessary involvement with experiencep;with "life
itself, the crude, the raw, the vulgar"p;that was the basis for
great and enduring literature.
A project of The Public Media Foundation, "Scribbling Women" dramatizes
stories by American women writers, originally prepared for national radio
broadcast. (See list
of stories here; scroll down to find text.) The site includes dramatizations
of two 19th Century plays in Real Audio format. The site also offers a discussion
about teaching with "Scribbling Women," as well as lesson
plans, information about linking
the stories, and other resources, including teacher
workshops.
The stories in the "Scribbing Women" series, says Lucinda H. MacKethan
of North Carolina State University, "demonstrate just how wrong, how
blind, Norris and other earlier critics and writers have been in their assessments
of American women writers." The series provides 10 "compelling
examples of 'life itself' in all its different shades, rendered with great
vividness and complexity by women who pursued lifelong, successful careers
as writers of fiction." Among the stories: "Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs (1861); "A
Whisper in the Dark" by Louisa May Alcott (1863); and "Louisa"
by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1891) -- "In a gentle story of endurance,
hardship, and stubborn optimism, a young woman refuses to marry a man she
doesn't love, even though his prosperity would save her family from destitution."
Developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and other organizations,
this site aims to make mathematics part of the everyday learning process
outside of school. Targets
parents of middle school-age children and provides them with a variety
of math challenges to work on with their children.
The site's math
challenges are built around attractive graphics and high-interest topics.
See, for example, What's
My Angle? and Chocolate,
Chocolate. The site includes information
for users on the best brower and other software to take full advantage
of the features.
Lesson Stop is a website dedicated to collecting and disseminating lesson
plans, with articles and tips aimed at helping K-12 teachers develop and
improve their teaching. You can also subscribe to a weekly e-newsletter
pointing readers to 4-5 new lesson plans discovered on the Web.
Of particular interest to middle grades teachers: "Five
Common Mistakes in Writing Lesson Plans" and "Avoiding
the Pitfalls of Mediocre Lesson Plans." The site includes lesson
plans under these headings: Arts;
Language Arts;
Math; Science;
Social Studies;
Technology; and
Other Lessons.
The site is also developing a collection of its own
lesson plans, which include links to Internet content, standards, a
vocabulary list, comprehension and critical thinking questions, and other
activities.
Ashok Bansal, an electronics marketing director, thought his children weren't
getting enough exposure to the analytical math problems they would face
in today's workplace. So he started writing his own word problems - the
dreaded questions that force students to apply math to real world scenarios
- and geared them toward his children's elementary school sensibilities
by combining the problems with stories
from children's books and other kid-friendly topics, like "magic
with numbers."
His children enjoyed working the problems while improving their math skills,
and Bansal was inspired to share his labor of love with others. In March
1999, he posted a free Web site called Mathstories.com. So far, he has created
2,500 brain teasers for elementary and middle school students (See problems
for grades 5-6 and for
grades 7-8.) The
problems for middle schoolers cover basic computation as well as writing
and solving algebraic equations (example)
and working with probability (example).
Since its launch, Bansal's site has received close to 2 million visitors,
and teachers in New York City and other districts are using Mathstories.com
as part of their curriculum.
(Adapted from San Francisco Examiner story.)
Restoration in the
Barrens is a moving novel about 13-year-old Corey Nelson, orphaned and
sent to live in rural Central Wisconsin. Corey's foster parents, Ben and
Ellen Raine, introduce him to "The Barrens," a large wildlife
area near their farmhouse. The Barrens quickly becomes Corey's refuge whenever
things grow difficult. This vast area of prairie grass and scrub oak serves
as a link to his late father, a botany professor. Coming to grips with the
death of his parents, uncovering Ben and Ellen's painful past, and dealing
with a science teacher with an attitude, are only a few of the problems
that await him.
"Restoration in the Barrens" weaves grassland ecology around the
struggles of a middle school student. It can be a starting point for classroom
explorations of the American prairie and the native landscapes just outside
your schoolhouse door. The author, Joe
Riederer, has been teaching middle school science in Central Wisconsin
for seventeen years and has been "working with prairie projects for
almost as long."
"Restoration" has been selected as the literature component to
Bell Live!,
an excellent on-line prairie field trip produced by the Bell Natural History
Museum. Riederer's website includes a brief summary of the book and ordering
information -- plus web
links for each chapter, downloadable
classroom resources, including a vocabulary sheet, published curricula,
reference books, and classroom notes for teachers and parents. You'll also
find prairie
photos.
Teachers Talking about Learning is designed as a framework to support the
online professional development of teachers working in remote regions of
the world. An excellent collection of digested articles on current issues
in educational theory provide the foundation for an online discussion and
interactive projects and tools. The first project sponsored by Teachers
Talking, These
Trees: a global gallery is designed to help students make contact with
others around the world and to share what they know about their community.
