Need a lesson plan?

Researching the web today I was amazed at amazingly high count of sites offering lessons plans for K-12 on all subjects. I mean .... there are hundreds and hundreds of these sites. Do teachers really use all those lessons plans?

I have been teaching for four years and never once went to a site to get a lesson plan. My most useful resourced are teachers at school and in the District who have been around for a while. They usually have stellar ideas and materials I can borrow or steal .... then tweak for my style, student requirements, and objectives.

I want to use more educational games. Well, I want to but I have no computers in my class – try as I may. We have two computer labs at school with 30+ computers, when they are all working, for our population of 2,000+ students. Granted, using computers would be brainless if they were in my class. Hey, there is nothing wrong with dreaming about the perfect classroom environment.

So, when I saw all those teacher lesson plan sites .... I morphed what I was researching into finding quality educational games. That info will be published in a day or two on this page: http://www.educationreporting.com/rssfeed.aspx.

There are plenty of online games and free downloadable games to use. But, what I really want are interactive games where students play roles to help them learn about science.

Looks like some of the most popular virtual entertainment games are: 1) Second Life, 2) Utopia, 3) Zano and there are the oldies like Sims, and Supple.

All those are fine for entertainment .... but I want one where students are learning too. You know a game where students are faced with a situation, they have to use specific concepts to work through the issues at hand. Well, let's take an example ..... the temperature is climbing, they live on an island, and what can they do to channel the water or build different homes to combat the water? Or, what will they do to modify their food supply since their farms will be wiped out in a a matter of time.

You probably have a better example, I agree.

Anyone know of such a virtual world?