10 Reasons Your Educators Are Resisting Your Change Initiative

The blog Dangerously Irrelevant recently posted this very interesting and timely article on the reasons that change is resisted. Taken from IBM's Online Change Toolkit the article lists a collection of very good reasons. Definately worth a read!

Dangerously Irrelevant: 10 Reasons Your Educators (Employees) Are Resisting Your Change Initiative

View Reading Level in Google Search Results

Working with students on reading in the content area has been an important concept in education for some time, but seems to have increased importance recently. Being able to find web resources for students that are at an appropriate reading level is easier now that Google has included reading levels in their advanced search results. You may choose to limit your search to only one level or tag all results with the level of that page. Now you will instantly know whether that site you want your students to use will be understandable or far beyond their ability to comprehend. Google only provides three levels so fine adjustments in reading level are not possible, but at least you can get your choices of web resources in the right neighborhood. To view a brief how-to video describing how to use the reading level option in Google view the video below.

The British Museum WebQuests

The site Free Technology for Teachers recently posted about The British Museum and utilizing its terrific resources for completing WebQuests. For those unfamiliar, the site WebQuest.org defines a WebQuest as "an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in February, 1995 with early input from SDSU/Pacific Bell Fellow Tom March, the Educational Technology staff at San Diego Unified School District, and waves of participants each summer at the Teach the Teachers Consortium." Free Technology for Teachers author Richard Byrne provides several WebQuests he has written using The British Museum. Check them out and use them in your classroom or as a springboard for creating your own.

The British Museum
Richard Byrne British Museum WebQuests

Electronic Anatomy Coloring Book

Here is a way for students to learn anatomical structures through electronic coloring and a quiz-like labeling system. The site presents various systems and then breaks them down into smaller parts for coloring and labeling. Students choose colors and when they click on an area it is filled with the color and the site triggers a multiple choice labeling exercise that will guide them to the correct choice. Final documents can be printed. Note that the site requires the Adobe Shockwave Plugin.

Body Spectrum Electronic Anatomy Coloring Book

Biological Animations

Here is a terrific website containing numerous flash animations of biological functions that would be very helpful in illustrating these concepts for students. Although the pictures in the gallery below are static the actual presentations on the website are animations. These animations appear to be created by John L.Giannini of the St. Olaf College Biology Department.

Biological Animations