Among other features: What
Makes a Good Teacher (500 hundred children from 50 countries contributed
opinions); interviews with successful
teachers from various countries; learning
games from around the world; and an on-line
discussion among teachers across the globe. This site is new and the
conversation has not reached "critical mass," but it would be
fascinating if it did. We suspect teachers across the world would find they
have much in common.
Sponsored by the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse,
this site "is a collection of resources to help educators and professional
development providers facilitate discussion and reflection on improving
K-12 mathematics." The materials include professional
development activities, TIMSS
publications, articles
about teacher change, teacher
narratives and other explorations of changes in practice, and a selection
of excellent
articles on reform. An altogether terrific site, with something to offer
everyone interested in school change.
Bring contemporary issues alive in your classroom with the Internet version
of the award-winning "Decisions, Decisions" series from Tom Snyder
Productions. As students role-play legislators faced with a critical situation,
Decisions, Decisions Online stimulates discussions that start inside your
classroom and continue outside of it. Each month, Decisions, Decisions Online
introduces students to the clashing viewpoints behind a controversial social
issue drawn from today's news headlines. (Hey, they're not paying us to
say this. We liked it.)
Recent topics include cloning
and gun
control. The best way to dive in? Visit the "Teacher
Instructions" page and follow the step-by-step directions -- or
check out the Frequently
Asked Questions. There's also a
Walk-Through document that gives teachers an overview of how the program
should work.
Designed for grades 5-12, registration is free and the site will notify
you when a new issue is posted. Unlike the CD version, the website activities
are designed to be completed in only one class period and can be used by
the entire class or small groups. Teachers can get by with one computer
and a large monitor, and student preparation is not essential. Each issue
includes an Activities
section, where students can: write persuasive arguments and post them on
a discussion board; e-mail their government representatives; download a
quiz; and follow issue-related links. Handouts
and quizzes are bundled on a special page, as are discussion
tips and curriculum
connections. The bold subtitle of this site -- "the most amazing
discussions you'll ever have in your classroom" -- begs at least a
visit!
And teachers interested in this site may want to visit another Tom Snyder
offering -- Cultural
Debates -- designed to enliven multicultural studies. Students learn
about the Mentawai tribe of Indonesia and the cultural choices they face.
Activities include watching a video, learning about issues, reading and
writing opinions, and making connections between a rainforest society and
students' own culture.
The Scout Report describes "On the Prairie" as "a superb,
online science learning center" that emphasizes Minnesota's resources
and research. Resources include: Build
a Prairie (a learning game that emphasizes the functional role of species),
Field
Guide to the Prairie (complete with scientific names, photographs, life
history information, and a glossary), Experience
the Prairie, Curriculum
Goodies, and Researching
the Prairie (what biologists are finding out).
In each section, users will find background information on the ecology and
natural history of prairie organisms, tips on prairie plant and animal identification
(and ecological function), and learning games (Build a Prairie), among other
resources. A special feature of the site is the upcoming electronic
prairie field trip, involving "live satellite broadcasts driven
by a curriculum and Internet activities," to be broadcast live -- from
the prairie -- on October 13, 1999.
"American Collection," a new National Council of Teachers of English
(NCTE) Web site (and PBS television series), focuses on four works by Willa
Cather, Langston Hughes. Henry James, and Eudora Welty -- including
lesson plans and complete
texts on-line. But there's much more. The site contains information
on dozens of American authors, identifies the
best videos (and the cheapest prices); offers lists of teacher-evaluated
Web sites on authors and their works, and features an in-progress "Literary
Map" created by students and teachers across the country who are
researching their local authors to help map the American literary tradition
(7th and 8th graders are invited to join). Worth your time! (Some sections
are still under development.)
Targeted toward parents and educators of middle school children, ParenTech
is a free set of resources designed to educate families about the ways technology
is changing how we learn, work, and live. Developed by North Central Regional
Lab (NCREL) and the AmeriTech corporation, the ParenTech website includes
a wealth of resources, including: guides
that help parents judge the quality of technology-based instruction and
learn more about technology careers; a
guide to teaching with technology and a principal's tip
sheet and other educator
materials; discussion
corners for parents and for educators (they answer the questions!);
a links page of related
sites; and more.
In addition, the initiative provides free
resource kits to parents of middle schoolers in the five-state region
of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin (others can order for
a small fee). Most of the material is also available on the site in plain-text
or PDF format
This on-line magazine published by the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
targets mathematics, science and technology instruction, with original articles
and selected resources. Launched in the spring of 1999, the e-magazine combines
several ENC resources and is also available in a print version (free sign-up
at the site). The theme of the premier issue is Innovative Curriculum Materials,
including stories about cross-discipline
collaboration in the middle grades; implementing
a standards-based math curriculum (Gr 6-8); innovative
professional development; and an innovators
forum.
The site includes articles
from earlier, print-only editions of Focus. The online version
has been designed to take advantage of the flexibility and almost infinite
capacity of the Internet. A click of the mouse provides immediate links
to the full catalog records of the highlighted resources from ENC's collection,
as well as access to related web sites.
