Review of "Teacher Scholastic-Dirtmeister"

Ray E. Etheridge
Western Washington University

Teacher Scholastic Website-Dirtmeister
http://teacher.scholastic.com/dirt/index.htm
Site Accessed: May 10, 2010

The Scholastic Website is an excellent resource for teachers and students. It has many different resources for the teacher and student alike from laboratory exercises to news, publishing resources, projects and links to additional websites. The website is easy to use and navigate and easy to adapt too many different classroom situations. The laboratory exercises are clearly spelled out and offer clear and obvious examples of the different ideas presented in the book. The resources are useful, approachable and easy to use. Using this website therefore allows for an easy and enjoyable introduction to the concepts of environmentalism, activism and community involvement that are embodied in the modern concept of education that I have been talking about in my previous posts. While a corporate website at heart it offers many free resources and opportunities, ignore the occasional corporate logo and access what you like, ignore the rest.
One of the main reasons I like this resource is that it allows for a ready-made access to many practical examples, ideas and project that can easily engage students in the study of the subject of Sustainability Literacy. Also I like this website because I feel that it offers many practical resources for teachers at many levels that augment the concepts and ideas embodied in the ideas of issues based education and environmentalism combined with good Science program that allows for a diversity of education techniques that I have discussed in my previous postings. While many ideas are of great importance they are often difficult to approach at a ground level and the website fills the gap between theory and practice that can otherwise be difficult to bridge, especially for beginning teachers and students with special needs or diverse backgrounds. After all what is more down to earth and common to every civilization that dirt.