Hot Websites

Teaching Pre K-8, Apr 2003 by Lindroth, Linda

Integrating technology into your Earth Day studies is a snap - make that a click - with these sites

Let your environmental science curriculum come to life with these rich web resources for Earth Day. Whether you're a K-1 teacher working on a unit about spring, a third or fourth grade teacher studying animal habitats or an intermediate teacher conducting a science lab on biodiversity, there's something here for everyone.

Gould Leaque - FoodWeb

www.gould.edu.au/foodwebs/

This wonderful site on animal diversity and the food web is a perfect way to integrate technology with Earth Day themes. Online activities let students create food webs for three different habitats: Australian Grasslands, African Grasslands and the Antarctic.

In each food web activity, students select from the plants and animals indigenous to a selected habitat to build an accurate food web for the habitat. Once completed, the food webs can be printed for use in other activities. My students love choosing a plant or animal to "make extinct" and then writing what they predict will happen to the ecosystem.

In the "Who dun it?" mystery, students discover the remains of a dead bird and try to determine how it might have been killed. The link to the Gould League provides additional classroom lessons as well as environmental kits and materials to order for the classroom.

Mini-Beasts

www.hedds.co.uk/mini_beasts/mini_ beasts.htm

This is a comprehensive, well-organized resource that covers insects, arthropods, arachnids, worms and mollusks. The detailed "What is a mini-beast?" lessons provide wonderful links to web resources specific to each category. This is a delightful learning experience for primary students. My students loved "The Adventures of Herman" when studying worms. Another class favorite is the BBC Nature website which accompanies the study of insects.

Once students have studied the mini-- beasts, the website offers interactive games to reinforce the facts from the reading. A 10-question test reviews the basics and links to a game to find the answer if a student misses a question.

EarthPulse National Geographic

www.nationalgeographic.com/ earthpulse/

This site has dozens ot research resources, videos and online adventures and webquests related to the study of our Earth and conservation. There are themes for oceans, climate, weather, energy, technology, heroes, habitats, population and ecosystems.

Each theme features articles from National Geographic magazine with links and video. Most have interactive maps and quests to support the theme. My students loved the Population Pasta lesson, which helped explain world population growth. Lesson plans are grouped by age and each lesson is rich with additional links. Visit the News resources with news on everything Earth-related.

TECH SPOTLIGHT

AIRPORT EXTREME

The new AirPort Extreme is actually two products: the AirPort Extreme Base Station and the Airport Extreme Card. At almost five times faster than broadband connections, AirPort Extreme provides wireless networking between AirPort Extreme users at speeds of up to 54 Mbps! This means a school network can transfer large digital video files between computers at a speed that will significantly improve student time on task for multimedia curriculum.

AirPort Extreme works best with the AirPort Extreme Card, but can also be effective with the earlier 802.11b AirPort Card. The AirPort Extreme Base Station allows for wireless printer sharing to an Ethernet or USB printer for up to 50 computers. Another important feature is the advanced security. Airport Extreme uses private network addresses so anyone outside the network is locked out. A plus is the ability to tighten the security to one room or conference room using the AirPort Admin Utility software to control the range of the base station.

For more information, visit www.apple.com/airport/ or call 800-MY-APPLE. AirPort Extreme Card, $99; Base Station, $199; Base Station w/modem, $249.

Linda Lindroth is a K-5 Technology Teacher, a Teaching Editor and Website Coordinator for Teaching K-8.

E-mail: Linda@TeachingK-8.com