Group items tagged

"The suggestion that global warming has stopped is "nonsense," climatologist Richard Alley of Penn State University said last fall. The fact that the year 2012 was no warmer than 2002, he said, ignores the long-term trend of warming. But scientists say that trend has been partially obscured by the ocean, which is likely absorbing the excess heat."

"Children's unorthodox spelling and grammar while texting does not stop them learning the rules of formal English, suggests research. Just over 160 children, aged between eight and 16, from the West Midlands, took part in the snapshot study. The researchers compared spelling and grammar in formal tests and in text messages, at the start of the project and again after a year. The results showed the most creative texters were among the best spellers. The children were asked to copy out all their text messages over a two-day period."

"Do you cringe when a student's reaction to every problem involving fractions is "cross multiply!"? It doesn't matter whether you teach elementary or high school, whether you're a parent or a tutor, having a student yell out a trick without stopping to think is painful. This book is filled with alternatives to the shortcuts so prevalent in mathematics education and explains exactly why the tricks are so bad for understanding math."

"Want to be a game piece in Candyland? Want to ride a roller coaster down the Rocky Mountains? Now you can do it all! … Well, you can make it look like you did it all. Juxtaposer is the best app for creating fun photomontages. Cut out a piece of one photo and stick it onto another. We can't stop playing with it! We're going to show you the ins and outs of this app and turn you into a pro user. Because everyone needs to know how to make a photo of themselves swimming in a tub of ice cream."

"On a recent flight to Buffalo, on a recommendation from Amy Burvall (@amyburvall) I started reading Austin Kleon's Show Your Work I don't remember the tweet exactly, but I recall that Amy shared something along the lines of..."This is the best book about education that isn't about education." I didn't have much choice but to read. Halfway into the book I stopped reading, popped open my iPad and had to start writing this post. Grab of copy of Show Your Work and you will quickly understand wh"

"Jackie Myers, the 4th and 5th grade art teacher at Independence Elementary School in Yukon, Oklahoma, explains how to create a functional iPad stand using a cardboard box, duct tape, and a box cutter. Jackie used cardboard iPad stands like these with her students in April 2014 on a stopmotion video project. View examples of student work on: http://iesart.posthaven.com. Students used the free "Stop Motion Cafe" iPad app for their projects."

"Store Van Music embarked on a tour of schools in the UK and help the students create outstanding music using iPads and their minds. Their stated goal is to put a stop to the 80% dropout rate of students in the musical arts. As you can see from their website, they're a passionate bunch with some terrific motivation. They've made another video recently, and within an hour and a half of the release, it reached number 1 in iTunes children's charts. As of this writing, it is the 19th most watched music video in the UK. Talk about cutting-edge, relevant music education! Check out the video below, and use it as a little inspiration when you're not feeling sure that technology is enhancing your classroom!"

"Mystery Science is a relatively new service that is offering nice science lessons for elementary school students. The lessons on Mystery Science feature a series of videos and images arranged around a science subject. After each video there are questions that students can answer on their own or work through with your guidance. The lessons don't stop there. After the initial videos and questions you can extend the lessons by leading students in hands-on activities that reinforce the concepts shown in the videos. Mystery Science provides materials lists and detailed directions for each hands-on activity"

""If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve," Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: "Do what you love, and don't stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…" Far from Pollyanna platitude, this advice actually reflects what modern psychology knows about how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) - an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality. A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled. A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. Out of these two mindsets, which we manifest from a very early age, springs a great deal of our behavior, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness."

"A bit of software for Windows and Mac computers. Create stop-motion movies from webcam snap shots. Add an mp3 soundtrack. Export as a .flv video for upload to YouTube. Watch the terrible video I made to see how it works."

"Friday March 14 is the 135th anniversary of Albert Einstein's birthday, a good time to think about the importance of asking questions. This was a big theme for Einstein, who told us, "The important thing is not to stop questioning," while also urging us to question everything and "Never lose a holy curiosity." Einstein understood that questioning is critical to learning and solving problems. If he were alive today, Einstein would see a world in which questioning has become more important than ever before. But he might also be left wondering why, for the most part, we still don't encourage questioning or teach it to our children."

"Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck's best-selling book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, started a revolution in most of the schools that I work in this year, and for good reason: her findings are inspiring teachers and students and parents alike to rethink what it means to be a successful learner and what dispositions we must cultivate in order to make that vision a reality. This a complex study, and reflecting as we read brings interesting considerations to the surface. For instance, how can we stop perseverating on performance in order to cultivate a growth mindset?"

"The impulse to create is one of the most basic human drives. As far back as the Stone Age, we were using materials in our environment to fashion tools for solving the problems we encountered. And in the millions of years since then, we have never stopped creating. In fact, the rise of civilization is largely defined by the progress of technology of one kind or another. Today, the availability of affordable constructive technology and the ability to share online has fueled the latest evolutionary spurt in this facet of human development. New tools that enable hands-on learning - 3D printers, robotics, microprocessors, wearable computers, e-textiles, "smart" materials and new programming languages - are giving individuals the power to invent. We're not just talking about adults. Children of all ages can use these tools to move from passive receivers of knowledge to real-world makers. This has the potential to completely revolutionize education as we know it. And the movement has already begu"

"I cringe when people ask me, "Are you handy?" Partly because I don't consider myself to be the best with tools, but also because it is asking me to judge whether or not I'm capable of fixing, making, or crafting something. Here's the thing, I didn't know how to put new shower tiles in and patch up my existing dry wall with cement board when we had a leak last year…but I had a friend help get me started, I watched a few DIY Youtube videos, looked at some articles online, and now I know how to do that (although not too well). The same thing happens in high schools all the time. The "handy" kids go to shop class, the "artsy" kids go to art class, the "business" kids go to business classes, the "techy" kids go to web design classes and so on… It's got to stop. We can't continue labeling kids as one thing or another thing. What we know about the future workforce is that creativity, making, and innovating will be at the center of most jobs…and that will require students to be all of the above: 'Experts predict that 50 per cent of occupations today will no longer exist by 2025 as people will take up more creative professions,' said Martin Chen, Chief Operating Officer of Genesis."

" It is a myth that we operate under a set of oppressive bureaucratic constraints. In reality, teachers have a great deal of autonomy in the work they chose to do in their classrooms. In most cases it is our culture that provides the constraints. For individual teachers, trying out new practices and pedagogy is risky business and both our culture, and our reliance on hierarchy, provide the ideal barriers for change not to occur. As Pogo pointed out long ago, "we have met the enemy and it is us." http://www.cea-ace.ca/blog/brian-harrison/2013/09/5/stop-asking-permission-change "

"If we are to be completely honest with ourselves, the concept or theory behind computer science in the curriculum is not new, well not within Early Years Education. If we stop and think for a minute, what is happening when we code? We end up with - Problem Solving. Plain and simple……Computer programmers, computer scientists……solve problem! Our young learners spend every day solving and overcoming problems and obstacles. As educators, we set up scenarios, we pose problems and we guide the children towards finding strategies. These challenges are often in Maths and Science lessons but we sometimes see them in Physical Education and language classes too. We always strive to relate these problem solving skills to contexts, it makes sense if children can relate to real life scenarios. And this is where coding fits in."

"n his TEDxUNC 2015 talk, Chase Lewis, a 15-year-old inventor, talks about taking any tools around us - any inspiration that we can find - to stop waiting, to take action and to do something. Chase uses his personal experience doing just that for the past several years, and conveys that we ALL can do it."