Where do you start?

STEP 1: Decide what you want the Internet to do for you. Do you want it to:

provide lesson plans?
provide worksheets?
provide background information on a topic?
be a on-line activity for your students?

Once you figure out what you want it to do, you are ready to start finding web sites.

You know your topic and you know what type of Internet sites you want to complement your unit of study, now what?

STEP 2: Start by researching your topic with a Search Engine.

A Few Search Engines to use: Yahooligans, Yahoo, Altavista

STEP 3: Do a search. Using a Search Engine is like using a card catalog to find books in a library. Enter the topic for which you want to find sites. If it is a phrase, put quote marks around it. Click the search button. A list of sites related to that topic will appear. You have done a web search!

Now that you have a list of sites, what do you do with them?

STEP 4: Visit the sites and review their contents to make sure that they are pertinent to your unit and appropriate for your students. When you find a site that you want to use, Bookmark it. Make your lesson plan.

STEP 5: Run through your lesson plan the day before you use any Internet sites to make sure that the site is still posted and you can get to it.

You have lots of sites for lots of units, how can you organize them?

STEP 6: Open your Bookmark window in your browser software. Make a folder and title it with your lesson plan's topic. Drag all the sites used for that lesson plan into the folder in the order you want to use them. Do the same for all your lesson plans for which you have collected sites. Close your Bookmark window. Go to the menu item "Bookmarks," click and hold. You will see your list of bookmarks and folders with your lesson plan titles. When you drag down to your lesson plan folder, a window with the folder's contents pops up. Slide over to the site you want to use.

Visit "Working the Web" and "What's on the Web?" to read what this exceptional educator has to say about integrating technology into the classroom.

Some helpful sites:

ITRC Instructional Technology Resource Center
Kate Sullivan's Academic Resource page and Class Activity page
Leon County Schools web site has lots of information

Some things you can find:

lesson plans - Ag Day,
reproducible activity sheets- John Deere's Find the Fun and Dodge the Danger, Cubist Coloring Book, coloring sheets
puzzles - Brain Teasers, Critical Thinking Puzzles, Word Search Puzzles
on-line games & activities - Math Baseball , Wacky Web Tales , Lemonade Stand
e-mail - Digital Florida Postcards

Make friends with your webmaster. Your webmaster can help you post a page listing your lesson plan and the sites you used. You and your webmaster can start a collection of lesson plans that you and other teachers can utilize. Kate Sullivan Elementary is working on an on-line database of lesson plans that incorporate the use of the Internet in the curriculum.