CATE edtech bookmarks

Reshaping Schools toward evidence-based cultures: Learning through design (opening & closing remarks) AERA symposium 2007

Research shows that students have difficulty achieving deep understanding of many fundamental science concepts, for instance, the nature of matter, pressure, density, and electrical circuits to name but a few. After students have presumably learned the scientific explanations, they often revert back to their initial explanations. The Understandings of Consequence Project has demonstrated that part of the problem arises from differences in how students and scientists think about cause and effect. Scientific explanations often require students to structure knowledge in ways that contradict their expectations about the nature of how causes and effects behave. Such explanations can involve: causal mechanisms that are inferred or abstract; causal patterns that extend beyond linear and unidirectional to cyclic, reciprocal, and non-sequential; correspondences between causes and effects that are in various respects probabilistic; and causal agents that are decentralized and involve aspects of emergence. These are ways of thinking that students typically are not familiar with. Thus students attempt to assimilate information about complex concepts into simplistic causal structures which ultimately distort the information. In order to achieve deep understanding of scientific explanations, students need to learn the levels of these dimensions that fit the level of explanation needed. We have developed a taxonomy of causal models to guide these teaching and learning efforts. We have also developed a taxonomy of epistemological "moves", such as comparing more than one model and being alert to possible gaps in one's explanation, that serve scientific inquiry and lead to more complex conceptions.

Playable fictions are interactive stories in which one is positioned as a protagonist who makes game choices that have consequence in the fictional world. Further still, we often find ourselves engaging in struggles and developing understandings that shape player's worldview outside of the game.

Bright Hub's goal is simple: share knowledge about how the simplest scientific idea evolves into tomorrow's technology. With an expert writer network and an active community of life-long enthusiasts Bright Hub provides a level of technology transparency rarely seen in high tech. The team of writers and managing editors utilize deep domain expertise to focus on creating valuable information for both novice and advanced consumers. With a content inventory of thousands of science and technology articles, software and hardware reviews, buyer's guides, blog entries and forum discussions, Bright Hub is able to provide readers with a dependable resource to make informative technology decisions.

free clipart images for teachers and students, by category

Text to Speech app: "THERE ARE NO LIMITS OF TOTAL CHARACTERS PER YEAR, JUST A LIMIT ON EACH INDIVIDUAL CONVERSION. THE PLANS BELOW DESCRIBE THE DIFFERENT CHARACTER COUNTS PER CONVERSION. example: If you had 120,000 characters to process: For Free you could cut those characters up and make 240 mp3 files on the other hand for $69.99 for a whole year, you could divide those characters up and make only 2 mp3 files. And you can do this until your subscription runs out."

Useful for National Centers and other projects

Philanthropy News Digest: search for RFPs and news on 501(c)3/s

I work here!

ISTE Learning: ISTE's new professional development hub

101 Fast Recipes for Grilling

from The Center for comprehensive school reform and improvement

Explaining Complex Concepts with Infographics

BagTheWeb: curate web content by collecting websites, publishing the "bag" and sharing them

Clay Shirky (here comes everybody): on TEDtalks re: how cognitive surplus can/is saving the world

52 Weeks of UX: Design advice every week blog - great stuff (you can subscribe by email too)

technique for capturing 3D surfaces for modeling in virtual environments

10 emerging technologies in 2010

The Chronicle of Higher Education (article): Augmented Reality on smartphones brings teaching down to earth