Group items tagged

Sound is caused by changes of pressure in the air that is transformed into nerve impulses in the inner ear. Explore "The Ear Pages" and collect the snail shaped symbols to gain points in the quiz!

"Learning in Hand Show #29 tells you about three websites that are great for finding clipart, photos, symbols, and icons. These sites feature images that you already have permission to use on your website, blog, poster, slideshow, video, animation, etc., etc. Also, get tips on how to download these images and advice for finding images to illustrate your ideas."

"Literature is meant to be brought to life. Without musical, artistic, acting, and verbal connections, many students view literature as an endless flipping of pages full of meaningless words. They long to experience novels, short stories, poetry and other works of literary art by creating songs, drawing precise symbols, morphing into a character and dropping a few lines, and speaking in such an academic manner that demands the attention of their peers. Anything else can be, well, square."

"The paperless classroom is a compelling concept for what it symbolizes as much as anything else. While it sounds sleek and futuristic and easy to organize and environmentally friendly, the reality is that paperless classrooms aren't that simple. The "environmentally-friendly" part, for example, is wildly subjective: the costs of manufacturing-and eventually recycling and disposing of-tablets versus the loss of "renewable" trees and the subsequent waste that is environmentally-friendly."

Click on the guide to find out how each punctuation symbol is correctly used.

"With Valentine's Day just around the corner this is a good time to take a look at the science of kissing. The following video from It's Okay To Be Smart (produced by PBS Digital Studios) explains why humans kiss, the history of symbols associated with kissing, and some cultural views of kissing. When I saw this video I immediately thought of my friend Jeni who teaches high school health."

" I walk into almost all of our schools in West Vancouver and very often the first thing people want to show me or talk to me about is the changes happening around the library.  Or more specifically, schools are taking great pride in their learning commons spaces that are developing.  While the physical spaces are exciting, the changes to our mindsets are far more powerful.  We are not destined for new schools in West Vancouver anytime soon but the rethink of the library has been both a symbolic and concrete shift in how we think about space and how we think about learning.  The school library - a centre piece in schools - is now the modern hub for learning."

"This little digital creature called Hashtag has been revolutionizing the way people network, communicate and share on social media websites. It first started on Twitter around the year 2009 then Google Plus adopted it in 2012 before Facebook officially integrated it in June 2013. However, what is mysteriously unknown about this #poundsign is that its origin dates back to the 12th century when the #symbol first appeared in the musical realm. Since then, hashtags have been used in different contexts and for different purposes till they finally landed in the social media landscape some few years ago. The visual below provides a very good visual illustration of the chronological development of the sign #hashtag."

"Having completed the wondrous Romeo and Juliet text for Grade 9, the time had come to investigate the deeper intricacies of Shakespeare's wonderful work! Instead of simply going through the various motifs, themes and symbols inherent within the play, the English Department at Parklands College put a far more intriguing spin on it by App Smashing Blippar, Socrative, and Padlet. These three extremely useful applications enabled teachers to research, collaborate, and build a revision tool in order to intrigue the minds of the learners and get them excited about a typically bland topic."

"I'm now a little over a month into my new role as the coordinator of our brand-new makerspace in my PS-8th grade school here in Seattle, and I'm honestly loving it every bit as much as I expected! Over the course of this month, 450 students made prototype boats for their stuffies (PK), built "doodle bots" (K and 1),  "hacked" their notebooks with surface-mount LEDs (2), made dioramas powered by Hummingbird Robotics kits (3 and 4), designed and laser cut labels for their new classroom spaces (5), made postcards using the greenscreen of themselves visiting exotic locales (5 French), built casino games for math class (6), and built symbolic representations of their personal core values (8). 7th grade will be building turbine-driven generators next week! And, that's not even a comprehensive list… In the process of collaborating with my colleagues to develop and implement these projects with our students, I've figured out a few tips to pass along to educators at other schools initiating similar programs."

