Website Review: http://www.educationplanet.com

By Stacey Whaley

This website is so much fun to look at and get ideas from that I really had to force myself to log off and write this review. The Education Planet site does require a subscription of $49.95 per year, but you can get a free 30 day trial to check it out first. This site is an excellent resource for teachers, students and parents. I found the lesson plans very usable and easy to find since they are organized by curricular area.

Other features of this site include:

· Links and information on state standards for all states

· Clip art

· A weekly newsletter

· Grants and other funding sources

· Curricular tools (including a Lesson Plan Maker)

· Research tools

· Online schools

· Online discussions with other teachers on educational topics

When I went into the lesson plan area of the site and performed a search for “high school writing”, the site came up with the following:

· 553 lesson plans

· 441 websites

· 17 software applications

· 29 videos

· 150 recommended supplies

· 213 books on writing

· 114 online courses

The lesson plans contain lessons on all aspects of writing from grammar to creative poetry. In reading through them, I was amazed at the collection of great ideas and practical strategies presented. (This was where I spent most of my time browsing!) Other teacher web tools included a newsletter maker and a lesson maker.

In the student resource section of the site, there were links to online encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, math and science conversion tables, distance calculators, CNN sites, maps, and weather information. There is a neat feature where students can publish work online as well.

All in all, I was thoroughly impressed with this site. Across curricular areas, there is something for everyone!