Bookmark for any school or teachers! Parts and clips from this series have been posted several times, but I thought I'd try sifting this playlist, with 5 full-lenght 1 hour episodes in one neat list.If they show up in low-quality, they are all available in High quality on YouTube. Youtube desctription: Oxford professor Richard Dawkins presents a series of lectures on life, the universe, and our place in it. With brilliance and clarity, Dawkins unravels an educational gem that will mesmerize young and old alike. Illuminating demonstrations, wildlife, virtual reality, and special guests (including Douglas Adams) all combine to make this collection a timeless classic.

The Spanish researchers believe that including video games in the online education platforms is the best way to achieve mass, economic distribution of this tool, the educational effectiveness of which is now rarely a topic of debate in the academic field. However, widespread use of video games in these environments must still overcome certain educational and technical difficulties. According to the authors, an educational video game must be designed with three key elements in mind: the possibility for evaluation, adaptability and ease of integration.

However, not all adolescents participate in music equally, and certain groups are disadvantaged in access to music education. Families with high socioeconomic status participate more in music than do families with lower socioeconomic status. In addition to social class as a predictor of music participation, ethnicity is also a factor. Asians and Whites are more likely to participate in music than are Hispanics. While young Black children attended concerts with their parents, they were less likely to take music lessons.

Technology needs to trickle up, she said, not down. We need to give the most powerful tools to the most vulnerable populations because they are the ones who need it. "Young learners, non-readers," she continued, "need high-speed access, they need animation and graphics and sound. And that's the truth." According to Lovely, and education technology consultant and speaker at the FETC 2009 conference in Orlando, FL in January, it was the recognition of those needs that led her to develop a "top 10 list" of go-to technology tools to help inspire young students and empower under-funded teachers. "The important thing to remember here," she said, "is that this isn't about simply providing you with 10 links. It's much more important to ask, 'What are you going to do with these things? How are you going to use these tools?' That's why we're here," she said. "So I can show you not only what's out there but also how other educators are using these resources to teach their students right now."

Social networking in education is a flattener, this breaks down barriers that would otherwise exist between the student, the program and the instructors. This also makes information on demand as long as there is a good way to find that information that students will work with and use. Reliance on the old static school room or black board computer system is not necessarily the way that things are going. Education 2.0 should be breaking down these barriers, and it is great to work for a school that is doing this, because it is all about how people learn, and if people learn, then we are doing our job.

Today at our Saskatchewan Curriculum Renewal workshops we were introduced to many of the new concepts and philosophies of the new curriculum. The intent of the curriculum is to reduce outcomes, provide common language for all curricula, focus more on learning than on teaching and focus on depth of understanding instead of only breadth. There was a lot of talk of big picture thinking and encouraging teachers to reflect on why they teach what they teach. Early on someone mentioned the goals of education. With some recent discussions on the purpose of education, I thought it pertinent to look up the 9 goals of education for students in Saskatchewan.

Play actually appears to make kids smarter. In a classic study published in Developmental Psychology in 1973, researchers divided 90 preschool children into three groups. One group was told to play freely with four common objects--among the choices were a pile of paper towels, a screwdriver, a wooden board and a pile of paper clips. A second set was asked to imitate an experimenter using the four objects in common ways. The last group was told to sit at a table and draw whatever they wanted, without ever seeing the objects. Each scenario lasted 10 minutes. Immediately afterward, the researchers asked the children to come up with ideas for how one of the objects could be used. The kids who had played with the objects named, on average, three times as many nonstandard, creative uses for the objects than the youths in either of the other two groups did, suggesting that play fosters creative thinking.

Teaching children how to think has brought academic success to schools in Manchester. But will techniques pioneered by the guru Edward de Bono catch on?

John Cleese provides a ten-minute insight into what many of us know already, but fail to acknowledge: 1. We do not know where we get our ideas from (but we do know we don't get them from our laptops). 2. Sleeping on an idea can help make its reappearance later so much better. 3. Ticking things off and keeping all the balls in the air means you will not have any creative ideas. 4. In our frenzied connected world we need to make some time to make some mood for creativity: a tortoise cocoon from which we can check it's safe to come out into a self-created oasis in our lives. 5. We need to set aside time and place where interruptions are not allowed - we need to create boundaries of space with a starting time and a finish time, separate from ordinary life, and only then creating a space and place where we can play. 6. The problem with some teachers is that they may not know that they are not very creative, and therefore they may not value creativity even if they can recognise it. 7. If those in charge are egotistical and wish to claim credit for the work of others, then they shall directly or indirectly discourage others from being creative.

Twitter can be a game-changer for online communicators. Education provides countless opportunities for various forms of communication, especially online. This leads to the question: Can Twitter be incorporated into an effective online communication strategy for educational institutions? The short answer is yes and I wanted to explore how educational institutions can and are using/trying Twitter to assist in their communication efforts.

Teaching web search strategies early in the semester can prevent frustration for you and your students down the road. The Boolify Project mentioned above is suitable for students in elementary school through high school. The Primer in Boolean logic is probably best suited to high school and college students.

Zigtag's group option could be useful for creating professional learning networks. The group option could also be useful for students that are working in groups on research projects.

Whether you're a high school or college student, a small business owner looking to set up a new business plan, or someone who wants to be better organized with your errands, goals and regular to-do lists, there are a variety of tools to keep your notes and tasks safe and filed away online. These 50 tools and tricks will revolutionize your note-taking by introducing you to techniques and websites that let you share ideas, store your thoughts directly on a web page and more.

It's a well-known fact that Google is working to capture high-resolution images of the landscape for its mapping products. What might come as a surprise is that they're also pursuing a similar challenge within the walls of one of the most famous museums in the world - The Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. Now, thanks to this groundbreaking project, you can get closer to the masterpieces of The Prado than you ever imagined - using Google Earth.

ScreenToaster is a free online screen recorder paired with a video platform dedicated to screencasts. Just the perfect tool to search and find tutorials, howtos, reviews, tips and tricks, showcases, walkthrough and e-learning formations

The mission of Teampedia is to become the world's largest collection of resources (e.g. warmups, icebreakers, and other group facilitation and training activities) to facilitate teamwork, teambuilding, and community.

I'm looking for sites that have math problems that require creativity from students, not just knowledge of the material, like the kinds of questions they use for math competitions. Two interesting answers with resources - worth checkng!

How To Sketchcast Screen recording tools: * Cam Studio (free) * Krut Recorder (free) * ACA Screen Recorder ($30) * Camtasia Studio (full-featured and very powerful, but $300) * And many, many others. Drawing Tools. For drawing tools, you can pretty much use anything. I really enjoy using Artrage. It's only $25 and there's even a very capable free version. You can even use good ol' MS Paint or the free Paint.net.

Social media - Pownce, Twitter, Facebook, Social network service, Second Life - Visual Wikipedia

As a teacher, using an RSS reader can help you stay informed and up to date on new information related to your content area and practice. People often ask me how I find so much information about new technology resources, the answer is simple, I scan roughly 600 updates in my RSS reader every day. Obviously you don't have to subscribe to as many websites as I do to stay informed, but my RSS addiction does demonstrate how much time a person can save and how much information a person can find by using an RSS reader. If I didn't use an RSS reader there is no way that I could find so much information in a couple of hours each day. (As a side note, I'm going camping for six days without Internet access when I get back, I'll have thousands of items to scan through). If you maintain a blog or website for your classroom, having your students use RSS readers is a good way to keep them informed of new information you've posted. For teachers that address current events in their curriculum, having students use RSS readers is a good way for them to track developments in news stories.