" It was visual literacy in action this week at The Kellett School in Hong Kong as a variety of elementary classes explored logo design for packaging. These young learners needed to craft a distinctive design, using a considered colour palette and a combination of shapes, in Assembly app on their iPads. While there are a whole variety of tools that can be used for this kind of task, one of the powerful tools in this app is actually one that is missing - text! With no words 'to do the talking', the principles of art and design took centre stage during the production of this purely visual piece of communication. "

"About two decades ago The MIT Media lab introduced the concept of block-based programming. The idea was to develop an interface that allowed computer programs to be built by simply dragging and dropping puzzle blocks to represent complex programming constructs and commands. With this new method for teaching and learning computer science, the hugely popular Scratch platform was born. This approach lowered the bar for experimenting with programmatic thinking, making it possible for students to create interactive animations and small games without writing a single line of code. This simple concept removed the need to learn the syntax of a formal programming language, and made teaching and learning the basics of computer science accessible to younger learners and to teachers with no formal coding background. Outside of the classroom though, coding has always been, and still remains, a process of typing letters, numbers and symbols. This text-based programming, used in programming language such as C, Javascript and Python, requires coders to obey and conform to formal syntax. Despite the pain of dealing with typos in names of variables and inevitable syntax errors, no other coding method designed to be more "user friendly" has really caught on. Tools have been offered for managers to define business logic through a graphical user interface without writing lines of codes. Or for web developers to add interactive behaviors to their websites without learning Javascript. But in reality, neither of those substitute the power and flexibility of text-based programming. And with neither winning significant adoption, the demand for the classic skill of text-based coding continues to grow and grow."

"I have been asked to return to teach summer enrichment classes on maker education for elementary-aged learners at a local school during the summer of 2016. One of the new classes I am designing is called Coding and Bots. The description is: Learn how to code first by playing games and then by coding some bots including Sphero, OZOBOT, and Dash and Dot. All ages are welcome but the child should have basic symbol recognition/reading skills. Two things to note about this class are, first, I learned last summer not to underestimate the learning potential of very young kids. These classes are mixed ages ranging from 4 to 10 year old kids. For most of the maker education activities, the very young ones could perform them, sometimes better than the older kids. Second, I am a strong proponent of hands on activities. Although I like the use of iPads and computers, I want elementary aged students to have to directly interact with materials. As such, I am designing Coding and Bots to include using their bodies and manipulating objects. This translates into having all activities include the use of objects and materials excluding and in conjunction with the iPad - not just using the iPad and online apps/tools to learn to code. The activities I plan to do follow:"

"Education technology devices have become symbolic of the efforts to transform US education through blended and personalized learning--and desktops, laptops, and tablets are quickly becoming ubiquitous in education. Devices are crucial as a conduit for content; however, they do not directly improve learning outcomes. These tangible examples are, with the exception of few dazzling products, nearly indistinguishable. When we are shown images of technology enhancing education, it is rarely a picture of particular software or data systems--it is a student with a device. Devices are crucial as a conduit for content; however, they do not directly improve learning outcomes."

"Wordplay is a never-ending source of amusement for me, with puns, spoonerisms and double entendres bringing a little extra color and life to the everyday language that we sometimes take for granted. Swedish designer Daniel Carlmatz also loves to get creative with words, but in a different way. He set himself a challenge to create a new typographic logo each day for 365 days, using a common word and adding related visual elements through symbolism, creative use of negative space, and geometry. "The inspiration for the 365 day challenge came from trying to challenge myself to look at type and design from a different perspective," Daniel told Bored Panda. "The challenge was just an outlet for my personal design thinking. And yes, I did manage to finish it without missing a day!""

"The power of Google search engine lies in its hidden features. Getting precise search results requires much more than simply comping up with a random search query and hitting  'I am feeling lucky' button. Google search is a skill that needs to be explicitly taught to students. To this end we are sharing with you this handy visual that features some practical tips to hone in your Google search skills and enable you to effectively search for and find digital content using a wide variety of specific symbols and words. "