Many web sites are available now that offer planning assistance for teachers.  These sites offer lesson plans, activities, information, and other tools designed for instructional use, or useful for educational purposes.  One such site is The Gateway, provided by the ERIC Clearinghouse for Information and Technology. A project of the US Department of Education, this site catalogs, evaluates, and indexes educational resources. The purpose of this assignment is to introduce you to this powerful planning tool, locate useful educational materials on the Internet, and evaluate both the indexing site and the resulting educational material for a specific instructional purpose.
 

Task

1.    Choose an instructional unit topic (for example, the digestive system or Huckleberry Finn). Also, choose a target grade level or levels.
2.    Search The Gateway for relevant lesson plans or other educational resources.
3.    Choose at least one resource that you think you might use. First, write a short description of the resource, including these elements:

• Web site title
• URL (hot)
• Author or organization responsible for site
• Last update or copyright date
• Description of site
• Possible instructional use(s)

• Did you find what you were looking for? Was it easy or difficult? How so?
• How easy is The Gateway to use?  What specific difficulties, if any, did you have?
• Would you consider using The Gateway on a regular basis? Why or why not? How would you use it, if so?
• How helpful were the resource descriptions (referring to the information provided about the resource before you actually pulled it up)?  Which parts were useful, and which not? What additional descriptive elements would have been helpful?

For this assignment, you need not write a formal-style paper.  Provide the information you selected under Task 1.  Then, answer the questions under Tasks 3, 4, and 5.  Print out your assignment and leave it in your folder. Also, send it to me as an email attachment (so that I can click on your sites and avoid typing the URLs).