UEN Site Reflection

The UEN site is fantastic. I had no idea this was available. I’ve used this site to access the core requirements and the UEN personal page, but never looked closely at what else was available. Their core information is really useful and I like the link to The Secondary English Teacher site. This location has a great chart that has all grades, 7-12, in one document. As someone who has multiple grades in every classroom, this is the best way to view the core. I love how the material is all centralized. It seems to have a really nice balance of tools for the teacher and the students and a lot of diversity in approaches.

The Pioneer site is a good resource. I was worrying about how to get some of the UVU library resources after graduation and I’m glad this is available. The SIRS search engine on the Pioneer site seems like a really good tool for the classroom. I often have students getting lost and distracted when I ask them to find information on the internet. I have had a student pull up a very…interesting…google image search that involved a playboy photo shoot that the filter just didn’t catch.

I’m generally pretty dismissive of online lesson plans, but I was surprised by some of the interesting and creative ideas. I love group projects and found two really good plans that include that method. There weren’t a huge number on the 8th grade pages, but enough to bring in some great new approaches. I also appreciated all the interactives that could be great for students who finish assignments early, as well as elements that could tempt students to my class website.

How wonderful to have a place to go for relevant videos other than YouTube. There is a lot of great material there, but it takes a lot of time to wade through the bad, the inappropriate, and irrelevant. I think this make the SIRS website also very intriguing, since that filtering process will be done for me.

What I really need now is a whole day to just explore and play on the UEN, Pioneer, and SIRS sites. I can’t wait to share the treasures I’ve found with other teachers I know!