No Need to Re-Invent the Wheel

I remember when I was in college I used the internet for 2 things, emailing friends/boyfriends and looking for lesson plans (we had to write 3 page lesson plans constantly for our education classes). I pretty still use the internet for the same thing – connecting with others and learning new things for my classroom. I remember a professor telling us “no need to re-invent the wheel as long as you don’t copy and paste and give credit where credit is due” when I asked him what he thought about us searching for lessons online. I think teachers get so wrapped up in live, paperwork, school, we go with the simple, less engaging lesson we did last year or came up with in the haste to turn in lesson plans to our admin we forget there are awesome lessons online.

When you do start looking for online lessons, where do you start? If we Googled it we are back to being swamped again with this time having to sift through 939,395,293 results. The Adobe Education Exchange is a great place to search for awesome lessons without getting overwhelmed. It is very easy to search and the ideas are great! There is even a place where you can look up other teachers who are on the exchange. Great way to connect!

Here are some cool lessons I found in a search for “science” lessons:

Angry Animals (For all the Angry Bird lovers out there! This is too cool)

Volcano Eruption (My kids do a similar project, I think this is much better than what we were doing!!)

Take the time (which I know is precious) and browse through the site, it will be worth it. Even if you do not have access to Adobe in your school it is a good place to start ideas, and may be good to use to persuade the powers that be to get Adobe!

Enjoy the search!

(This post is crossed posted on Tools and Apps Y’all)

 

2 thoughts on “No Need to Re-Invent the Wheel

  1. Getting other people’s ideas and shaping them into ways that will suit yourself is an effort similar to reinventing the wheel. I think you’re kind of saying that there’s no need to start from scratch, but there is a need to reinvent the wheel.

    In fact, a couple of years ago I wrote the same sort of thing, but using opposite words.

    It was in a post entitled “the lie that you shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel.” http://frogphilp.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/lie-that-you-shouldn-have-to-reinvent.html

  2. Pingback: Educator Blogs | slm508jab

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