The theme of the second issue of the magazine will be Inquiry and Problem
Solving (due in late summer). Future
topics include Educational Technology, Teacher Change, and Assessment
in Mathematics and Science Education. Educators are invited to contribute
material for publication.
"Learn and Live," a documentary film produced by George Lucas
and hosted by Robin Williams, provides "compelling images of what our
best public schools look like," using examples from Boston, Des Moines,
San Diego (O'Farrell
Middle School), and Seattle. You can view clips from the
film on the website, if you have the QuickTime plug-in (link to software
on the site). If not, the film's script
is available as an Adobe Acrobat document. There's also a
resource book with essays from researchers and practitioners (including
Howard Gardner). A Digital
Toolkit provides random access to individual film segments and articles
from the book.
Review all of the
options available in connection with "Learn and Live," including
a discussion
forum, and information on ordering
the film and book ($20).
"Teaching with Historic Places" uses properties listed in the
National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to enliven
history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects. "Places
around us lift events and people off the pages of textbooks, helping students
connect history to their own lives," says the introduction to this
large site. "Studying places as evidence from the past requires active
involvement, imparts a sense of discovery, and makes learning exciting."
The site offers a variety of products and activities that guide teachers
through this process. These include ready-to-use
lesson plans, education kits, ideas about creating
your own curriculum materials, and professional
development materials and workshops. The program also encourages partnerships
among educators, historians, preservationists, site interpreters, museum
specialists, archivists, and others. Created by the National Park Service
and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Read some teacher
feedback.
This inventive-thinking unit from Education
World will challenge students to think "outside the box."
It includes some of the best inventive-thinking sites on the WWW, offering
hands-on projects that tap a wide range of intelligences.
From the introduction: "When children are given the opportunity to
interact and create, the mix is dynamic and the learning is inspiring! Children
have a gift for looking at the world in fresh and novel ways -- and a study
of inventors and inventions taps into that ability and enables teachers
to teach many skills that are part of the curriculum. Even if you are not
a science teacher, per se, consider what an inventive-thinking unit can
offer you and your students. Even if you do not take your study to a culminating
activity such as a science fair, think about the infinite possible connections
to your language arts, math, and social studies curricula!"
Includes on-line games that spur critical thinking, tips for teachers who
want to help their students become inventors, and ideas for group activities.
Sponsored by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, this excellent site calls attention
to the many important roles that women have played in shaping American history.
Starting roughly with Pocahontas (Early
America) and progressing through the
19th Century, the 1880s-1920s ("At
the Crossroads"), continuing through the
20th Century, the site presents women's triumphs and failures, struggles
and success. Travel through the time line, read through hundreds of biographical
essays and portraits, read famous (and infamous) quotes,
listen to readings,
or examine the
teacher guide.
The "MarcoPolo" partnership
offers five discipline-specific educational web sites, geared primarily
toward K-12 teachers. The MarcoPolo partner sites cover core disciplines,
including economics, geography, humanities, mathematics, and science. Developed
with the help of expert panels, user surveys and teacher focus groups, the
sites include materials to help with daily classroom planning, brief
and extended lesson plans, reviewed- and expert-approved links to related
high-quality sites, and powerful search engines. In addition to the partner
web sites, there is also the MarcoPolo site itself, which is both a gateway
and an educational resource of its own. A progress
report keeps track of the site's development and partnership activities.
The site offers a Teacher
Training Kit, designed to teach instructional technology coordinators
how to train K-12 teachers on Internet integration. Visitors can also add
their names to the site's mailing list and receive regular updates on
the program's development.
MarcoPolo is a partnership between MCI WorldCom and six educational organizations:
the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council of the Great City
Schools, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National
Geographic Society, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and
the National Council on Economic Education.
"The Master Teacher" is a subscription newsletter published by
the company of the same name, which also publishes
several newsletters for principals and superintendents. Each week, Master
Teacher posts a free
"resource" that relates directly to instruction or school
management. The weekly resources are archived
and can easily be browsed.
Each resource is "intended to be read individually by teachers in five
to eight minutes...(and) are designed with the objective of giving teachers
large quantities of practical and professional training in small segments
throughout the 36-week school year. Among recent topics: a Poltical
Cultures lesson plan; How
to Check Comprehension as You Teach, Alternatives
to Electricity, Three
Techniques for Listening, and Tapping
an Underutilized Resource: Department Chairs.
Performance Assessment Links (PALS) is an on-line, standards-based, continually
updated interactive resource bank of science performance assessment tasks
indexed to the National
Science Education Standards (NSES). The tasks can also be custom-indexed
to local or state standards. The site's largest area offers middle
grades performance assessments covering physical science, life science,
earth and space science, and "science in personal and social perspectives."
