Teacher to Teacher: Discussing Online Resources

Joann did a wonderful job of explaining the goals of our weekly columns, so I hope you read her post first! I would like to join her in welcoming you to the new Gateway and inviting you to make the Gateway an integral part of your teaching. As you explore, you will find tens of thousands of resources that include lesson plans, activities, units, and examples of best practices. When you choose a resource to use in your classroom, you will be able to see the alignment of that resource to your state standards, and share that resource with your colleagues. It's a simple way to find and share standards-aligned resources.

I work with Joann each week to pick a timely and useful topic as the subject of our weekly columns and featured resources. These themes often relate to current or historical events, questions that come up in discussions on our Facebook and Twitter pages for educators, and hot topics in education news and blogs. These weekly themes are widely varied and we include examples of resources for as many grade levels as possible. We alternate between different subject areas to ensure that our columns are as useful as possible to the educators we are supporting.

Each week in her column, Joann features a few resources to help educators introduce that week’s theme to their students. As the Gateway's resident teacher, I build on Joann's discussion and featured resources to bring a classroom connection to the topic. This can mean something different each week. Some weeks, I feature more Gateway resources that cover the topic from different angles. Other weeks, I discuss web-based tools that will be useful for introducing the theme in the classroom. Sometimes I discuss related issues that come up on our Facebook and Twitter discussions and in the #edchat discussions we follow online.

All of our weekly columns are archived in our blog site, so if you are looking for support in a particular area, you can search the archives. We will continue to rely on you, the educator, for ideas on new weekly themes you would like us to cover. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to help guide the direction of this important part of the new Gateway!