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Kathe Santillo

PhET: Free Science Simulations - 0 views

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    Fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena from the PhET project at the University of Colorado. Interactive tools that enable students to make connections between real life phenomena and the underlying science which explains such p
Darcy Goshorn

Cymbolism | Words & Colors - 1 views

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    share with yearbook advisers or psych teachers
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    Attempts to quantify the association between words and colors. Users click on the color that matches a word. You can view results for 200+ words. Might make an interesting discussion in psychology class or definitely a good tool for yearbook or web design classes.
Michelle Krill

poetryofplace » home - 0 views

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    We are a group of poetry, English, art, geography and technology teachers who are interested in having our students study the relationship between poetry and place.
Michelle Krill

In US classrooms, 'tech sherpas' assist teachers with computers - 0 views

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    In a role reversal, students provide the tech support, creating a 'culture of respect' between teachers and teens.
Michelle Krill

newsmap - 0 views

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    Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe. Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news; on the contrary, it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.
Darcy Goshorn

The Renaissance Connection, from the Allentown Art Museum - 0 views

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    Interactive, flash-based webquest about the connections between Renaissance life and modern life. Has a lot of motivating features, and includes lesson plans for teachers. Excellent site from the Allentown Art Museum.
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    Interactive, AND with pre-made lesson plans!!
anonymous

Education Week: Filtering Fixes - 0 views

  • Instead of blocking the many exit ramps and side routes on the information superhighway, they have decided that educating students and teachers on how to navigate the Internet’s vast resources responsibly, safely, and productively—and setting clear rules and expectations for doing so—is the best way to head off online collisions.
  • “We are known in our district for technology, so I don’t see how you can teach kids 21st-century values if you’re not teaching them digital citizenship and appropriate ways of sharing and using everything that’s available on the Web,” said Shawn Nutting, the technology director for the Trussville district. “How can you, in 2009, not use the Internet for everything? It blows me away that all these schools block things out” that are valuable.
  • While schools are required by federal and state laws to block pornography and other content that poses a danger to minors, Internet-filtering software often prevents students from accessing information on legitimate topics that tend to get caught in the censoring process: think breast cancer, sexuality, or even innocuous keywords that sound like blocked terms. One teacher who commented on one of Mr. Fryer’s blog posts, for example, complained that a search for biographical information on a person named Thacker was caught by his school’s Internet filter because the prohibited term “hacker” is included within the spelling of the word.
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  • The K-2 school provides e-mail addresses to each of its 880 students and maintains accounts on the Facebook and Twitter networking sites. Children can also interact with peers in other schools and across the country through protected wiki spaces and blogs the school has set up.
  • “Rather than saying this is a scary tool and something bad could happen, instead we believe it’s an incredible tool that connects you with the entire world out there. ... [L]et’s show you the best way to use it.”
  • As Trussville students move through the grades and encounter more-complex educational content and expectations, their Internet access is incrementally expanded.
  • In 2001, the Children’s Internet Protection Act instituted new requirements for schools to establish policies and safeguards for Internet use as a condition of receiving federal E-rate funding. Many districts have responded by restricting any potentially troublesome sites. But many educators and media specialists complain that the filters are set too broadly and cannot discriminate between good and bad content. Drawing the line between what material is acceptable and what’s not is a local decision that has to take into account each district’s comfort level with using Internet content
  • The American Civil Liberties Union sued Tennesee’s Knox County and Nashville school districts on behalf of several students and a school librarian for blocking Internet sites related to gay and lesbian issues. While the districts’ filtering software prohibited students from accessing sites that provided information and resources on the subject, it did not block sites run by organizations that promoted the controversial view that homosexuals can be “rehabilitated” and become heterosexuals. Last month, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after school officials agreed to unblock the sites.
  • Students are using personal technology tools more readily to study subject matter, collaborate with classmates, and complete assignments than they were several years ago, but they are generally asked to “power down” at school and abandon the electronic resources they rely on for learning outside of class, the survey found. Administrators generally cite safety issues and concerns that students will misuse such tools to dawdle, cheat, or view inappropriate content in school as reasons for not offering more open online access to students. ("Students See Schools Inhibiting Their Use of New Technologies,", April 1, 2009.)
  • A report commissioned by the NSBA found that social networking can be beneficial to students, and urged school board members to “find ways to harness the educational value” of so-called Web 2.0 tools, such as setting up chat rooms or online journals that allow students to collaborate on their classwork. The 2007 report also told school boards to re-evaluate policies that ban or tightly restrict the use of the Internet or social-networking sites.
  • Federal Requirements for Schools on Internet Safety The Children’s Internet Protection Act, or CIPA, is a federal law intended to block access to offensive Web content on school and library computers. Under CIPA, schools and libraries that receive funding through the federal E-rate program for Internet access must: • Have an Internet-safety policy and technology-protection measures in place. The policy must include measures to block or filter Internet access to obscene photos, child pornography, and other images that can be harmful to minors; • Educate minors about appropriate and inappropriate online behavior, including activities like cyberbullying and social networking; • Adopt and enforce a policy to monitor online activities of minors; and • Adopt and implement policies related to Internet use by minors that address access to inappropriate online materials, student safety and privacy issues, and the hacking of unauthorized sites. Source: Federal Communications Commission
  • “We believe that you can’t have goals about kids’ collaborating globally and then block their ability to do that,” said Becky Fisher, the Virginia district’s technology coordinator.
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    This is an excellent article. I think every school should take this to a meeting with Administrators to discuss bringing sanity to this issue once and for all.
anonymous

Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:What Would Socrates Say? - 0 views

  • The noted philosopher once said, "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance." My fear is that instead of knowing nothing except the fact of our own ignorance, we will know everything except the fact of our own ignorance. Google has given us the world at our fingertips, but speed and ubiquity are not the same as actually knowing something.
  • Socrates believed that we learn best by asking essential questions and testing tentative answers against reason and fact in a continual and virtuous circle of honest debate. We need to approach the contemporary knowledge explosion and the technologies propelling this new enlightenment in just that manner. Otherwise, the great knowledge and communication tsunami of the 21st century may drown us in a sea of trivia instead of lifting us up on a rising tide of possibility and promise.
  • A child born today could live into the 22nd century. It's difficult to imagine all that could transpire between now and then. One thing does seem apparent: Technical fixes to our outdated educational system are likely to be inadequate. We need to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
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  • Every day we are exposed to huge amounts of information, disinformation, and just plain nonsense. The ability to distinguish fact from factoid, reality from fiction, and truth from lies is not a "nice to have" but a "must have" in a world flooded with so much propaganda and spin.
  • For example, for many years, the dominant U.S. culture described the settling of the American West as a natural extension of manifest destiny, in which people of European descent were "destined" to occupy the lands of the indigenous people. This idea was, and for some still is, one of our most enduring and dangerous collective fabrications because it glosses over human rights and skirts the issue of responsibility. Without critical reflection, we will continually fall victim to such notions.
  • A second element of the 21st century mind that we must cultivate is the willingness to abandon supernatural explanations for naturally occurring events.
  • The third element of the 21st century mind must be the recognition and acceptance of our shared evolutionary collective intelligence.
  • To solve the 21st century's challenges, we will need an education system that doesn't focus on memorization, but rather on promoting those metacognitive skills that enable us to monitor our own learning and make changes in our approach if we perceive that our learning is not going well.
  • Metacognition is a fancy word for a higher-order learning process that most of us use every day to solve thousands of problems and challenges.
  • We are at the threshold of a worldwide revolution in learning. Just as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the wall of conventional schooling is collapsing before our eyes. A new electronic learning environment is replacing the linear, text-bound culture of conventional schools. This will be the proving ground of the 21st century mind.
  • We will cease to think of technology as something that has its own identity, but rather as an extension of our minds, in much the same way that books extend our minds without a lot of fanfare. According to Huff and Saxberg, immersive technologies—such as multitouch displays; telepresence (an immersive meeting experience that offers high video and audio clarity); 3-D environments; collaborative filtering (which can produce recommendations by comparing the similarity between your preferences and those of other people); natural language processing; intelligent software; and simulations—will transform teaching and learning by 2025.
  • So imagine that a group of teachers and middle school students decides to tackle the question, What is justice? Young adolescents' discovery of injustice in the world is a crucial moment in their development. If adults offer only self-serving answers to this question, students can become cynical or despairing. But if adults treat the problem of injustice truthfully and openly, hope can emerge and grow strong over time. As part of their discussion, let's say that the teachers and students have cocreated a middle school earth science curriculum titled Water for the World. This curriculum would be a blend of classroom, community, and online activities. Several nongovernmental organizations—such as Waterkeeper, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Water for People—might support the curriculum, which would meet national and state standards and include lessons, activities, games, quizzes, student-created portfolios, and learning benchmarks.
  • The goal of the curriculum would be to enable students from around the world to work together to address the water crisis in a concrete way. Students might help bore a freshwater well, propose a low-cost way of preventing groundwater pollution, or develop a local water treatment technique. Students and teachers would collaborate by talking with one another through Skype and posting research findings using collaborative filtering. Students would create simulations and games and use multitouch displays to demonstrate step-by-step how their projects would proceed. A student-created Web site would include a blog; a virtual reference room; a teachers' corner; a virtual living room where learners communicate with one another in all languages through natural language processing; and 3-D images of wells being bored in Africa, Mexico, and Texas. In a classroom like this, something educationally revolutionary would happen: Students and adults would connect in a global, purposeful conversation that would make the world a better place. We would pry the Socratic dialogue from the hands of the past and lift it into the future to serve the hopes and dreams of all students everywhere.
  • There has never been a time in human history when the opportunity to create universally accessible knowledge has been more of a reality. And there has never been a time when education has meant more in terms of human survival and happiness.
  • To start, we must overhaul and redesign the current school system. We face this great transition with both hands tied behind our collective backs if we continue to pour money, time, and effort into an outdated system of education. Mass education belongs in the era of massive armies, massive industrial complexes, and massive attempts at social control. We have lost much talent since the 19th century by enforcing stifling education routines in the name of efficiency. Current high school dropout rates clearly indicate that our standardized testing regime and outdated curriculums are wasting the potential of our youth.
  • If we stop thinking of schools as buildings and start thinking of learning as occurring in many different places, we will free ourselves from the conventional education model that still dominates our thinking.
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    Some very interesting points in this article. Why not add your coments?
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    A VERY interesting article. If you've got Diigo installed, why not add your comments
Michelle Krill

