Weekly Post - UEN Part 2

Utah Education Network is full of valuable resources I would like to use in my future classroom. Because I want to teach out of my home, UEN would be a useful tool to find the pre-k core curriculum so I would know what I should be teaching. UEN also offers lesson plans, which is such a time-saver. All of their lesson plans are based on standards and objectives from the core curriculum so UEN is a much better source for finding lesson plans than searching Google.

To encourage parents to continue education at home, I would also post bookmarks on my UEN page and in newsletters to parents of interactive learning games and virtual field trips relating to our theme that week. These are fun and easy ways for parents to implement learning activities in their home.

Through Pioneer Online Library, eMedia offers many video clips that I could use in my classroom or could suggest to parents to watch at home. It is easy to find relevant movies through eMedia because it lets you search by grade level or by Utah Core subjects, as well as featured items, media type or popular series.

Also through Pioneer, there is a resource called CultureGrams. I think it is important to teach about diversity in early childhood education and CultureGrams would be a great resource to find out about different cultures. I could find information from here to teach in my classroom or bookmark a link to the country/culture we were learning about in class on my UEN page. This is a fun way to get kids interested in learning about different places and cultures and that there are many different kinds of people in the world.

A great feature that Pioneer offers, especially for me, is Preschool Pioneer. This is a whole site dedicated for Preschool! It has tons of educational activities for kids to do. There are sections for Learn, Play, Watch and Read, but all are educational. There is also a page for parents and one for early childhood professionals. This is especially great for me because it has links to research, blogs, current news and more to keep me up to date at home.

UEN is such a valuable resource and can be a huge time-saver for underpaid teachers. There are many great features in the K-12 Student Center for teachers and students. Pioneer gives you access to movies through eMedia, audio clips through Soundzabound, articles through EBSCO, SIRS Discoverer and Knowledge Source, and many more. The great thing about these resources is that they are not only great for teachers, but they’re parent-friendly and kid-friendly as well.

Video Post

Oh how I love Sir Ken. How inspiring. I totally agree with what he says. I am kind of one of those people who thrive in creative arts - I love design, I love to sing, I love to dance, take pictures, create things, the works. But I too think I was stifled as a child with "that's never going to happen" and "choose a reasonable career" type of thing. That is why I love preschool - in preschool imagination and creativity are encouraged more than in any other grade. Three, four, and five-year-olds have yet to be stifled by society and the rationality of the world. Yes only a few make it to the top, but who can say that won't be you - you never know until you try. I think the world needs to realize the importance of creativity and encourage it more, especially in schools.