Each assessment includes a rubric, adminstration procedures, directions
to the student, and technical quality data. Of particular interest is the
section on 'Examples of Student Work' for each task in the collection (see
a sample). Developer Tom Hinojosa, who works for SRI International's
Center for Technology in Learning,
writes: "I believe the web site can serve as a focal point and tool
for some powerful professional development for all teachers, but especially
at the middle school level because the majority of the tasks are designed
for grades 5-8. In addition, the tasks in the collection are ready for immediate
use in the classroom if a teacher chooses to do so."
[Editor's Note: We're so impressed by this site that we
featured it a second week!]
Do your middle grades students like yucky stuff? Send them here! The "Yucky"
site explores science in ways that are sure to appeal to young adolescents.
See, for example, the "Gross and
Cool Body" page where students can learn "why poop stinks"
and the answers to other questions about how the body works. There's also
Worm World and Bug
World, which features a close-up look at roaches this month. Students
can Ask Wendell questions about
science; questions like "Would it be bad and unhealthly to brush your
teeth with a regular bar of soap?" (Answer: no, but it tastes bad and
doesn't work as well as toothpaste!)
The Yucky Teacher's Center
is filled with teaching units, Teaching with Worms, Teaching with Bugs,
Teaching with Human Body and Teaching with Ask Wendell offer lots of curriculum
ideas for grades 3-8. Plus, they are designed to align with national standards.
The Center offers links to related sites and book and video lists for each
of the units and age groups. Read
a story about how one teacher is using Yucky's bug page as part of her
Bugscope electron microscope project.
A parent's guide includes
recommended, age-appropriate web sites that parents can visit with their
children -- including Homework Help, Science Museums and more.
We've never promoted a website that doesn't quite exist yet, but the proposed
"Learning Adventures in Citizenship" site from wNetSchool (the
website of NY public television's WNET) offers a great opportunity to set
a precedent. The creators of "Learning Adventures" are announcing
their project in time for teachers and schools to include this FREE exploration
of cities and communities in their planning for Fall 1999 and Spring 2000.
Fill out the information
form and you can watch as the site is developed, shouting your suggestions
from the cyber-bleachers.
"Using New York City as an example of how cities and communities across
America developed into unique centers of commerce, politics, culture, and
ethnicity, this project is a national curricular effort that prompts middle-school
students to critically examine their own communities, and become active
participants by volunteering and working in the community." Learners
will use multimedia Web materials about New York history as a springboard
to investigate their own neighborhoods to better understand the political,
economic, and cultural issues facing their community's past, present, and
future.
The project is the "Web companion" to NEW YORK, a six-part documentary
film series by award-winning filmmaker Ric Burns, scheduled for national
broadcast on PBS.
Utilizing resources drawn from the NEW YORK series, the Web project will
help guide students in the fourth to eighth grade through real-life, collaborative
activities based on inquiry and problem-based learning. The project is "mapped"
to a standards-based social studies curriculum. The site will also host
Teaching Tips, Student Portfolios, a Discussion Forum, an Online Registry
for student and classroom exchanges, and a National Contest, judged by a
blue-ribbon panel, of the best student work displayed in a rich online portfolio.
Educators can preview the site at www.wnet.org/newyork,
offer feedback, and receive monthly e-mail updates on site content. The
project overview
(http://www.wnet.org/newyork/overview.html) offers a brief description of
each project component.
This remarkable website, supported by Carnegie Mellon University, brings
together a comprehensive, yet diverse body of scholarship, art, journals,
novels, and collections of texts. This is a site best investigated by teachers
first, since it's a "censorship-free" server. See the sections
What's On It, How
It's Different, and History.
English teachers will appreciate access to complete
texts like "Ivanhoe" and "Beowulf." The book selections
are limited but growing. There's also poetry,
including Maya Angelou's inaugural poem, Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky,"
"Paul Revere's Ride," "The Aeneid," "The Charge
of the Light Brigade" and much more. Also: short fiction, drama (including
many Shakespearean plays)
history, film and television.
Be sure to check the "Recent
Additions" page -- you may find items there that have not been
indexing on the main pages yet. When we visited, we found Joyce's "Dubliners,"
and the complete text of "Genesis."
Following this link , we found complete texts of Homer's
classics.
In an attempt to close the technology gap between minority and non-minority
students, the Cyber-Youth Network has created a Web site specifically designed
to meet the needs of urban students, teachers, and parents. The fully-interactive
Web site features free
e-mail services, curriculum-specific lesson plans, homework
help, a 24-hour "school and community news" ticker, online
mentoring and tutorials, games,
and an online
magazine featuring articles written for students, by students. There's
also a page to find out more about jobs,
college, and scholarships.
The first of several area-specific Web sites of the Cyber-Youth Network
was launched in Washington, D.C.
The Network plans to establish Web sites for Atlanta, Baltimore, Camden,
Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia.
The goal of the Network is to provide what some feel inner city students
have been lacking--a Web site designed specifically with them in mind. It
is also designed to encourage urban students to use computers and the Internet.
This sites offers students the opportunity to read book reviews written
by middle school students (ages 10-14) -- and post
book reviews of their own. Developed by sixth graders at middle schools
in Santa Monica, California and Falls Church, Virginia, the site was won
second place in the national ThinkQuest
Junior contest for educationally useful websites made by 4th - 6th graders.
