Homework Web Resources

Explorer: I did some more checking on web resources. Consumer’s Reports has essentially nothing about educational resources. I wonder why they are so committed to reporting recalls of junk you probably can’t find and not interested in evaluating educational resources.

I found two promising sites that seemed to have some authoritative work behind them.

BrainPOP is a web site that seems to know how to use multimedia presentations for instruction. They claim that 15%of US school districts subscribe and that they have 3 million (child) users. http://www.brainpop.com/

edHelper.com is designed for teachers. It seems to be organized to fit a standard curriculum. I looked at the vocabulary treatment (since that is one my current projects). I found the contents organized by grade, with extensive practice materials available. The practice materials probably require a subscription. But the vocabulary list was readily available to the public.

I could also see, from the titles of the practice materials, that the site offered abundant practice content. Some of it even sounded interesting. All of it, however, appeared to be intraverbal (and mostly in print form). Or, in Thinkerer terms, called primarily on the main verbal modules. I think these methods would work best if earlier preparation has given the child oral experience with the words and the reality-referenced context. http://www.edhelper.com/