www.weareteachers.com - Universal Sign Up - 0 views

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    Whether you are a teacher, parent, school administrator, or student, education is everybody's business. Become a member to share, collaborate, and connect with others in The Knowledge Marketplace, a unique aggregation of recommendations, best practices, and the latest educational tools and products. WeAreTeachers facilitates engagement and conversation between our community and business industry leaders. Our aim is to empower you with vital information and resources to promote educational innovation, quality, and excellence. WeAreTeachers and its sponsors give back to our members through grants, free resources, and other incentives.
Mardy McGaw

Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenge... - 1 views

  • But in fact, the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
  • What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills.
  • This distinction between "skills that are novel" and "skills that must be taught more intentionally and effectively" ought to lead policymakers to different education reforms than those they are now considering. If these skills were indeed new, then perhaps we would need a radical overhaul of how we think about content and curriculum. But if the issue is, instead, that schools must be more deliberate about teaching critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving to all students, then the remedies are more obvious, although still intensely challenging.
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  • To complicate the challenge, some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
  • What will it take to ensure that the idea of "21st century skills"—or more precisely, the effort to ensure that all students, rather than just a privileged few, have access to a rich education that intentionally helps them learn these skills—is successful in improving schools? That effort requires three primary components. First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills. Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained. Finally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks.
  • Why would misunderstanding the relationship of skills and knowledge lead to trouble? If you believe that skills and knowledge are separate, you are likely to draw two incorrect conclusions. First, because content is readily available in many locations but thinking skills reside in the learner's brain, it would seem clear that if we must choose between them, skills are essential, whereas content is merely desirable. Second, if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
  • Because of these challenges, devising a 21st century skills curriculum requires more than paying lip service to content knowledge.
  • Advocates of 21st century skills favor student-centered methods—for example, problem-based learning and project-based learning—that allow students to collaborate, work on authentic problems, and engage with the community. These approaches are widely acclaimed and can be found in any pedagogical methods textbook; teachers know about them and believe they're effective. And yet, teachers don't use them. Recent data show that most instructional time is composed of seatwork and whole-class instruction led by the teacher (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network, 2005). Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered methods (Shapson, Wright, Eason, & Fitzgerald, 1980). Again, these are not new issues. John Goodlad (1984) reported the same finding in his landmark study published more than 20 years ago.
  • Why don't teachers use the methods that they believe are most effective? Even advocates of student-centered methods acknowledge that these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers. When students collaborate, one expects a certain amount of hubbub in the room, which could devolve into chaos in less-than-expert hands. These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses. Anyone who has watched a highly effective teacher lead a class by simultaneously engaging with content, classroom management, and the ongoing monitoring of student progress knows how intense and demanding this work is. It's a constant juggling act that involves keeping many balls in the air.
  • Most teachers don't need to be persuaded that project-based learning is a good idea—they already believe that. What teachers need is much more robust training and support than they receive today, including specific lesson plans that deal with the high cognitive demands and potential classroom management problems of using student-centered methods.
  • Without better curriculum, better teaching, and better tests, the emphasis on "21st century skills" will be a superficial one that will sacrifice long-term gains for the appearance of short-term progress.
  • The debate is not about content versus skills. There is no responsible constituency arguing against ensuring that students learn how to think in school. Rather, the issue is how to meet the challenges of delivering content and skills in a rich way that genuinely improves outcomes for students.
    • Mardy McGaw
       