Visitors with Java-enabled browsers can search
the site for keywords and can select book reviews by genre, date of
publication, age group, etc. Genres
include: fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, mystery,
short story, drama, biography, and history. There's also information
about classic works and a list of other useful sites.
To sample more ThinkQuest and ThinkQuest Junior sites, visit the ThinkQuest
homepage
The WEB Project, based in Montpelier, Vermont, is a U.S. Department of Education
Technology Innovation Challenge Grant geared toward creating multimedia
forms of evidence of student performance. "This means using technology
to show what students can do through digitizing images, sound, and motion."
Included on the site is a
report (PDF) on experiments with multimedia at a Vermont middle school,
and some limited examples of student work in music, art, and history. The
86-pp. project handbook (downloadable
in PDF format) describes one state's effort to integrate technology into
the classroom.
Teachers and historians have developed an
interface to the national scoring guide which shows the relationship
between National History Day criteria and theVermont Standards in the categories
of project and media. The student work samples from the Vermont History
Day competition have been included on this site to serve as references for
students and teachers in future competitions.
The National Museum of Women's History marks the 150th anniversary of the
first American women's rights convention, held in 1848 at Seneca Falls,
New York, with a rich visual history entitled "Political Culture and
Imagery of American Woman Suffrage." To reach these pages, you'll need
to enter the museum at the homepage and make your way through some introductory
material. You can take an indepth journey through the history of women's
suffrage or just take a walking tour through the image gallery. Teachers
will find much here that can be used by students -- with some help-- who
are researching papers for "National Women's Month" in March.
Here's a teaser: "At (the Seneca Falls) convention, the delegates adopted
a platform that called for a broad range of social, economic, legal, and
political reforms that would dramatically raise the status of women in American
life. To the surprise of most of us today, the demand for women's right
to vote (called woman suffrage) was the most controversial reform proposed
at the convention. From the time it was first formally proposed in 1848,
gaining the right to vote took the women's movement 72 years of struggle
to achieve.This exhibit examines the development of a distinct female political
culture and imagery that evolved to promote voting rights for women."
Here are some other links
to Women's Suffrage sites.
Journey North, an Annenberg/CPB
"Learner Online" science education program, uses the Internet
to track migration and signs of spring. Registration
is free. Each year, in late winter, students and teachers across North America
go online for four months to share their observations of the changing seasons.
Schools can join in at any time. Over 4,000 schools and 200,000 students
are expected to participate in 1999.
To get oriented, begin at How
to use Journey North where teachers will find lots of help, including
a "teacher tips"
link. Teacher lesson plans are available on-line, and teachers can also
purchase a manual
that includes a 1998-99 supplement. One important feature of the project
is the daily reporting
of sightings from migratory routes. A daily
news page keeps everyone up to date.
The
Migrations project provides updated locations of a dozen birds and animals,
from Bald Eagles to Hummingbirds, Manatees to Monarch butterflies, and Whooping
Cranes to Whales. The Journey North News Calendar provides participants
with an overview of upcoming information for focal species. And Signs
of Spring uses indices like ice-out, leaf-out, and frogs to track the
season's progress. "This site could serve as a wonderful virtual lab
for teachers seeking ways to integrate local classroom activities with global
processes," says the Scout Report.
Why should students worry about stuff that happened back when Eisenhower
was President and Elvis was King? This WebQuest, designed by Tom March for
Pacific Bell Education First, prompts
students to think about the nine African-American students who, back
in 1957, chose to attend an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas
and thus forced Americans to question segregated schools. Includes a
review and a
role-playing activity that invites students to assume the roles of historians,
social scientists, and news reporters. After the role-playing, students
work as a group to
answer the key question: What, if anything, should be done to racially
desegregate U.S. schools? A teacher's
guide will help teachers prepare to use the activity -- including
a rubric!
This excellent WebQuest activity is not strictly a history lesson but explores
the world we live in today and the choices our communities have made in
the past and students will make in the future. The activity can be used
by students collaborating across schools to gain a broader perspective.
Teachers can use the interactive Transformation
Builders feature to facilitate higher order thinking.
The Columbia Education Center compiles lesson plans in the core subjects
at this web page. The lessons are
divided into four age groups, including "intermediate" (grades
6-8). A random sampling of the lessons suggests a fairly high quality --
certainly well worth exploring! Some of the lessons have been included in
Microsoft's
Encarta lesson collection (which is also worth browsing -- the lessons
are free although they frequently reference the MS Encarta encyclopedia).
You'll also find a beefy
list of links to lessons and activities at other sites. If you've always
wondering exactly how to use "Jeopardy" as a review tool, a teacher
has kindly described the process here.
All in all, a good first stop when you're lesson-hunting.
