Group items tagged

"This habit trains your mind to find the positive in every day and to identify your own agency in creating that positive. Rick Hanson, the author of The Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom, describes our brains as "like Velcro" for negative experiences -- we dwell on them, and "like Teflon" for positive experiences -- they slide right out of our minds. Our minds are practically programmed to notice and remember the things that aren't working -- and as teachers we know there are plenty of those each day. The little successes, growth, and positive moments are washed away by the tidal waves of what's not working in schools."

"his is a growing collection of free edu apps that are considered to be "surprisingly educational". Many are edutainment in nature. We have provided ideas for integration for each app (in our "appy hours 4 u" show) that span across content areas and multiple grade levels. "

"One of the toughest challenges for any teacher charged with younger grades education is finding a way to teach phonics awareness while also keeping short attention spans engaged. "Phonics Genius," a simple app for the iPad and iPhone, offers a way to do just that, as well as work on fluency and decoding skills that are all instrumental to literacy skills."

"For some reason, educational games are getting an increasingly bad rap. Educators are questioning their merits on social media. Studies are popping up saying they don't help. Psychologists are cautioning parents about impact on attention span. Part of this could be over-inflated expectations. If we expect a game to teach children anything other than what that games simulates, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment."

"Thinking is troublesome. For one, it is an intimate act splicing time and space. It is done right here, but it spans moments in the pasts and reaches out uncertainly towards moments in the future. Put another way, you think in a singular, precise space about plural, imprecise times."

"The revolution that began with the web in the mid 1990s has exploded with the advent of small, ubiquitously connected devices in every space and size. The kind of technological changes that took a lifetime in previous centuries has occurred in the span of a decade, and this rate of change is accelerating, not slowing down. With the turn of this new century, this digital revolution took another increasing pitch transforming thus the way we live and do business."

"I'm in the midst of teaching my STEM students how to use the iPad app "Explain Everything" to create short, narrated slideshows about the cantilever spans project we've been doing recently. My students share iPads on our STEM cart, and do not have their own Google logins to upload videos to YouTube. So, after they complete their narrated slideshows and export their finished videos to their iPad camera roll, the challenge is: How can we readily get these videos uploaded to YouTube? This situation is complicated further by the fact that YouTube uploads are blocked on our school network by our content filter, unless a teacher logs in in to bypass the filter. Here are two ways I've dealt with these constraints and requirements. I am sharing this post today because one of the librarians in our district ran into this same problem and asked for help!"

"Free Books is a great free iPad app that provides you with a huge library of eBooks and audiobooks. It actually contains over 23.000 classic books that are all in public domain. These books span a wide variety of topics and different fields in human history including letters of leaders, the collected works of geniuses, the finest Victorian novels, the plays of Shakespeare, the philosophy of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie. It's all here, along with tens of thousands of other books."

"Looking for some interesting free documentaries to use in your class or probably use for your own professional and intellectual growth? This list from Open Culture has you covered. It features around 200 free documentaries spanning a wide range of topics from history to arts and science. All of these documentaries are provided with a short description about their content together with a link to the page where you can watch them and read more about the contextual information surrounding the topic they cover. It will take you awhile to sift through the entire list but we are pretty sure you will come out with some good documentaries to share with your class."

"Minds of Modern Mathematics is an excellent iPad app that takes users in a journey into the world of Math. This is basically an interactive timeline that tells the story of how Math and mathematicians have shaped the world we are living in now. The story spans a very long period of time almost 1000 years ago."

"What are the real benefits of a maker-centered approach to learning? It's often described as a way to incubate STEM skills or drive technical innovation - and it is probably both of these. But as a new report from Project Zero's Agency by Design concludes, the real value of maker education has more to do with building character than with building the next industrial revolution.  "

"s a high school math teacher, it was important for me to create a learning space that welcomed on-demand wonder and exploration. I knew that I planned to have a few essential hands-on math tools, and in the last few years, I also knew that I needed to have other items that were essential for providing kids more creative freedom. With a few containers, manipulatives, and supplies, along with some technology, I created a space that my students would go on to name "the wonder shelves." What you are about to read was not an overnight process, but one that grew over an eight-year span."

"For about a month in the spring of 2013, I spent my mornings at Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle whose students are the scions of the Pacific Northwest elite. The beautiful red-brick campus looks like an Ivy League college and costs almost as much to attend. The school boasts Bill Gates among its alumni, and its students come from the families of Amazon and Microsoft executives. Unsurprisingly, there is no dearth of technology: Teachers post assignments on the school's intranet; classes communicate by email; and every student carries a laptop (required) and a smartphone (not). In this context, what do parents do when they think their children need an extra boost? I was there as a substitute tutor for students spanning the academic spectrum. A few of them were taking honors calculus. They were diligent but wanted a sounding board as they worked on tough problems. Others, weighed down by intensive extracurricular activities, struggled in geometry and algebra. I would review material with them and offer pointers as they did assignments. Yet another group required no substantive help at all. They just needed some prodding to finish their homework on time. Despite their differences, the students had one thing in common: What their parents were paying for was extra adult supervision."

"Educator and blogger Alice Keeler has written extensively on integrating Google Classroom with everyday school work. Spanning three posts on her blog Teacher Tech, Keeler has assembled 46 ways teachers can take advantage of Classroom, the latest in Google's Apps for Education lineup. Google's cloud-based classroom organizer streamlines the flow of daily assignments and helps overcome teacher-student communication barriers."

"As a high school math teacher, it was important for me to create a learning space that welcomed on-demand wonder and exploration. I knew that I planned to have a few essential hands-on math tools, and in the last few years, I also knew that I needed to have other items that were essential for providing kids more creative freedom. With a few containers, manipulatives, and supplies, along with some technology, I created a space that my students would go on to name "the wonder shelves." What you are about to read was not an overnight process, but one that grew over an eight-year span."

Interesting changes over a ten year span 2000 vs 2010.