Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"This is where the new Woodcraft app comes in, allowing you to not only design your next woodworking project but also create a bill of materials, plan for the tools you will need to use and visualize your project as well as carry it through to the finished product."

"Today I am sharing with you a set of great apps to visually capture your ideas and share them with others. The apps below are designed to enable you to easily create mindmaps and concepts to illustrate abstract topics and enhance learning. The apps I am including below are selected based on their powerful performance and practical usablity. I know there are tons of other similar apps in the iTunes app store but the ones I handpicked for you below are ideal for educational settings and I would also recommend them for students."

"Chem Collective is a project designed and maintained by Carnegie Mellon University's chemistry department and the National Science Digital Library. On Chem Collective you will find virtual labs for chemistry experiments, simulations, visualizations, tutorials, and auto-graded problems. Students and teachers can search the site by resource type or by chemistry topic."

"Kids have always made in my library. We encouraged digital and visual and dramatic and rhetorical creativity before, during, and after school.  But for a while, I've questioned the value of using already heavily used real estate to randomly carve out space for a 3D printer, electronics stations and sewing machines. I had my doubts about the makerspace movement in school libraries. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to chat with Amos Blanton, project manager of the Scratch online community, and a member of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab.  On his profile Amos notes:  I design and sustain creative learning environments for people with agency. Amos makes the case for makerspaces as powerful, authentic, relevant learning experiences, and for when and why library may be the very right space to create a makerspace."

"A new wave of e-textbooks is giving students more than just words and a few hotlinks on a digital page. Publishers over the last few years have been adding video, interactive maps and gamified quizzes designed to engage students more deeply in their learning. "Think of it as making the textbook a hands-on activity," says Andrew Miller, an ASCD faculty member and technology expert. "It's making the content come to life in a way that meets the needs of different learners-auditory learners, visual leaders, text-based learners." The latest e-textbooks, developed by traditional publishers as well as new players like Discovery Education, are powered by a host of adaptive features, such as adjustable levels of difficulty and instant translation into other languages. And in some districts, teachers are using platforms like Apple's iBooks to create their own digital course materials."

"Creatubbles is a global platform for sharing and interacting with children's visual art. I believe this is a tool many of us having been looking for a long time. Designed for elementary through middle school-age kiddos, the platform allows young artists to safely showcase, archive and share their creative work. It also allows them to discover, to be inspired by, and to interact with the work of others."

"When creating materials for professional development with teachers, I always try to ensure that my visuals are clear, well-designed, and easy on the eye. So, when I do iPad training, I often turn to a variety of screenshot apps in order to achieve these goals. The apps below are some of my go-to apps and are ideal for creating tutorials or eye-catching graphics for iOS devices."

"Teachers and students can make their projects shine and amplify learning by illustrating ideas with photographs, drawings, symbols, and "big bang" images. The Pictoral Superiority Effect (PSE) is described in Brain Rules by John Medina. Humans remember pictures a whole lot better than they remember words. Tested 72 hours after exposure to information, people remember about 10 percent of what was presented orally. If you add a photo, that figure jumps of to 65 percent. "

"Making is not just about STEAM, reserved for science class, or even meant to be just an activity for after school.  Making across the curriculum can change the way students are thinking, interacting, collaborating, and engaged.  Gather some simple materials, offer students the chance to design, create, and dream up a new way to engage and connect with the world.  For example, integrating making into reflecting on a favorite book, creating to demonstrate a concept visually, investigating and interpreting the use of materials to show thinking?  It takes learning to a whole new level, allows students to drive, and best of all? It can be FUN!   It can be overwhelming to look at the products and projects floating around the internet and people often ask, "Where do I even begin?"  Here are a few simple ways to get started with making in your classroom - no matter what subject you teach!"

"In today's selection we curated for you some useful apps and web tools to use to add text to pictures and create classroom posters. Students can use these tools for different educational purposes including visually explaining a given topic, creating greeting cards, designing inspirational quote posters and many more."

