Many teachers across the nation have spent an overwhelming amount of their own money on a variety of school supplies and other supplemental materials. Well, here is where it stops. When it comes to teaching your own students, there are plenty of resources that can be used and are available at your fingertips. Multimedia and other platforms can be used to benefit not only your pocket, but also your student’s education!
1. YouTube Videos
There are an abundance of videos that can help capture you student’s interest on what you are teaching! Ranging from entertaining Crash Course videos to informative TedTalks, you are bound to find something that can not only engage your learners, but get them thinking about your new topic.
2. Organizations
There are science education resources available across the World Wide Web for you to use! Such as National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), there are many links to scientific journals, research articles, and additional websites that you can have you students look at! Science teachers across the country can give good advice and other great recommendations for you to use to have you students be engaged in your classroom.
3. Simulations
Simulations is almost a hands-on activity for students to do without the mess! The supplies for a real dissection can be expensive and allow other dangers in the classroom to happen. But for lab simulations there are many websites and downloads you can find for free! These will be educational and have the students in charge of their own learning!
eduMedia is a great resource for science teachers in all fields, especially for biology.
4. Demos
Performing demos for you students can be inexpensive! The supplies you need don’t always have to leave a dent in your wallet. There can be many demos you can find online that you can adjust to your learner’s level of knowledge AND content areas.
Here are a few easy experiments that can be adjusted to your student’s needs! Be sure to get them involved!
5. Games
It’s all fun and games until… well, until you really want to use games in your classroom for learning! There are many educational science games online that provide your students critical thinking strategies and an engaging side to science. Providing not only entertainment, games can be beneficial to students conceptual understanding of certain science topics.
Games can be very interactive and competitive (Kahoot) or use higher order thinking (games on https://sites.google.com/site/gameonlearning/science-ms-games-1).
Money can be an issue for everyone, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting a more ENGAGED classroom. There are plenty of resources available for use that can enhance a learner’s knowledge of science! @AnnMacKenzie #EDT432 #scienceteaching
— Mr. Seballos (@mr_seballos) February 7, 2019
Great post Michael! I really liked how you focused on the money issue because the reality is that teachers do spend so much of their own money and aren’t paid enough to sustain that. These are all great ideas for resources to save money yet still keep the kids engaged. Would you use something like simulations before or after already introducing the information? In your opinion which makes more sense?
-Margaux
Hello Michael!
Excellent post. I, like you, also added the crash course videos to my post. I put a crash course on ATP production and cellular respiration. I really like your video about the body. I also found simulations as well. I found a simulation for dissections. I am probably going to be a biology teacher, but I still think dissections are gross, and so do many other students. Froguts is a simulation that I found that allows students to virtually dissect organisms. I haven’t heard of eduMedia before, so I’ll have to check that out. Hank’s crash course videos are awesome. Which one is your favorite. Hank makes it fun and engaging for the learners. Another good thing that you put in your post is the NSTA resources. I haven’t looked deep into that, but I think I will start reading the journals given to me. Excellent post! What are the best ways you think to engage a student?
Delaina:)
Hi Michael! I really loved all of the resources that you provided for engaging on a budget! I really loved the video that you found, and like how you included NSTA in your resources. I had never heard of eduMedia before, so I’ll have to check that one out next time I need a simulation! Awesome post!
Thank you Bryce! I thought NSTA would be a good resource to provide to other teachers who could stumble upon my post! Because there really are so many different journals that can be read to benefit a classroom! eduMedia is a very interesting site! I highly recommend checking it out. I remember some of my own high school teachers would use it in class.