Service-learning combines service to the community with student learning
in a way that improves both the student and the community. The Learn &
Serve America National Service Learning Clearinghouse is a comprehensive
information system that focuses on all dimensions of service learning, covering
kindergarten through higher education school-based, as well as community-based
initiatives. The center of the Clearinghouse is located at the University
of Minnesota, Department of Work, Community and Family Education, with collaboration
from a consortium of twelve other institutions and organizations.
Vistors will find useful on-line features, including: searchable
databases; a wealth of resources;
a listserv
where e-mailers can connect with others interested in service learning;
publications, state reports, videos, and an on-line
newsletter. Of particular interest is the downloadable article (PDF
format), "Service-Learning
as an Integrated Experience in Middle School Education."
Kids Energy helps school systems create a web-based student mini-grant system
that allows students to design a learning project of their own in any subject
area, apply for a mini-grant, carry out the project, and report what they
have learned on the Internet. See
the "What Is..." page.
Kids Energy provides schools everything they need to make mini-grants work
and connects student grants to local learning goals. Supporters can see
directly on the Kids Energy website what is being done with their money
and hear reports from children on what they have learned.
"This simple approach is successful because children develop and pursue
their own ideas, take on increased responsibility and understand the relevance
and application of what they are learning," say the Kids Energy organizers.
Parents enjoy seeing their kids succeed, donors can see the results of their
investment, and "many teachers are already using service-learning projects,
entrepreneurial programs, career exploration activities, field-trips, and
project-based learning. Great teachers know what works. Kids Energy is designed
to build on the success of. . .teachers."
Find out about Kids Energy's approach and a pilot program in Portland,
Oregon that involves 2,000 middle school students. And read
about what some students have accomplished. To navigate effectively,
go to the home page, choose "enter," and then select the "Onward"
buttons on each subsequent page. Or jump
to the index. Send e-mail to jamie@kidsenergy.org.
Fritsche Middle School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is a national Blue Ribbon
school dedicated to "continuous improvement." Read how Fritsche
designed a block schedule to push student achievement even higher. And learn
more about Milwaukee's proficiency
standards for eighth graders and the district's Connected
Math Project and accelerated
program for at-risk students. An above-average middle school site! (Watch
MiddleWeb's Latest Updates page for more details about Fritsche's block
scheduling and continuous improvement approach -- coming soon!)
The Middle Level Leadership Center (MLLC) was established in the Department
of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) at the University of
Missouri in the fall of 1997. The general mission of MLLC is to promote
quality middle level education through the development and dissemination
of knowledge about effective site-level leadership. We were particularly
interested in perusing the MLLC's Project
Assist materials, which offer a design for systemic middle school change.
The Center works with about a dozen schools each year. The site includes
a detailed description of how one school, called "Heartland
Middle School" here, worked through the systemic change process.
The site also includes some pedagogical resources.
We found some of the hyperlinks hard to get at -- and some of the language,
too -- but there's a lot of useful information here for those willing to
dig it out.
This remarkable website communicates the meaning of active, intentional
teaching with a clarity and richness seldom found on the Internet. Most
exciting, perhaps, is that it's a *beta site,* still "under construction."
If it continues to develop at this level of quality, ALPS will certainly
become one of the Web's definitive sites for demonstrating high-order teaching
and learning.
ALPS allows teachers and
teacher support staff to collaborate with educational
researchers and curriculum designers working at Harvard University's
Graduate School of Education and Harvard's Project Zero. The site includes
model lesson plans and activities; curriculum design tools; online educational
publications; interactive forums, workshops and conferences; and teacher
journals refecting on practice. The site is built around three themes:
Teaching for Understanding;
The Thinking
Classroom; and Education
with New Technologies.
ALPS is currently free and the entire site is accessible to anyone willing
to register.
But you can sample what's available without registering at all. At some
point, ALPS will begin to charge admission in an effort to recover some
of its development costs. So now's the time to poke around without cost
or obligation! The site includes a
brief guided tour (15 minutes) and a more in-depth "kick-off"
activity. As of this writing (12/98), the FAQs area is still not active.
You might want to begin your visit at the
Site Map, where you'll quickly get a feel for the in-depth resources
available. Among the most intriguing pages we found: "A
Year of 7th Grade English;" "A
Year of 8th Grade Science;" "The
Colonial Biography Unit" (middle grades social studies); a collaborative
curriculum design tool; and a self-reflection
guide. We've just skimmed the surface. If you're interested in improving
teacher practice, you must visit this site.
As the folks at "Virtual Field Trips" correctly note, researching
a topic on the Web can be a time-consuming and often frustrating experience
for students and teachers. Virtual Field Trips aims to ease
the process by creating pre-researched "adventures" that cover
single topics (most
of them science-related) and are shaped by subject matter experts. VFT takes
advantage of software developed by Tramline, Inc. to build sequential stories
around the selected topics. We tried out the "salt
marshes" field trip and found it easy to use and informative.
