Teacher Sharing Sites Offer Helping Hand to Educators
Wednesday, August 16, 2017 by Cyber Acoustics
Imagine for a second what it’s like to be a stand-up comedian. You walk out on stage and it’s just you, under a spotlight, a crowd of people sitting there with their arms folded, waiting for you to entertain them for the next hour. Over the next 60 minutes, you must grab their attention and keep it with no dead spots, or you lose them. And a few of those people in the audience are just waiting for a misstep so they can pounce and give you a hard time about it.
Sound intimidating?
Now think about this -- that’s basically what teachers do, except it’s all day, five days a week, 10 months a year. Just them alone in front of that classroom, with a room full of kids waiting for the teacher to lead them through the day.
It’s a challenge known only to fellow teachers, and while they can share their experiences in the lunchroom with their colleagues, there's also an entire ecosystem online where they can go for ideas and advice on how to better run their classroom. Because who knows better than other teachers? It’s a community they alone understand better than anyone else.
Online sharing isn’t just for students working on a project together, but also teachers who can share lesson plans, download worksheets and get advice on dealing with different personality types or learning styles. There’s an entire online community of educators creating resources or adding to existing ones to help make life easier for teachers.
Of course, like anything when it comes to online communities, it starts with one question: where to begin? Here are some suggestions:
Share My Lesson
Perhaps the industry leader when it comes to teacher sharing sites, Share My Lesson is a treasure trove of information for teachers. They have thousands of lesson plans beginning with preschool through high school, including new resources and challenges for teachers who work with gifted students. There’s also a comprehensive professional development section, and active social media accounts that keep teachers up to date with their latest info.
Education World
With the new school year just around the corner, Education World's section dedicated to Back to School ideas will be especially popular in the coming weeks. But this is a valuable resource all year, with lesson plans, technology tools and much more. There's also a library of articles on a variety of topics teachers will find useful, from making sure introverted kids get the attention they need to how to help prevent bullying of special needs kids.
Education Northwest
Education Northwest has a number of initiatives at all levels of the educational system. From turning around underperforming schools to resources for teachers to use in their classrooms, there’s something for just about all educational roles on the site. More specific to teachers, there’s a section devoted to helping kids struggling with reading and writing called 6+1. It gives samples to practice scoring, and teachers can compare their graded samples to samples graded by their peers.
TeacherTube
As you might guess from the name, it’s essentially YouTube for teachers. There’s a full library of videos with ideas for teaching different topics, as well as a robust audio section to boot. It functions as something of a social network, with any user able to upload audio and videos to the site. Due to this audience sharing, you may sometimes have to sift through items that don’t pertain to you, but there's plenty to work from once you find it.
TeachNet.org
We’ll get it right out of the way – this site isn’t very flashy. It’s blocky, unassuming and a testament to early Internet design. But if you can get past the aesthetic, there is a lot of useful information on this site. There’s a section on how to address negative comments in a student’s report card, tips on working with kids learning English as a second language, and advice on building relationships with your students’ parents. This site is a definite lesson on not judging a book (or website) by its cover.
No matter the grade level or the subject, there’s a vast number of websites and online communities to help teachers. For more resources, Scholastic.com offers a helpful list here. Or, if you're looking for resources more specific to EdTech, EducatorsTechnology.com has a great list here.
And as you prepare for the new school year, Cyber Acoustics has everything your school or district needs for device protection and classroom audio solutions. From custom cases and Bluetooth speakers to headsets and headphones, our industry-leading products help teachers and students make the most of the learning experience. For more information, check out our product catalogs, and request a product sample today.