YETC Lab Introduction and Presentation

You know the saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover." Well I should have applied this idea to my thinking of the YETC Labs. Before this class I had attended the YETC labs a couple of times and I even noticed some of the teaching materials that they had on display, but my idea and understanding of it were very limited. Let me just say that I am now amazed at shear volume of resources that are available through the YETC.
During our tour of the YETC we were shown all kinds of different digital tools available. Some of the materials we talked about were things like the Gutenberg project. Which is an online project to digitize thousands of different books. We also talked about one of the many add-on's that are available on FireFox to be able to download live streaming videos. One of my personal favorites was the free astronomy software called Stellarium. I really loved this tool because it was free and I think it would be a great tool to help my students learn more about the constellations and where they are at in the sky.
As we were walking through the YETC I kept having ideas for lesson plans and ways I could utilize the resources available at the YETC. One thing I really like about the YETC is how you are able to use so many different forms of media. For example, I think that using say a video of the space shuttle for a presentation on NASA would be a lot more interesting to a group rather than just a picture of the shuttle. Another thing I am defiantly going to look into are the many different teacher improvement videos available. I know that I am a visual learner and to have the opportunity to use visual sources to improve my teaching is a definite plus.
One thing I have noticed and it is something that I brought up in class, was how the elementary school I am at right now only has computers in the library and students only use the library once a week. I think that it is sad how their are so many different resources available online but schools simply don't have the funding or means (i.e. computers) available to their students to help them in their per suits of learning. I hope that when I become a teacher I might have resources available to allow my students to utilize the Internet and the resources available their.


YES ----I think that another day of YETC exploration would be an awesome idea.