Thinkfinity

I attended our local area technology director/coordinator meeting this past Thursday and heard several interesting presentations. The first one was from Karen Horn from Thinkfinity.

Thinkfinity is the result of the consolidation of Marco Polo and Verizon's Literacy Network. Basically, it acts as a portal for teachers to use to find resources (activities, web sites, lesson plans, etc.) created by one of the several member organizations. There are 8 member organizations. The Kennedy Center (ArtsEdge), National Council on Economic Education (EconEdLink), National Endowment for the Humanities (EdSiteMent), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (Illuminations), International Reading Council & National Council of Teachers of English (Read Write Think), American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science NetLinks), National Geographic (Xpeditions) and the newest addition, The National Museum of American History (http://americanhistory.si.edu/).

Ultimately, Thinkfinity only acts as a entry-point into the member organizations individual sites. So while you might find reference to something you like on the Thinkfinity site, you click on it and it takes you out to one of the member sites. That's not really a problem (since linking is part of the power of the Internet afterall!). While each site is supposed to adhere to certain guidelines for creating and posting lesson plans, during the demonstration by our presenter the ArtsEdge web site linked us out to a solar system model located elsewhere. Along with the solar system model was a banner ad which handily loaded some pop-ups. One of the pop-ups had a cartoon style girl standing in her underwear. Most older age students would probably have just clicked it closed without even a bat of the eye, a younger audience might have something more to talk about. This particular lesson was aimed as grades 3-5. While pop-ups can happen to almost anyone, the ArtsEdge site was not very careful in picking a site with advertisements as a selected online educational resource.

Is there good stuff to be found here? I think so (they claim over 55,000 resources). Just make sure your teachers preview the lessons before trying to use them in their classrooms (like they shouldn't have already been doing that?). Also, its probably a good idea to spend some time with the site to get used to the layout and how you navigate the portals.