Teachers will want to run through the field trips first to guage difficulty
levels, but many of trips can be taken by middle schoolers. Right now, at
least, the trips are free. And each trip offers teacher
resources, including logs or journals for students and short teacher's
guides that provide some curriculum guidance. Teachers can also suggest
other tours and find out how to license the software for their own use.
Teachers and students will both love this rich, kid-friendly site developed
by Dr. Eric H. Chudler of the University of Washington and supported by
The National Institutes of Health. Activities
include building a (non-working) model of the brain, and experiments with
reflexes, the senses, and "sidedness." The site also includes
creative writing
projects and many
games and puzzles for grades K-12 that help students explore the relationship
between memory and learning.Teachers can find out where
to order a brain--animal, gelatin, rubber, or plastic--to study, and
students can browse
photos of Dr. Chudler's brain-juggling act at schools where kids are
studying neuroscience -- and see samples of student
work. They can even subscribe
to a monthly newsletter.
We're not the first to be impressed by this compilation of middle grades
resources developed by the kids and adults at Eastchester Middle School
in Eastchester, NY. Consumer Reports, the Los Angeles Times, NetGuide, and
the Discovery Channel are among those who have visited and liked what they
saw. The well-organized and attractive site is monitored by teachers and
is "student-safe," with an ample collection of subject-area links.
Eastchester has earned deserved recognition for a student-written
handbook about AIDS, one of many student-developed pieces promo'ed on
the school's homepage.
See also, this sixth-grader's
photo journal of a trip to India. Or this poem about prejudice, "A
Brown Rose."
Teachers will enjoy the page developed just for them: "Web
Resources Helpful To Middle School Teachers," which includes a
nice assortment of useful links. There's even a
virtual-reality tour of EMS. This is one of the best middle school sites
we've seen -- and we've seen quite a few!
Mesopotamia, Teotihuacan, Chaco Canyon were once flourishing, vibrant communities
that have all but disappeared from Earth. At this highly developed site,
students can explore theories on what caused these cities to collapse and
learn how scientists find and assemble clues of the past. Students are invited
to play the role of an archaeologist and uncover
clues at Copan, an actual city from a collapsed civilization. They can
also try their hand at "garbage-ology" and study what trash can
tell us about a society. Lastest in a series of on-line multi-media lessons
drawn from the Annenberg/ CPB Projects Exhibits Collection. See the complete
list of exhibits available on-line. Coming soon: "Math in Everyday
Life.
This site comes highly recommended by a former middle grades educator who
now works as a technology learning specialist in a Wisconsin school district.
She attests to its value as both a space sciences site and a basic science
resource. Visit her contribution -- the
Wright Flyer Online.
Also see the Space Team Online,
Aero Design Team Online,
Mars Team Online,
The Women of NASA,
and the Space
Station Tour. The Learning Technologies
Channel provides live events connecting classrooms and educators to
such exciting programs as the Eye of the Storm, Satellite Town Meetings,
Exobiology, the Oceans Programs, and much more. "There are wonderful
projects going on for educators who integrate aeronautics units in their
classroom," she says, "and aeronautics is a very popular topic
in middle school tech ed and science classes."
Re:Learning by Design "helps educators build schools around the
student's needs as a learner." The site reflects the organization's
focus on improving "the ways that educational goals and means are organized
and assessed... Most importantly, we help educators keep alive the difficult
questions at the heart of education: [including] How do we set high standards
while also setting fair and reasonable expectations?"
Everyone's promoting the new teacher resource pages at PBS, but what's in
it for middle school teachers? The site already includes more than 1,000
free lesson plans, teacher guides and online activities--and you can explore
these resources by subject or grade level or with keywords. The catch?
You have to get your kids to watch public television!
Most guides and activities complement PBS television programs. The site
includes information
about how teachers and media specialists can legally tape the PBS shows
for classroom use, including upcoming series like Africans
in America, a four-part documentary project that includes its own website,
a free teacher's guide for middle and h.s. teachers, and opportunities to
attend teacher workshops based on the series. We tried the search for 7th
grade algebraic concepts and ended up learning about the PBS series
"Life
by the Numbers" and how it matches certain state and national standards.
The site also includes advance
schedules and info about ordering
PBS videos.
"Six Paths to China" demonstrates how teachers can target student
learning using a Topic Hotlist, Subject Sampler, Multimedia Scrapbook, Treasure
Hunt, or WebQuest. This revised version of the popular website "Searching
for China" includes "more scaffolding for student cognition and
more effective use of the Internet." A great site for students and
teachers exploring China.
Blue Web'n offers detailed reviews of 100s of education sites, employing
an informative, easy-to-browse format (see sample below). You can sign up
at the site and get a brief weekly list of these reviews via e-mail. The
site sorts
its links as Tools, Resources, References, Online Lesson/Tutorials,
Activities, and Projects. An easy-to-use grid on the home page allows visitors
to explore subject-area sites in each of these categories.
But Blue Web'n offers much more. Supported by Pacific Bell and staffed by
teachers and graduate students sponsored by San Diego State U./Pacific Bell
fellowships, Blue Web'n has produced original curriculum materials and carefully
catalogued ThinkQuest and
other web-based projects developed by students and teachers across the US.