"I normally don't like to create "click bait" blog post titles, but this one seemed to fit. Twenty-five resources can be overwhelming, but there is a good mix of different types of items. There are links to websites with lesson plans, iOS apps, books, videos, and samples of student work to fit your learning style.  Scratch was developed by MIT a little over eight years ago. It uses a visual programming language that is easy to start for students of all ages. Teachers can start with the Scratch Jr. app for the iPad. That app, linked on the list.ly below, is designed specifically for 5-7 year olds. The only way to learn new skills, is to dig in and give it a try. I love the summer for this reason. It gives me the chance to keep up and learn something new. I am going to try Minecraft with my daughter, Gwen, after I finish up this blog post. "

The Symphony of Science is a musical project headed by John Boswell, designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. Here you can watch music videos, download songs, read lyrics and find links relating to the messages conveyed by the music. The project owes its existence in large measure to the wonderful work of Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steve Soter, of Druyan-Sagan Associates, and their production of the classic PBS Series Cosmos, as well as all the other featured figures and visuals.

"Pad is a versatile tool that can be used like a Swiss Knife, you mention it and there is an app for it. One of the cognitive areas we can improve through the use of iPad is creativity. There are several excellent apps out there that are specifically designed to unleash learners creativity, drawing and painting tools are some of them. Having access to apps is one thing but using them effectively is another thing and that's where a practical guide such as the one below comes in handy"

"This web site is designed to foster visual creativity by making stories out of photos. It is based completely on the Five Card Nancy game devised by comics guru Scott McCloud and the nifty web version at 741.5 Comics. However, rather than using randomly chosen panels of the old Nancy comic, my version draws upon collections of photos specified by a tag in flickr. You are dealt five random photos for each draw, and your task is to select one each time to add to your building set of images, that taken together as a final set of 5 - tell a story in pictures. When you are done, you can add a title and explanation, and save the story. You can easily put a link in your resume or send to your Mom (she may print it out and tape it to the fridge, or she may criticize your creativity, your mileage and mom may vary). Plus we offer the ability to tweet your story or use an embed code to add it to your own web site."

"A few days ago I shared here PBS Kids Video app that provides a wide variety of educational videos for kids. Today I am adding another wonderful iPad app in this direction. Brainfeed is one of the top ranked apps in the iTunes store. Designed to inform, entertain and inspire, Brainfeed provides children 7+, tweens, teens and even inquisitive adults with a safe corner of the web to explore a universe of educational videos. Each video in Brainfeed  is handpicked by a team of enthusiastic educators from around the globe who are tasked with finding short (under 10 minutes) and documentary style videos that meet the following criteria:Curriculum-based, entertaining & engaging, visually stimulating, high quality content, age-appropriate , and child-friendly."

"This article has been making its rounds in social media. I tend to agree with the idea that heavily-decorated, cutesy classrooms are distracting. I've never been a fan of a barrage of brightly-colored signs, Garfield posters and motivational phrases. However, I also see a real danger in district-mandated use of wall space. Here, the issue is less about bright and cutesy and more about things like word walls and anchor charts designed to create visual cues for learning. I see the point to it, but often this creates a text dump that students have to navigate (rather than having a simple notebook or website with tutorials they can access). It starts to feel like an encyclopedia had vomited on the walls. "

"I was first inspired to explore stop-motion when I met influential art ed dude Mark Jones. He's the genius behind some of the best stop-motion animation videos designed, written, and created by kids. I was lucky enough to see him at my state art ed conference a few years back. If you haven't seen these videos - watch them before you go any further! The Robot and the Butterfly Stand Up Tall Stand Up Tall: Behind the Scenes (to help visualize the process) See more on Mr. Jones' YouTube channel. After seeing the potential, I asked myself: How do I do this with MY kids?"

"Students and teachers alike continue to look for cool design tools to give any project that extra visual punch, and we continue to find great ones all over the Web. This post features 7 fairly unique free online creative image maker tools that are easy to learn and lots of fun to experiment with. Make things like motivational posters, memes, Keep Calm posters, Webcam pics, and so much more with these great image generators. Have fun trying them out and having students add creative flair to lesson projects of every kind."

"Getting started with Spark is easy for users of all ages. This is one reason that I love sharing with teachers and students. When I lead a professional development session or visit a classroom, everyone can jump in and create a dynamic, visually stunning artifacts of their learning. So if Spark is entirely new to you, it won't take long for you to dive into this user-friendly tool with your students! You can turn students into movie-makers, website creators, and graphic designers with the Spark tools. From book trailers in the English Language Arts classroom to lab reports in the science classroom, the possibilities are endless!"

"This course introduces computer science through the Python programming language. It is built on the feedback of thousands of educators and hundreds of thousands of students who have used it to learn computer science and apply it to everyday problems. The lessons are designed to be easy for beginners, and test your understanding through problems and visualizations. "