Group items tagged

"Your complete guide to the horrifying reality of tick season. "

"In today's post we are sharing with you some very good iPad apps students can use to help them navigate the world in an easier and faster way. Using these apps will enable them to save time planning for trips, get the fastest routes to specific locations, avoid traffic disruptions, navigate the urban transit system  effectively, access offline transit maps and many more. We tried to include apps that work worldwide"

"School life can often get hectic, as you juggle between classes, assignments, projects, good grades, all laced with extreme competition, constant up gradation, and race for perfection. It is therefore, not uncommon for students to go through phases of stress and anxiety, as they surf through their learning journeys. It's important not to brush off your stress as just exam pressure or derivatives of academics. Stress and anxiety in students, is as serious a problem as it is in adults. If unattended, it can lead to several physical and mental health problems including obesity, sleep apnea, depression, eventually effecting your development and growth. In a study conducted by the World Health Organization, 25% of adolescents in India face depression, and 8% suffer from anxiety. Learning how to manage stress, won't just help you avoid serious repercussions of it, but also give your mind some much needed space and time, to function and focus well."

"The University of Florida's Digital Collections offers a huge library of digitized children's books. Thanks to Open Culture I discovered this collection this afternoon and immediately started to browse through it. The books that you will find in the collection consist of works that are in the public domain. You can search for books according to topic, language, publisher, genre, and publication date. All of the children's books in the collection can be read online. Reading the books online could be a bit difficult for some as there is a border with menus surrounding each page of the books. To avoid that, you can print all of the books for free. The printed version does not display anything but the book as it was scanned."

"With all the great things about makerspaces, it can be easy to overlook some of the small hiccups and larger hurdles that might come up when making if educators and youth don't make time for designing and planning.  At the reMAKE education conference (#remakeedu) this past week, Stephanie Chang and I engaged educators in some planning exercises that can help bypass those hiccups and hurdles and streamline the design process. (Thanks to the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh and their framework for helping us focus our efforts)."

"We've all heard how we must practice being more human to avoid turning into robots. But how about practicing humanity to make sure we don't become monsters? Whether it's the emotional cues spinning by in a meeting headed for disarray, curiosity that could turn a business-as-usual day into an internal spark reminding you why you got into this darn job in the first place, or the art of making space for conflict resolution that's going to save us all, here are ten ways to salvage our better selves and keep us from mutating into workplace monsters."

"A federal election is coming and Canadians should be wary of being exposed to fake and misleading news, particularly on social media. What you need to look out for most during this election cycle is your own emotional bias. This is what leads us to share fake news without checking the facts first.  We have been researching the psychology of fake news for almost three years now, with the goal of finding out why people believe fake news and what each of us do to avoid falling for it ourselves. We have uncovered a few answers; one of the most important of which was recently detailed in a paper titled Reliance on Emotion Promotes Belief in Fake News. "

"Educators never get a break. Oftentimes they see their students in their community, grade papers and plan lessons, and become emotionally invested in the lives of each of their students - all outside of classroom hours. Children of teachers can sometimes feel they rank below their parents' other "kids" at times. To avoid burnout and keep yourself happy at work and at home, remind yourself that teachers can have a work-life balance and follow these tips for creating it."

"As an administrator, whenever I walk into a teacher's classroom, one of the first things I almost always subconsciously look for is whether or not the students are engaged in inquiry. However, telling a teacher, "Your students need to engage in more inquiry," is comparable to letting a comedian know she needs to be funnier or asking a pizzaiolo to make a better dough. And, vague directives in the absence of explicit instruction typically generate anxiety. To avoid these anxieties, and for progress to actually take place, we need to drill down to the nitty gritty and be as explicit as possible. In other words, we need to be explicit about being explicit and leverage specific strategies to comfortably move forward for the benefit of our students. With these thoughts in mind, I've been obsessing over inquiry's common denominators - the strategies or drivers we should always consider when implementing an inquiry-based lesson. That being said, here are the six drivers of inquiry-based learning. And, while I don't think every lesson or activity must have all six, I do believe that once we (and our students) become comfortable with an inquiry approach, all drivers will naturally find a way into learning experiences on a regular, if not daily, basis."

