Courtney Butler's List: Websites

On the BTN website students and teachers can access videos on many different current topics and issues. There are also many teacher's resources and polls and quizzes for the students. Behind the News is a great way for children to learn about current events in the world in an easy to understand way.

This site allows you to watch videos of the television show Survivor and full episodes. This is useful when teaching a unit such as the one I created titled Survivor Island.

The CSIRO website has information for teachers regarding programs, professional partnerships and categorised teacher resources. This site would be valuable to teachers when developing units for technology or other KLAs.

This link includes a variety of design challenges for students of various years that could be incorporated into the classroom. It also includes cross-curricular links, questions, assessment and a real world link. This link is great for teachers to either gather ideas for a technology design challenge or use one of the ones there.

Education World is a site full of different aspects of teaching including lesson plans, professional development opportunities, technology integration, administrator's desk, school issues, a market place and more resources including classroom management. A very valuable site for teachers.

This site is where you can watch episodes of the television show "Escape from Scorpion Island". This is useful when teaching a unit such as the one I created titled as Survivor Island.

This website provides an insight into the future. It has and interactive timeline and a static one that would fantastic for use in the classroom. There is also more details, dates and predictions to accompany these timelines. These predictions for the future timelines are very interesting and would be great to look at as part of a unit.

This is a lesson plan that involved students investigating toys and is aimed at students in prep to year two but is one that could be altered to suit any year level. This would be great to gather ideas for the classroom from or to use to create a unit on toys that could incorporate the parts of this lesson and a great design challenge.

This is an amazing collection of learning technologies resources. The resources are categorised into the type of technology they use and students in general or grade levels and then the type of resource they are; for example, sites, lesson plans and software. The resources are easy to search through and would be beneficial to any teacher.

The NASA website has categorised teaching materials for the classroom and for students it has a design challenge, experiment competition and resources to help with research. This is a great site for teachers to gather resources as well as students to take part in a challenge, competition or conduct research.

The Gold Coast City Council has created a range of modules and resources available on their site under Ready-Set-Teach. These are great for any teacher, especially those on the Gold Coast as they are based on the area.

School Tube is a valuable site for students and educators, offering a safe media sharing environment. It includes lesson plans, web resource links, videos and contests.

The website provides links to teaching and learning strategies that are valuable to any teacher. These include active listening, Bloom's Taxonomy, constructive feedback, peer teaching, 6 thinking hats, etc.

This is a great site for teachers where they can access resources, share ideas and access a teaching forum. The site is categorised and has subject areas including design and technology as well as other areas such as classroom management, special needs and time-fillers.

This is the site for the Technology Education Federation of Australia. It includes sections on such things as 'What is technology education?' This section includes What is Technology?, What is Technology in the School Curriculum?, Technology Education Goals, The Four strands of Technology and the bands and a statement on Technology for Australian schools. On the site there is also Technology Terminology, education resources and a huge data base of primary technology education resources. It features a huge variety and is a fantastic place for teachers to search for resources. Each resource has clear and extensive details available.

This link is for a technology unit plan that also incorporates a musical instrument design challenge. It is aimed at years seven and eight but could be modified to suit any year level.

This section of this website is all about, what is technology? It discusses the classes of technology and the nature of technology. This is a really great resource for teacher to learn the classes of technology and what technology is. This site also has a section on 'What is Design' which is great for teachers to learn more about design and its' history.

Activity one on this site is fantastic for introducing what technology is all about. It offers many great questions to ask students and is a great activity to follow and work through including the appropriate steps for the level being taught.

This resource is a part of a unit titled "Wheels in Motion". This particular activity is perfect for a design challenge incorporating both technology and maths. It provides a challenge, great details and appraisal questions. While this site aims the unit at grades two to three this could easily be used for any year level.

Youtube is a great source for videos that can be integrated into lessons. While it is a site that would have to be monitored for student use it is great for teachers and pre-service teachers to access and upload videos.\n