The internet is full of resources for teachers and for day-to-day life in general. For the past three days our internet has been down at school and it is amazing how many things I have not been able to do due to this issue. I am constantly looking up things through search engines like google or even wikipedia as a starting point. This is one of the greatest things about the internet - the speed with which I can find information on a wide variety of topics.
I have found www.education.ti.com to be a wonderful source for math and science teachers. Here teachers can share lesson plans that relate to Texas Instruments technology. Another place where math teachers share great ideas is at www.illuminations.nctm.org. These lessons are searchable by topic or grade level and are often very creative and interesting. A web site with animations called gizmos that bring clarity to difficult topics is www.explorelearning.com. I use this frequently when teaching any type of graphing, conics or trigonometry. Liberty University's online integrated learning resouce center for students allows me to access thousands of journal articles quickly, easily and anywhere there is an internet connection. It is truly amazing the wealth of information that I have access to.
One of my absolute favorite web-based resource is www.worldmathsday.com. This site declares the first Wednesday in March as world maths day. Students, teachers and parents from around the world can log in and try to do as many arithmetic problems as possible and try to break the world record each year. The format where this is done is truly enjoyable. Students play games against other students from all around the world while doing math problems. There are levels for students from the earliest grades all the way up to high school. We started doing this four years ago and my students look forward to it every year. If you are teaching in a school, I highly recommend that the math classes take this day each year and participate. You have to have enough school computers for each student. It is a wonderful way to celebrate math and to help improve students' knowledge of math facts.
As an American living in Europe, the internet is a huge part of my life. I communicate with family and friends through Skype. We use email services, such as mail chimp, to write our support team. We update supporters through blogs and keep in touch through Facebook. We also stream all of our TV through the internet and subscribe to sports sites such as ESPN so we can get our some of our favorite American sports games. We rely heavily on ebay and Amazon to get cheap resources for teaching or things that we need personally. With web-based phone service through Vonage we can call anywhere in the United States for one low monthly rate. It truly is incredible how much the internet has changed our lives and what missions looks like now.
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