Thinkfinity

​​ ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION

As we have explored and discussed many ways of integrating technology into the classroom, this has laid a good foundation leading to Integrating Thinkfinity Resources into Instructional Units using the Thinkfinity Portal at http://www.thinkfinity.org .

Thinkfinity makes it easy for educators to enhance their classroom instruction with lesson plans, interactive activities and other online resources. Thinkfinity also provides a wealth of educational and literacy resources for students, parents and after-school programs.

All of Thinkfinity's 55,000 standards-based K-12 lesson plans, student materials, interactive tools and reference materials are reviewed by the nation's leading education organizations to ensure that content is accurate, up-to-date, unbiased and appropriate for students.

At Thinkfinity, you'll find primary source materials, interactive student resources and grade-specific research lists to help you tailor materials to meet your needs. Start exploring now! Explore the lesson plans on the Web sites that comprise the Thinkfinity Portal at http://www.thinkfinity.org.

Find / select two lesson plans that you could use as part of an instructional unit in your class. Remember, the items you will find on the Thinkfinity Web sites, are not necessarily complete units but supplemental resources.

You will complete two forms – one for each Thinkfinity lesson plan. Describe the instructional unit at the top of the form. At the bottom, describe the Thinkfinity lesson and why the lesson would be an integral part of the instructional unit. 

Your Portfolio page should include a title, brief description of Thinkfinity, a link to thinkfinity.org, and the Word documents with a brief description (teaser to get people to open the Word document) of the lesson / unit, in addition to the process you went though to determine the two lessons, what else was on the Thinkfinity sites that you will explore further, and a reflection on your participation in this activity. You might consider including the Thinkfinity logo as part of the Thinkfinity description.

Ok, so you have read about the assignment and you see the link to Thinkfinity. I bet you want to take a quick look at my Thinkfinity Lessons...don't you? Oh c'mon go ahead and see what I came up with. Now I will warn you, at first I had a little difficulty because my topic can be limited. My topic was business but I found two Thinkfinity lessons that went along with two lessons that I recently taught in my Integrated Business Technology class. I thought that the Thinkfinity lessons took my lessons one step further and I liked that. So go ahead and click the Word documents links below and take a look.



REFLECTION

As far as my thoughts on this assignment. I actually really liked it. At first I did think I was going to have trouble finding topics related to business, because I usually do. But it was relatively easy to find two Thinkfinity Lessons. I was very surprised that I was able to find them and I was quite pleased with the amount of information that was found and how these lessons took my lessons one step further and incorporated activities that I would have never thought of and that seemed to be great activities to get my students more engaged on the topics of discussion. I believe I will utilized the Thinkfinity website more often when it comes to designing my lessons plans for my classes. The site definitely has alot to offer and I think I could better engage my students with some of the lessons that I could find on the website. Afterall that is what I want to do; engage my students and increase their achievement and I think that these lessons offer some activities that offer different ways of exploring topics and teaching them. I really enjoyed this activity.