Group items tagged

These maps based on U.S. Census and geography include demographic, economic, and business data about various areas. Should be useful for classes studying the U.S.

"Index Mundi is a site that provides a huge amount of information about every nation in the world. This site is a data portal full of information, statistics, charts and maps that users will find easy to navigate because the information is all categorized and is easily accessible on the home page. The site not only offers data about individual nations but it has comparison maps and charts as well as an entire area dedicated just to the United States. With data ranging from health, to economics, to energy consumption,and so much more, Index Mundi is an amazingly useful site that just about any educator can use in the classroom."

In this TED talk, Andreas Schleicher describes a new scale, "PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment), an initiative of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). PISA not only tests students on their mathematical understanding, reading level and ability to apply learning to new problems, but also looks at what teachers get paid, how long the school day is, what the average class size is and whether quality of education is uniform across schools and social stratifications. It even measures cultural attitudes, like whether people in the country expect all students to achieve or only a small segment of them to. It's this broad approach to data collection that makes PISA so powerful, says Schleicher." An interesting way for a country to compare where it is and how it compares globally.

How do we educate our children to meet the needs of the new economies of the 21st century, and retain local cultures while recognizing globalization? The current system of public education was conceived and designed for the 19th century period of industrialization with the social and economic imperatives of the Enlightenment: academic vs non-academic views of the mind. The result is kids being medicated to sit still in school while besieged with the information overload of the digital age. How do we allow divergent thinking and creativity?

Points out the advantages of using a tablet device for content-creation. It's fast, mobile, and economical: "We've had computers in schools for years, but in reality many (most?) classroom teachers don't and never did have their students making podcasts, movies, eBooks and websites. Doing so seems too time consuming and for many non-technical teachers the learning curve appears disproportionate to the benefits realised. "But producing comparable creative content on an iPad is relatively quick, simple, yields impressive results with minimal fuss, and the learning curve is … well, there almost isn't one! There is no need to connect an external microphone (the built-in one is better than that in any laptop), no need to adjust recording levels, no need to use a pop-filter. No need to import media from a recording device to the editing device (becasue they are one and the same), and it's unnecessary to allow 10 minutes at the end of a class, to save, unplug devices, shut down and stow the laptops. Instead, when the bell sounds, students simply flip their iPad cases closed and walk to the next class!"

Argues that art is not a luxury, but a crucial part of the scientific processes that lead to innovation and invention. Send this article to you school board and congresspersons.

"Quandl is a repository of time-series data on the internet, tailored for researchers, students and other data professionals. Quickly find the numerical data you need Get that data in any format you want Have complete transparency to the source of the data Quandl is open and free. Quandl currently has over 6 million time-series datasets. Most of the data is in the domains of finance, economics, demography, sociology, energy and the environment. 1000s of new datasets are added to Quandl daily."

"Digital stories-short and economical personal narrative pieces that use image, voice, sound effects, and music to convey meaning-can be a powerful form for creative and engaging student projects." Describes why digital stories make good collaborative projects, and how to do it, with examples and students' journal reflections.

News and information oriented to the Africa setting. Blog roll, news feed, etc., calendar-based.

Very useful collection of links to pdf and Word files containing rubrics for various kinds of creative activities: case studies, critic thinking, oral communication and presentations, management and finance, peer evaluations, problem solving, writing, etc.

An online game where you can discover how energy decisions impact life. Don't be put off by the Chevron sponsorship -- there is a wide range of energy resources, and opportunities to point out discrepancies, do research with newer stats, etc. Upper middle school and higher. Can be played in Group mode competitively.

A crazy huge collection of free curriculum resources, well sorted by age, theme, subject, et al., and with a search engine. These would be great for lessons in geography, history, social studies, ecology, intercultural understanding, etc. Many of the resources are activities, such as "Be an African Family" where you decide how to make the most of the rural village where you live.

" The Railroad Journey and the Industrial Revolution isn't about the building of railroads. In the video John Green covers how rail travel led to changes in where people lived, where they vacationed, and how they interacted with each other. A short lesson on the origin of Greenwich Mean Time is included too. "To bring the lesson into a current context, Green also does a nice job of making comparisons between the effects of the development of railroads and the effects of the development of the Internet." T/H R. Byrne

"Maps can be a social studies teacher's best friend. But they can also be useful for science teachers and math teachers who wish to have their students take information from data sets and transform it into something new. These maps could provide a model for a project in which your students collect local data and display it on a map. " t/h R. Byrne

The Pi Zero has 1 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM, with 2 micro USB ports and HDMI slots, as well as an SD card slot. The computer run Linux, and can be programmed, all in a credit card sized board. The foundation hopes to bring millions to the world of programming.

R.Byrne: "Numbeo claims to be the world's largest database of user-contributed data about the costs of living in cities. Some of the sets of data that you can see find in Numbeo include property values, transportation costs, and healthcare costs." Culture comparisons; includes a short lesson plan suggestion.