Ever wonder what would happen if you mixed the power of Internet resources with the classroom practices we know are effective?

Cindy Johnson, technology director of Lee county schools did!  With the help and inspiration of several educators including Mark Mine (formerly of Too Cool for Grown-ups, now a part of The Way Stuff Works) and Christopher Cobitz, she successfully acquired funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to develop a set of Internet based activities that integrate curriculum and mix effective practice with the power of the Internet.

This grant was received on behalf of a consortium of school systems including; Lee County schools, Rockingham Consolidated Schools, Thomasville City schools, Pender County Schools, Chatham County Schools, and North Carolina A&T State University.

Appearing soon will be a set of 5 lessons for fifth grade social studies.  These lessons integrate reading and math into the social studies content while address both technology skills and information skills.  Each lesson self scores for a pretest and quizzes students along the way to ensure that they have learned.  If a student does not perform well on a quiz, they are transported to a learning activity that reteaches the content the student did not master.  Finally, each student is post-tested to allow the student to demonstrate their prowess and allow the teacher to see a measure of the student learning.

The target date for these lessons to be available on line is March 2001