The National Standards for Mathematics, the National Science Education
Standards and Technology for All Americans (technology standards under development)
all emphasize the necessity for integrated math, science and technological
literacy as essential to the everyday skills of problem solving, critical
thinking, and life-long learning. All three emphasize not just "hands-on,"
but more accurately, "minds-on" activities to set the stage for
learning.
The LINKS Project is sponsored in-part through a National Science Foundation
grant. The project is attempting to quickly develop and disseminate activities
that provide integration. This web site is one method of disseminating activities,
collecting feedback, communicating among teachers and experts, and of sharing
the activities after they have been improved by grinding them into reality
in the crucible of your classroom and reforming them through your comments.
LINKS is a conduit to make interdisciplinary goals reality. A conduit,
because we cannot make it happen, you the teachers in the classroom are
the ones who will make it work. You will have to identify the problems and
suggest the solutions. We will help in a variety of ways by providing: activitiy
ideas, feedback from experts , suggested materials, contact with other teachers
around the country doing similar activities, and improved activities that
incorporate your experiences.
Articles about LINKS activities have appeared and will continue to appear
in The Technology Teacher and
ties Magazine. Hopefully,
they have set the stage, whetted your appetite for participation and you
are already exploring the possibilities expressed in the articles.
We want you, as teachers, to try them, modify them, talk among yourselves and with experts about them (send us an email note and we'll have the experts give their opinions on your questions), assess the activities and talk to your studentsabout them. We'll take that information from you, process it and give back to you as expanded and improved activities. This web page is a forum for the feedback and discussions on the LINKS. If you have limited access to the web, we will periodically send (either via fax or regular mail) information to you.
Here are some questions to consider: How would you explore the interdisciplinary nature of this activitiy? Do you involve a math teacher, a science teacher, and a technology teacher, or do you do it alone? If you do involve math, science and technology classes, should each class have their own solution? Should it be a group effort among the classes? Should you just touch base with the math, science, and technology departments to see what they would like to reinforce? If you are the technology teacher, would you lay out the activity for the science and math teachers to see if what they are covering that could be reflected in this "hands-on" "minds-on" setting? How do you get that kind of access to the other teachers? Return to LINKS home page