"False content online has only multiplied over the years. But the fake news designation has also been used to serve all kinds of purposes-including, increasingly, to disparage real news reporters-so most experts now avoid the term. Instead, researchers usually talk about disinformation, which is purposefully false, and misinformation, which is unwittingly false (either because the publisher made a mistake or because the person sharing the content did). As false content spreads through social media networks, it can oscillate between the two, and it can manifest in various forms, including memes, tweets, or "imposter" content made to imitate real news stories. "

The same revision schedule I used to get an A* in GCSE maths a year early! It can be used by any GCSE/IGCSE maths student, regardless of the examining body. It covers the new UK GCSE Maths specification (9-1) released in September 2015. The fatal mistake thousands of students make in their maths revision and how YOU can avoid it. The most important area of your revision yet it goes widely unnoticed. This is where the A/A* grades are achieved. 3 unique memory retention techniques you can use to remember all you need to know for your exam. What process to follow a few days before your exam and why there is NO need to do any past papers at this point. A simple technique that will allow you to spend up to 50% of your time doing the things you enjoy! How to revise for all your other GCSE exams and achieve a top grade in each one. Tips on how to score up to 100% in your exam. A neat little trick to eliminate stress & anxiety on exam day. How to enter the exam if you're a private candidate with a tip on saving on the entry cost.

"English is filled with words that look alike or sound alike (or both), but mean very different things - so it's easy to get confused and use the wrong word at the wrong moment. As "word nerds" and podcast hosts of NPR's "You're Saying it Wrong," we're constantly on the lookout for these mistakes. And we've seen them everywhere, from corporate reports, resumes and cover letters, to major publications. But if you're aware of the different meanings of these words, you won't fall into the same traps. Here's a list of some of the most commonly confused words in the English language:"

Recently I have been contemplating how we might define inquiry. Like many terms in education, it is often used in multiple contexts and has a range of meanings attached to it. Coming to agreement on what inquiry is, requires negotiating seemingly divergent understandings. If we are to avoid oversimplifications and dichotomous thinking, we need to explore these multiple perspectives and find a balance point.

"Between school closures, learning loss, intensified educator burnout, widespread staff shortages and increased stressors at home, it's been hard not to focus on the negatives in education this year. In fact, it's human nature to get caught up in what went wrong-an innate survival mechanism called "negativity bias" vigilantly draws our attention to worries and risks so we can better remember and avoid threats. While I'm appreciative that my ancestors were wary folks, in 2021, I often saw myself and others trapped in this negative mindset, always tallying the losses and waiting for the next bad thing to happen. However, in my work with educators this year, I began to notice that some were able to metabolize this negativity and keep themselves and their classrooms positive and adaptive despite the obvious hindrances. Interviews with elementary classroom teachers spanning a variety of settings and grade levels revealed that these resilient educators utilized a common strategy: they practiced gratitude in their everyday lives."

"With most teachers out of school for the summer by now, summer learning loss probably isn't top priority. After all, the kids are back in their parents' hands for at least a couple of months, right? If the students aren't in your classroom, there isn't a whole lot you can do beyond a summer reading list (that the parents may or may not encourage their students to complete, anyway). What you do have to worry about is the amount of catching up you need to do once you have students back in your classroom in the fall. The handy infographic below takes a look at some interesting statistics on summer learning loss, aka the 'summer slide'. It also offers some really simple ways to keep kids' brains churning along during their summer break. You can even offer these as simple recommendations to parents, to show them that summer learning doesn't necessarily mean their kids need to sit down and read all of Dostoevsky's works before the evenings get chilly!"

"In digital marketing, there is always a new trend, a new technology or a new way of thinking to take into account. But there is still a place for the humble blog. An infographic from Referral Candy provides tips from top marketing experts to improve your blog, and more importantly to promote your blog effectively. First and foremost, your blog must be good. Providing helpful content, providing a unique perspective, telling stories, and responding quickly to trends will keep your content engaging and fresh. Once the content is there, make sure that customers and readers can find that content easily. "