Marco Polo
In the National Education Technology Plan, one of the seven recommendations is to “move toward digital content.” I also mentioned in a post the other day that one of the reasons for technology in education is to support the learning process, especially through the use of flexible, digital content. With these two things driving my thinking, I thought I would post about the Marco Polo site.
Billed as “Internet Content for the Classroom,” this is one truly amazing resource. A collaboration between seven educational partners, Marco Polo provides educators with some great materials - evaluated web sites, lesson plans, national content-area standards, and many nifty tools unique to the various partner sites. The partner sites include:
Arts Edge - Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
EconEdLink - National Council on Economic Education
EdSiteMent - National Endowment for the Arts
Illuminations - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
Read Write Think - National Council of Teachers of English
Science NetLinks - American Association for the Advancement of Science
Xpeditions - National Geographic
One could write much about what MarcoPolo has to offer, but here is just a brief overview.
Each partner site has links to the following: the national standards in each of their particular content areas; partner reviewed web sites; lesson plans; a search tool; and some other unique feature that provides information or activities related to the content area. For example, ArtsEdge has a Look, Listen, Learn section of specific topics (similar to units); Illuminations has math manipulatives; and Read Write Think has a section of Student Materials that contain interactives such as storyboards and other organizers.
Be sure to check out all the partner sites. There are many interdisciplinary topics covered throughtout.
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