Blue Web'n's Filamentality
tool turns existing Web resources into activities. Filamentality prompts
teachers to "fill in the blanks"with links, instructions, and
questions, and then builds a Web activity for students.
The site also includes a
website evaluation rubric that teachers and media specialists will find
useful and a refined search function that allows the user to select grade
level, subject area, and topic.
EXAMPLE OF A BLUE WEB'N ENTRY:
The Moonlit Road
http://www.themoonlitroad.com
Take a walk down The Moonlit Road if you want to read or listen to
interesting folktales presented at a state-of-the-art Website. Producer
Craig Dominey and his team have taken a simple concept and created a
quality contribution to the Web community. Beginning with compelling
stories of the American South, then adding RealAudio versions read by
celebrated stoytellers and appealing graphics, The Moonlit Road can be a
satisfying detour for young children and lifelong learners alike. This is
a
good example of how artistically presented sites can also be user-friendly
and quick-loading.
Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School, High School, College
Content Area(s): English (Literature), History & Social Studies
(Geography & Cultures) [Dewey #800]
Application type(s): Resource
An odd choice for "link of the week"? Not if you've been trying
for months, as we have, to order the TIMSS video comparing math instruction
in the U.S., Germany and Japan. We've called; we've written; and now we've
availed ourselves of ED's new on-line publication ordering system. We can't
report on the results yet, but we love the concept.
This link takes you directly to a search page where you can enter keywords
and locate a document you'd like to order. A couple of clicks later, after
you've provided your address and a phone number, the ordering is done. We
weren't asked for a credit card, so we're assuming the bill will come with
our video. The site also offers access to free materials and includes a
browsable list of new publications. There's currently a one-item limit on
orders -- soon to be increased to five. As an experiment, try entering "TIMSS"
in the search box.
The New York Times posts a fresh lesson plan each weekday, tied to current
events. The lessons are designed for grades 6-12 and are referenced to national
standards. Try a few samples for yourself: "Rescue
at Sea" examines the work of scientists and challenges stereotypes.
"Cowboys
vs. Environmentalists" considers the competing interests in the
future of the West. "Jingles
Sell: Advertisements as a Reflection of Society" helps students
examine the effects of mass media advertising on society. Each lesson plan
is written by professional educators and cover all subject areas. The plans
are maintained in a
topical archive that's easy to scan. The Times also has a "Student
Connections" area.
Education World offers education professionals, parents, students, and administrators
a place where they can start each day to find the lesson plans and research
materials they are looking for. This site is updated weekly with new
lesson plans and curriculum ideas, articles on issues that are of interest
to educators, parents, and students, and much more. Includes a database
of over 56,000 education sites and offers a weekly e-mail list of reviewed
sites and a cool
school site of the week
Many web-savvy educators surf to the ASCD website frequently for fresh ideas
about curriculum innovation and professional development. Just in case you
haven't made the trip, we wanted to underscore the many valuable web resources
offered by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development --
to members and non-members alike. We think that ASCD's magazine, Educational
Leadership, continues to be one of the best education publications for
non-academics, and one of the most useful to teachers. Each month, ASCD
posts several articles from Educational Leadership on-line. You'll also
find out how to subscribe to the e-mail newsletter Education
Bulletin (it's free), and you can peruse past issues of Curriculum
Update and Education
Update for articles on issues of interest. See, for example, "Helping
Students Take Charge of Their Thinking."
Tom March's curiosity about the World Wide Web and its educational uses
lured the high school English teacher out of his classroom and into a fellowship
at San Diego State University. During his three years as a Pacific Bell
fellow at SDSU, March helped invent the"webquest"
strategy, "filamentality,"
and Eyes on Art. Earlier this year, March moved with his Australian wife
and two children to the Land Down Under ("Oz") where he attempts
to make "an honest living" as a web educator. His site has a commercial
aspect, but also includes lots of free
advice and ideas
for teachers who want to integrate the Web into their own teaching but could
use some encouragement.
As a bonus, March includes several of his best webquest lessons: Tuskegee
Tragedy and Donner
Online, an exploration of the ill-fated settlers' trek across the Rockies.
These webquests can be used "right out of the box," or as high-quality
models for teacher-authors.
If you're a science teacher, you'll enjoy the bio-diversity of the four
science sites featured at Teacher2Teacher.
Middle school teachers in the Oakland, CA school system spent the summer
developing these resource-rich webpages that include lesson plans, an exploration
of teacher inquiry, urban education links, teaching projects, and even some
humor. The artwork is great, too. So check out Cody's
Science Education Zone, The
Niche, Ars
Scientia-The Art of Science, and the Carter
Science Page (which promises to feature student work soon). It's a four-for-one-click
deal! Anthony Cody deserves a special mention for his creative graphics.
See, for example, his "tub-o-fun!"
which manages to combine funny stories and teaching opportunities.