Interesting site offers short "brain breaks" in the form of videos incorporating colorful characters, subject content, and yoga-like elements such as stretching, breathing, mild exercise. Goes along with research into exercise/activity and the brain.
Easy to use tool for creating flipped classroom lessons. Use the built-in search tool to find videos, images, or social media posts, put them into a timeline, add text and/or polls, and share. Free account has very limited media storage, but not an issue if you only use embedded media. Paid service has educator discount and is only $2.50/month.
Decentralized systems have proven to be more productive and agile than rigid, top-down ones
And yet the dominant model of public education is still fundamentally rooted in the industrial revolution that spawned it, when workplaces valued punctuality, regularity, attention, and silence above all else.
We don’t openly profess those values nowadays, but our educational system—which routinely tests kids on their ability to recall information and demonstrate mastery of a narrow set of skills—doubles down on the view that students are material to be processed, programmed, and quality-tested. School administrators prepare curriculum standards and “pacing guides” that tell teachers what to teach each day. Legions of managers supervise everything that happens in the classroom; in 2010 only 50 percent of public school staff members in the US were teachers.
In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills
Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside
“schools in the cloud,”
There will be no teachers, curriculum, or separation into age groups—just six or so computers and a woman to look after the kids’ safety. His defining principle: “The children are completely in charge.”
as the kids blasted through the questions, they couldn’t help noticing that it felt easy, as if they were being asked to do something very basic.
Nice, easy to use tool lets users choose an image and create a caption, either using the built-in gallery of words or freestyle. Good tool to get the creative writing juices flowing!
Great collection of resources for anyone interested in starting an after-school programming club for kids in upper elementary. Lesson plans, student tasks, much more!
The DIY online club awards badges (called 'Skills' on the site) to students and kids of all ages in exchange for completing tasks. DIY Makers share their work with the community and get patches for the Skills they earn. Each Skill consists of a set of Challenges that help them learn techniques to get the hang of it. Once a Maker completes a Challenge, they add photos and video to their Portfolio to show what they did.
This site lets users create informative, web-based graphics using images and "tags", which function much like people tags in Facebook. Thinglink has the advantage, however, of allowing tags to contain links, media, etc.