Group items tagged

"It's summer, which means you're most likely out of the classroom and enjoying the weather and all that comes with it. For many of us, this means either attempting to grow a few things in our own gardens or hitting up the farmer's markets for some awesome fresh produce. Others will start small school gardens with their students in the fall, which offer many learning opportunities extending way beyond just the idea of how to get something to grow. The handy infographic below takes a look at fifty cool facts about plants, many of which you may not have already known. Use them as cocktail party fodder, to get your students interested in plants, or just for fun! "

"Kids will learn all about the process of photosynthesis and discover amazing adaptations plants make to their environment in this interactive reading app for the iPad."

"Changing the world sounds like a tall order. But in reality, educators play their role to help change the world every single day. The summer is a great time to start planting seeds of change in our personal or professional practice. Here are a few quick ideas to keep in mind over the next few weeks before we gear up to go back to school."

We are the stories that we tell and it is the stories we share which unite us. This was the seed of an idea planted by a day with author, artist, musician and story teller Boori Pryor. Understanding the power that our stories have allows us to better value their role in our lives, to see them as more than recounts of the past or imaginings of the future. Stories should be viewed as the powerful agents that they are with the force to shape who we are as much as we shape them.

"BOSTON - On the cramped urban campus of Boston Latin School, high-school students grow an acre's worth of vegetables in an old shipping container that's been transformed into a computer-controlled hydroponic farm. Using a wall-mounted keyboard or a mobile app, the student farmers can monitor their crops, tweak the climate, make it rain and schedule every ultraviolet sunrise. In a few decades, nine billion people will crowd our planet, and the challenge of sustainably feeding everybody has sparked a boom in high-tech farming that is now budding up in schools. These farms offer hands-on learning about everything from plant physiology to computer science, along with insights into the complexities and controversies of sustainability. The school farms are also incubators, joining a larger online community of farm hackers."

"If the most recent U.S. Election has taught us anything it's that we live in an era of fake news and sites. With accusations flying of manipulation of stories, the media and voters, it's truly hard to know if what we read on blogs, social media and other sites is actually the truth or a tale spun to generate clicks. To further compound the problem a recent study from Stanford shows that the vast majority of students can't determine it what they read on websites is true or baloney. The study showed More than two out of three middle-schoolers couldn't see any valid reason to mistrust a post written by a bank executive arguing that young adults need more financial-planning help. And nearly four in 10 high-school students believed, based on the headline, that a photo of deformed daisies on a photo-sharing site provided strong evidence of toxic conditions near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, even though no source or location was given for the photo. With many schools and districts rolling out 1:1 initiatives and a push to digitize learning, helping students understand where their information comes from, and if it is reliable and accurate are critical skills, not just for learning for but life as well."

"The movement to "go green" has been growing stronger over the past few decades. People are thinking more about the everyday changes they can make to help make planet Earth a little nicer and less touched by the harm of pollution. Might as well, since most of us are going to be stuck here for the rest of our lives. Whether you're building a wind turbine for your home or just planting a garden, there are a lot of DIY ways for you to go green."

"ARKive.org is a great resource for videos and images of plants and animals. In the education section of ARKive.org you will find lesson plans organized according to student age. The lesson plans include audio files, slides, and hand-outs to distribute to your students. Most of the lesson plans include hands-on components for students."

"What if Lewis and Clark had cell phones? What would JFK have posted on Facebook? What would Abe Lincoln have Tweeted? While it's fun to think about what how modern technology would have affected the past, it's also a creative way for students to demonstrate an understanding of historical figures, politicians, authors, or even plants and animals. Students love social media, and virtual impersonation tools provide an opportunity to bring some fun into assignments. All of the tools below are free, and can be used without creating an account."

"Pity the summertime. All year, we long for better weather, using this season as a repository for our plans. I'll paint the house in the summer. I'll plant a garden in the summer. I'll reorganize the garage in - you guessed it - the summer. But all those plans jamming up our calendar doesn't leave much time for anything fun. These seven apps can help you keep track of your various household chores and projects, so you can spend more time getting things done and less time keeping track of them."

From the website: "Shot at the BMW Mini assembly plant in Oxford and out on the road, these ten short sequences all feature a different aspect of mathematics for pupils to explore and investigate."

The LEAGUE combines service, learning, and friendly "co-opetition" with live, interactive events. From planting trees to collecting food for the hungry, kids are returning millions of dollars worth of value back to the community. We believe once people are inspired and once they are given the opportunity, change happens.

"When I'm considering an app review, or considering purchasing an app for personal use, one of the first things that I do is to read the user reviews, as I'm sure many of you do too. Unfortunately, a newly released app or an app without a lot of reviews can sometimes have fake reviews, planted by developers or their friends, to trick unsuspecting customers and artificially inflate ratings. We've developed a quick guide that will help you avoid apps that are being falsely promoted."

Multimedia site from Exploratorium - See how the plants we tend feed our bodies, our minds, and our senses.

From Richard Byrne Free Technology for teacher, quoted below:Listen and Read - Non-fiction Read Along Activities Listen and Read is a set of 54 non-fiction stories from Scholastic for K-2 students. The stories are feature pictures and short passages of text that students can read on their own or have read to them by each story's narrator. The collection of stories is divided into eight categories: social studies, science, plants and flowers, environmental stories, civics and government, animals, American history, and community. Applications for Education Listen and Read looks to be a great resource for social studies lessons and reading practice in general. At the end of each book there is a short review of the new words that students were introduced to in the book. Students can hear these words pronounced as many times as they like. Listen and Read books worked on my computer and on my Android tablet. Scholastic implies that the books also work on iPads and IWBs"

"US researchers are investigating ways to extract the gold and precious metals from human faeces. The group identified gold in waste from American sewage treatment plants at levels which if found in rock could be worth mining. Details were outlined at the 249th national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Denver."

"So many adults, including teachers, joke about not being able to do simple math or not being a "science person" that many students enter STEM classrooms with negative views. This creates a fixed mindset as students believe they need certain natural abilities to be successful in math and science. As educators, we need to create opportunities for students to overcome these deeply planted negative views. Using images or ideas from popular culture gives students an entry point to explore science-they're already experts, and they can use the confidence they have in that area to become more open to learning and experiencing how math and science are rooted in creativity and imagination."

"Every year since 2001 we've picked what we call the 10 Breakthrough Technologies. People often ask, what exactly do you mean by "breakthrough"? It's a reasonable question-some of our picks haven't yet reached widespread use, while others may be on the cusp of becoming commercially available. What we're really looking for is a technology, or perhaps even a collection of technologies, that will have a profound effect on our lives. For this year, a new technique in artificial intelligence called GANs is giving machines imagination; artificial embryos, despite some thorny ethical constraints, are redefining how life can be created and are opening a research window into the early moments of a human life; and a pilot plant in the heart of Texas's petrochemical industry is attempting to create completely clean power from natural gas-probably a major energy source for the foreseeable future. These and the rest of our list will be worth keeping an eye on. -The Editors"