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A collection worth exploring.

A downloadable science podcast for primary age. A good professional development site from the UK.

Teacher reviews importance of mental math before beginning math lesson. For Grade 3 (8 yr-old students). Demonstrates students talking about how they solve problems.Students are also asked to solve problems in different ways. Lesson also shows techniques of classroom management as students participate in the class activities.

Movement and mindfulness. A good break that stimulates minds and bodies. Hundreds of videos to dance to, or solve a puzzle, or learn something.

Once again, you can play Oregon Trail -- this time online. Great for American Civ and history, project- and content-based. Middle school.

Remarkable pictures and descriptions by teachers of K-6 classrooms. Really gives a good visual picture of the ways a traditional space can be re-invented for a more creative learning environment, on a tiny budget. Lots of DIY ideas, and some concepts for student self-management.

How a school develops language in a multi-lingual classroom in Chicago. Teacher ensures everyone has a job and tries to build a community where students have pride in their work, know and follow rules. She uses translation (she understands Spanish and Russian). Demonstrates some techniques to build vocabulary and interact with a reading text while listening.

"An Online Drawing Tool That Makes Everyone an Artist AutoDraw.com" t/h to Nick LaFave. AutoDraw turns sketches into more professional looking cartoons. By Google Creativity. Use to illustrate ideas about readings, or one's own storyline.

Some interesting ideas for setting up a studio in the classroom at very low cost. Use for student projects and special effects in student videos.

"Successful classroom management relies on a handful of fundamental strategies and a larger number of quick interventions." T/h T Finley

"This study aims at investigating the efficiency of web quests in enhancing the 8th graders' descriptive writing. The 8th graders in the Lebanese public schools in general usually demonstrate poor writing skills. Consequently, they don't show motivation to write in English. The subjects of the study are one control group (n=22) and one experimental group (n=23) enrolled in grade eight in a public school in Beirut and whose ages range from thirteen to fifteen years old. The purpose of the study is to examine whether or not the web quest helps 8th graders achieve unity and coherence in writing descriptive paragraphs and to examine if the motivation towards writing is increased after using the web quest."

"Use these strategies to help middle and high school students identify relevance, accuracy, bias, and reliability in the content they read." T/h J Coiro

Research on how using daily "free" reading can impact academic achievement for middle-schoolers.

This animation program is purportedly easy to use and Internet safe, also having a blocker for bad words, weapons, and alcohol. No drawing required. A 14-day trial period is probably enough to try it out, but there is a school-license available.

This may be of interest to middle school students.

Use the app to analyze the chemical composition of everyday objects. Could be a hook to bring students to science. T/h to M Burrett

"#BookSnaps provide fun visual ways to share our reactions to what we read. This post provides my quick take on #BookSnaps built on my experience working with teachers and students. For a more comprehensive look at #BookSnaps, please check out the amazing work of their founder, Tara Martin." T/h Nick LaFave

"nCtrl is a series of free standards-based lessons that teach key digital citizenship concepts. These lessons, for students in grades 4-8, are designed to engage students through inquiry-based activities, and collaborative and creative opportunities."

R. Byrne suggests you try Silk, Dropr, and Weebly for creating digital portfolios. I've tried only Weebly, and it seems hard to remove items once you've put them into the template -- or to change templates. But these might be worth a trial. Links to these tools at the blog.

"A little while back I saw a Netflix Template for Google Slides. It's essentially a template to replicate the screens you view when looking at episodes for a Netflix series. I immediately loved the idea of creating a Netflix series for a novel (displaying an understanding of plot, setting, characters, etc.). " T/h N LaFave