Thinkfinity

[|www.thinkfinity.org]

Thinkfinity is a website sponsored by Verizon that concentrates most things educational into one massive database. Lesson plans and lesson planning units on this site cross all curricular areas and grade levels. Here you will also find educational blogs and interest groups. There is also a wealth of information for parents and others who may not necessarily have an educational background. Professional development acitvities are organized by subject here. Opportunites for social networking can be found on the Lounge tab at this site.

My assignment was to evaluate two lessons/units from this site. The first lesson I explored was entitled Balance Beam Discoveries. ([]) Teachers in my building have an especially difficult time getting students to memorize multiplication facts. Thus, teachers are frequently asking me for suggestions to present multiplication lessons in new and innnovative ways. I found this lesson to be a unique opportunity to teach multiplication hands on while reinforcing the concept of equality with the concept of balance. I believe this would serve to make a substantive connection between digits on paper and the actual understanding of the numeration concept.
 * __Description of Assignment__**

The second lesson that I chose to evaluate was called Growing Patterns. **This is the third lesson in a series of 5. I introduced this lesson to this teacher because of the difficulty she is experiencing getting her students to take understanding from the concrete to the abstract. I like that it incorporates literacy through the reading of The House That Jack Built which addresses student ability to retain rhyme. I also like the fact that students can use simple manipulatives and grid paper to duplicate the patterns. Students take this concrete pattern to the abstract by filling in the table shown in the lesson. The introduction of Pascal's triangle fosters higher order thinking.Find this lesson at**

There is too much on this site to describe adequately here. Suffice to say that it is possible to conduct an entire year's curriculum just with lessons from this site. I especially want to go back to take a look at the use of technology in the lessons that are used here. I also want to explore the possibility of adding some of my own lessons to this database.

__Reflection__ Thinfinity is overwhelming because of the sheer volume of information that is available here. It is easy to get lost in all of the ideas that are presented here. I found myself wandering around this site for two hours before I actually chose the lessons I wanted to use to complete this assignment. I receive so many teacher requests for assistance with technology in instruction that I can definately see myself returning to this site repeatedly. However, for busy teachers who are usually looking for lessons that they can use immediately with little or no modification, I have made it a policy to formulate lists of suggestions that include no more than ten urls. That is about all that most teachers can handle before frustration takes over and they abandon the whole effort. Some teachers go on to explore the site more themselves using my list as a jumping off point to get the started in the right direction.