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This portion of the teacher's guide will provide
help in navigating the SciGuides, and in understanding their organizational
structure.
Each thematic-based Science Guide begins with a
description of the guide's contents, narrowing down into specific themes.
Themes are described and broken down into keywords, which point to supporting
Internet resources.
Each SciGuide topic is broken down into two or
four themes. Clicking on a theme takes the user to a page describing that
concept of that theme in more depth. Each theme is associated with several
keywords, further refining the content addressed by the SciGuide. These
keywords have been aligned with one or more Triads. A Triad is simply a way of
organizing Web resources using the National Science Education Standards in the
following way:
-- Subject
-- Topic
-- Concept
An example from the Organisms guide is:
-- Subject: Life Science
-- Topic: Diversity and adaptations of organisms
-- Concept: Millions of species of animals, plants, and microorganisms are alive today.
All the associated web pages contained at the
Keyword level of a SciGuide have also been aligned to the same Triads, thus
allowing the user to pinpoint web pages of interest by selecting particular
Keywords.
The Keywords are not intended to be a
comprehensive summary of the body of knowledge related to a given topic, but
are provided as a framework for navigational purposes. Searching the Internet
can result in mass numbers of possible websites to explore. This guide has
narrowed the field to include developmentally appropriate content within a
specific theme, based on the National Science Education Standards. Master
teachers of science have compiled this collection in a rigorous and
accomplished manner using detailed, calibrated rubrics. The pages contained in
this guide and the associated lesson plans, vignettes, audio files, and samples
of student work are designed to be an addition to regular classroom resources
and curriculum.
In certain cases, a particular web page may
appear listed under several keywords or even themes. This would occur if the
reviewers determined that the content of the web page would be useful in more
than one area.
It should be noted that the reviewed Internet
resources are generally specific web pages within large sites. This focus
allows teachers to quickly access those web pages that have been rigorously
evaluated and aligned to the National Science Education Standards. The specific
icon filters, described in the 'Types of Resources Included in the Science
Guides' section, help to further categorize and sort the web pages in that
keyword. Once at a specific site, teachers may then access additional pages
within that resource, according to their curriculum and students' needs.
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