      "ensuring that students learn how to think" You would think that this is the essence of education but this is not always asked of students. Memorize, Report and Present but how often do students think and comment on their learning?
  • practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.
    • Mardy McGaw
       
      Students need to be taught how to work as part of a group. The need to see mistakes and be given a chance to improve on them. Someone who already knows how to work as a team player is the best coach/teacher.
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    A very interesting article. Lots of good discussion points.
Anne Van Meter

Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning - 0 views

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    It's not a divide between have & have not, it's the divide between the do & do not (teachers direct this!)
Kathe Santillo

Estimating a Difference - 0 views

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    This site explains how to estimate differences between whole numbers. Gives practice and games to practice this skill in a helpful and fun way.
Kathe Santillo

WebMath - 0 views

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    Convert between regualr decimals and scientific notation.
Kathe Santillo

Connecting Humans And Nature through Conservation Experiences - 0 views

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    CHANCE(Connecting Humans And Nature through Conservation Experiences) is a coordinated effort and partnership between Penn State and PDE that addresses the need to train Pennsylvania 9th - 12th grade teachers in environmental science and ecology. Includes
anonymous

kmlfactbook.org - 0 views

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    If you've not seen this, do check it out. Show this to your social studies teachers.
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    kmlfactbook.org can use either Google Maps or the Google Earth browser plugin to preview the KML files that you create. To switch between the two modes press the 2D Map and 3D Map buttons to the right in the screen. The Preview in Map button will show the selected data-set in the Google Maps or Earth plugin preview window. The Download KML file button will download the same file to be saved locally on your disk or opened in the standalone Google Earth application.
Michelle Krill

World Digital Library Home - 0 views

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    The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world. The principal objectives of the WDL are to: * Promote international and intercultural understanding; * Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet; * Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences; * Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.
Mary Schwander

Duck Duck Go - 0 views

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    A new search engine with less garbage and better results. With less clicking forward and back between results, it is for anyone who wants to get information faster. You can click on an icon to easily search through sites such as Twitter and New York Times.
Ben Louey

Video Converter Freeware - Any Video Converter Free Version - convert video to any form... - 0 views

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    Any Video Converter (free version) is the most renowned free video converter for converting video files between various formats, with fast converting speed and excellent video quality. Input formats: avi, asf, mov, rm, rmvb, flv, mkv, mpg, 3gp, m4v, vob, YouTube videos and more Output formats: avi, mp4, wmv, flv, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, mpg (PAL or NTSC), mp3, wma, ogg, aac
karen sipe

Lure of the Labyrinth - 5 views

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    Developed in collaboration between Maryland Public Television, MIT's Education Arcade, and FableVision. When you need a fresh approach to teach math to today-s tech-savvy youth, Lure of the Labyrinth comes to the rescue. A ground-breaking online learning game blends cutting-edge design, graphic novel storytelling and stimulating game play to plunge middle school students into a captivating 21st century learning adventure. Labyrinth's mysterious world unfolds when students encounter animated monsters and challenging math puzzles that deepen students' understanding of critical pre-algebra skills. Math topics: ratios, proportions, fractions, variables, number and operations
karen sipe

Welcome To Professor Garfield - 6 views

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    This site was so cool. I created my own comic story. I was able to play brain buster games I read stories and had stories read to me, and watched videos about how to create a comic.. This site was created by Jim Davis, creator of the comic strip Garfield, in conjunction with Ball State University and PAWS, Inc. It give kids the opportunity to explore, create and connect safely with kids around the world. Jim Davis created this site because he felt there was a need to provide a high-quality, free, and engaging web site that could motivate children to achieve their full potential. The approach is kid-centric and tries to close the achievement gap between what kids seek to do on the Internet and standards-based educational activities. The mission of Professor Garfield.org is encourage children to explore academically sound literacy activities and provide them with tools to express themselves through creative writing prorams. It's an Internet destination that is safe, free and fun! The Professor Garfield and Sparktop sites (both found on this link) provide all kids of ways for kids to shine and showcase their talents and abilities! Students can record their own "talent" for Sparkstage (our American Idol-like competition), arrange music with the awesome music mixer tool, create their own comic strip in the Comis Lab, learn to sculpt, or be taught to draw by professional artists in the Art-Bot section. On Sparktop.org kids safely connect with other kids who knwow what they are going through. They find information about how their brain works and get tips on how to succeed in school and life. And they get to showcase their creativity and be recognized for their strengths. Millions of children from around the world visit the web site every month.
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