Message from zarooum

[Anonymous]

I rely heavily on websites to supplement the information supplied by my textbook, for teaching ideas, and to "hook" students. I think it would be useful to collect all of the recommended websites for Middle School teachers in one place so I will start and hope everyone will reply here.

For those of you who would like to join me in cataloguing your ideas, I will include Clay's notes about including websites: "In evaluating websites, provide details on who created the resource, what are its particular strengths and weaknesses, and how might it be used by teachers."

One of the earliest problems I have enountered in teaching Asia in my classroom is the fact that I am completely ignorant when it comes to pronouncing Asian names. In preparing to teach my first lesson, I realized that I was just making up pronunciations and that if I actually taught these words I would be doing a great disservice to my 6th graders. They might make my mispronunciations their own for the rest of their lives. So I became determined to learn how to teach these words properly.

One website has become my best friend. I practice with it in the evenings and sometimes I even check it out just before I "go on stage" in front of my kids. This website allows you to type in almost any word and hear the pronunciation of it.

Of course, it has a lot of other features like an online dictionary and thesaurus, a computing dictionary, a medical dictionary, a legal dictionary, acronyms, idioms, an online Columbia encyclopedia, and an online Wikipedia enclyclopedia.

It is great for kids because it has illustrations of the definitions of words and important people, places and facts from history. For example, in describing "cuneiform," I needed to know how to define "wedge-shaped" and the site displayed a wedge of cheese. The kids really got it from that. The information is very timely as well. If you look up the Taklamakan Desert, you will find a photo from space of a dust storm in the Taklamakan taken on June 25, 2005.

The website address is: http://www.thefreedictionary.com

Who created the resource and its particular strengths and weaknesses are described in detail on its homepage:

"Wikipedia is a Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers and sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. It contains entries both on traditional encyclopedic topics and on almanac, gazetteer, and current events topics. Its purpose is to create and distribute a free international encyclopedia in as many languages as possible. Wikipedia is one of the most popular reference sites on the internet, receiving around 60 million hits per day.

The English section of Wikipedia has over 730,000 articles and is growing fast. It is edited by volunteers in wiki fashion, meaning articles are subject to change by nearly anyone. Wikipedia's volunteers enforce a policy of "neutral point of view" whereby views presented about notable persons or literature are summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth. Because of its open nature, vandalism and inaccuracy are problems in Wikipedia.

The status of Wikipedia as a reference work has been controversial, and it is both praised for its free distribution, free editing and wide range of topics and criticized for alleged systemic biases, preference of consensus to credentials, deficiencies in some topics, and lack of accountability and authority when compared with traditional encyclopedias. Its articles have been cited by the mass media and academia and are available under the GNU Free Documentation License."