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Neighborhood Navigator - Wanda W.

Portaportal.com – The Place to Find Elementary SOL Aligned Websites
Guest ID’s solmath; solscience and solss

Virtually all Virginia educators are aware that there are wonderful interactive websites available that directly support the Standards of Learning. As a former elementary classroom teacher, technology specialist, and technology project manager for Fairfax County Public Schools, I have often heard educators lament that while the resources are indeed “out there,” teachers do not often have the time to find, and then store, all of the hundreds of links that support their various units of study.

In December of 2003, I attended the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) Technology Conference in Roanoke Virginia. While there, I participated in the “Locating Web-based Educational Resources” session led by Paul Barron, Library Manager, Mary Washington College.

One of the featured resources was portaportal.com. Portaportal is a free, web-based bookmarking utility that allows its members to store links of their favorite websites online. This web-link repository allows users and their guests anytime/anywhere access to archived links.

Shortly after the conclusion of the conference, I began to toy with the idea of aligning websites that support the SOLs within portaportal. I printed out the four-core elementary SOLs and decided I would first begin with math.

As our FCPS School-based Technology Specialists became aware of my ongoing project, I was prodded with requests to develop porta sites for Science, Social Studies and Language Arts. Because I was building these sites primarily during the evenings and on weekends, completion of the Math, Science and Social Studies portaportal sites took almost a year! (Since the Language Arts SOLs involve mostly reading and writing , I decided not to build a LA portaportal site.)

However now that I have retired from Fairfax County Public Schools, I may, if there is interest, begin developing such a site.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to submit websites to be included on this site and/or discover already listed websites that are no longer active so that I may quickly make the needed modifications.

Also other schools and districts have also begun SOL aligned portaportal sites. Use your favorite search engine to discover them all!

VCOL#2 Elections on the Web
Note: This article is reprinted from the February 2004 edition of VITALNews, the newsletter of the Virginia Initiative for Technology and Administrative Leadership

It's an election year, and come November, students all over the nation will be participating in mock elections as they have for many elections over the years. What makes this year different? The World Wide Web, of course! Learn more...

The Best of the Best of Webquests: Webquests have been around almost as long as the web. These problem-based, collaborative activities were designed to take advantage of the resources of the World Wide Web and were originally developed by Bernie Dodge at the University of San Diego. Over the years, the term webquest has come to mean many things ranging from scavenger hunts to hotlists. In an effort to “refocus” attention on the original intention of webquests, Tom March has created bestwebquests.com. Besides providing links to exemplary webquests, this website offers detailed analysis of each webquest based on well-defined criteria.

New Resources from the Department of Education: The Department of Education continues to update their SOL resources. For instance, the Enhanced Scope and Sequence Guides for Math are comprehensive resources that provide detailed lesson plans for all grade levels and standards. If you haven't visited the Division of Instruction recently, you will find lots of new curriculum guides and resources for all content areas.

Teacher/Classroom Web Pages: Have you thought about creating a website for your class but aren't sure where to begin? One of our VCOL friends has put together a website designed just for teachers that takes you through the process step by step. Just click here to get started!

VCOL#1 Using Email to Mine the Web: Finding time to explore the web can be tough. But you know there are great resources out there. So, how can you find them? Use your email. Learn more...