Friday, December 3, 2010

Useful Information In and Out of the Classroom 12/3/10

tools1Here are some interesting sites that I’ve found this week, thanks to my PLN. As a teacher, I feel we have to keep up to date concerning research in our field and current issues in the education system. I hope some of these inspire you, inform you, and even have you asking questions. Thank you for coming by and visiting!

The Economics of Seinfeld – Seinfeld ran for nine seasons on NBC and became famous as a “show about nothing.” Basically, the show allows viewers to follow the antics of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer as they move through their daily lives, often encountering interesting people or dealing with special circumstances. It is the simplicity of Seinfeld that makes it so appropriate for use in economics courses. Using these clips (as well as clips from other television shows or movies) makes economic concepts come alive, making them more real for students. Ultimately, students will start seeing economics everywhere – in other TV shows, in popular music, and most importantly, in their own lives.

The American Revolution – interactive lessons about the American Revolution

Oomfo – free add on for Microsoft Powerpoint, must be downloaded, make your charts and graphs animated and in 3D.

Geocaching for Educators – great info for using geocaching in the classroom.

Fatworld – download needed; “a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S. The game's goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations”

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

Original Image: Tools by Pat Hensley

1 comment:

E.Hull said...

Hello,
I am a student teacher right now and in my math methods class we have been using the website gapminder.org. After reading your post on Fatworld I couldn't help but find some similarities. We have been using gapminder to find relationships between data, of which one was nutrition/health and socioeconomics. I really liked the Fatworld site and thought that gapminder would be a way to add to the lesson by looking at real data and examining how relationships don't always equal causation.