photo credit: oskay

Good morning everyone,

Great learning experiences are interactive. It’s certainly what I strive for when designing lessons. I find that when interactivity is combined with engagement and purpose (e.g., solving a problem) my learning is at its most powerful. The site I am sharing today, “Interactives” by the Annenberg Foundation, is a great source for classroom interactives on a range of subjects.

“Interactives” came to me by way of Cheryl Bonsall, our elementary (soon to be middle) school library/media specialist. She saw it on Richard Byrne’s fantastic Free Technology for Teachers blog. (I’m sure you read Richard already … right?)

Anyway, I love the depth of resources on this site – there are math, language, art, history and science interactives for grades K-12. Here’s an example about geometric shapes:

One thing I like about this particular example is the ‘hands on’ potential illustrated by the animation on the right. It might be fun to construct prisms of various shapes for comparison and exploration. I am a visual learner (and terrible at math, as I’ve said before) and feel pretty confident more of a hands-on approach would have worked better for me growing up.

Another fun way to consider using this site is as a self-directed resource to students working on a project. Say, for example, students are designing geometric structures. This site could help them understand concepts well enough to begin exploring and creating their own.

Unfortunately, some interactive aren’t very … interactive. Consider “Amusement Park Physics” – where you get to “design a roller coaster:”

Uhm, ok … clicking radio buttons and then pressing ‘next’ until I’m told that my design “passes” or “fails” … this one doesn’t get it for me. However, after bouncing around the site (the “Spelling Bee” is an example of an instant fave I’ve already shared with some 1st and 2nd grade teachers), it’s clear that the vast majority of these interactives are precisely that and definitely worth your time!

So, thanks, Richard and Cheryl, for sharing!

Hope this helps!

-kj-