Pedagogy: Teacher tools to reinvent a classroom

Teachers must make sure students are technology savvy when they arrive to embark on a career or even higher education. The perfect method seems to be using it as much as possible in class and providing opportunities to let students use it - hands on.

Merlot is an excellent technology resource for students and teachers. It provides lesson material, but not in lesson plan style. You can actually do some decent research in what they provide. BTW, I hate all those lesson plan websites - what a dumb idea. Teachers who need help creating a lesson plan need a new career....my two cents worth. Students can do comprehensive searches on specific words and find info/resources I didn't find on Google or Yahoo.

The two sections I use most are "communities" and "learning material." Communities has four distinct groups. The "disciplines" community includes educators, topics covering everything from biology to statistics to teacher education, with some fairly detailed resources that I haven't found anywhere else. Another community covers learning material, which includes a peer review rating, five stars max, so you can see what other people, like you, think about the content. Not bad. I haven't seen that peer review feature anywhere else.

Another good thing, membership to Merlot is free. :-)

The annual conference is ....

MERLOT – Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
8th International Conference
August 7 – 10, 2008
Minneapolis Hilton

I am thinking this site works for teacher education or as a web quest research for students. Let me know if you have used it ......