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"AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat

Engineering lesson plans.  Sort by grade level.  

"Crickets are small programmable devices that can make things spin, light up, and play music. You can plug lights, motors, and sensors into a Cricket, then write computer programs to tell them how to react and behave. With Crickets, you can create musical sculptures, interactive jewelry, dancing creatures, and other artistic inventions -- and learn important math, science, and engineering ideas in the process. Crickets are based on more than a decade of NSF-funded educational research. Lifelong Kindergarten researchers collaborated with the LEGO company to create the first "programmable bricks," squeezing computational power into LEGO bricks. This research led to the LEGO MindStorms robotics kits, now used by millions of people around the world. While LEGO MindStorms is designed especially for making robots, Crickets are designed especially for making artistic creations. Crickets were refined in collaboration with the Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) museum network, and are now sold as a product through the Playful Invention Company (PICO)."

"Many of us will have fond memories of children's TV engaging us to turn our used bottles into rockets, our wooden spoons into cartoon character puppets, and attaching googly eyes to anything which keeps still for more than 3 seconds! Schools are great at turning recycling into creativity, and design is at the heart of this. Later, the skills pupils learn turning pasta into planes and tins into trains fuel are the beginning of making the engineers and artisans of the future."

"Whereas Siri can only perform tasks that Apple engineers explicitly implement, this new program, they say, will be able to teach itself, giving it almost limitless capabilities."

An innovative search engine built for education. Search via concept map, save searches in a personal journal. Great concept to check out. 

"To understand thoroughly and intuitively" - A search tool that show the inter-relatedness of a topic and allows users to graphically see the information relations.

Research any topic with an interactive concept map, that you can customize and share. Free personal and low cost educational accounts.

"Most knowledge workers believe that email is a passive tool they choose to use to make their real work easier. But as the Big Blue engineers discovered three decades ago, this technology is not passive; it instead actively changes what we mean by "real work.""

As technology evolves and its inner workings increasingly disappear from view, replaced with solid-state parts hidden by glass, aluminium and plastic, our understanding of what makes the world operate is similarly impeded. When machinery from just a few decades ago is viewed a world of moving parts, linkages, cogs and levers is revealed. These mechanical objects contain an inherent beauty and inspire curiosity in ways that modern devices with their pristine surfaces and simplified design language do not. Opportunities to explore devices from the past open our eyes and lead us to new questions of how our devices function, how machines do the jobs we need them to do and how engineers solve problems.

"hat Are the Disadvantages of Online Schooling for Higher Education? Today, online schooling for higher education is prevalent across many fields. While there are several benefits to online schooling, such as flexibility and convenience, there are also real and perceived disadvantages. Explore some of the potential drawbacks of online learning. View 10 Popular Schools » Online Schooling In 2012, about a quarter of undergraduate college students were enrolled in distance education courses as part -- if not all -- of their studies, according to a 2014 report from the National Center for Education Statistics. That same data found that 29.8% of graduate students in this country are enrolled in some or all distance learning classes as well. A 2013 report from Babson Survey Research Group and Quahog Research Group, LLC, pointed out that approximately 86.5% of higher education institutions offer distance learning classes. Clearly, online schooling is commonplace. Disadvantages: Student Perspective Despite advantages, online schooling is not the right fit for every student. Taking online courses is generally believed to require more self-discipline than completing a degree on campus, a belief that is supported by SCHEV -- the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Because online schooling options often allow students to complete much of the coursework at their own pace, students must be motivated to stay on schedule and manage their time accordingly. Other potential disadvantages from a student's viewpoint may include the following: Less Instructional Support Although instructors are available to students via e-mail, telephone, Web discussion boards and other online means, some students may see the lack of face-to-face interaction and one-on-one instruction as a challenge. A lack of communication or miscommunication between instructors and students may frustrate students who are struggling with course materials. That could be exacerbated by the casual nature

Origami, the ancient art of paper folding, has applications in the modern-day classroom for teaching geometry, thinking skills, fractions, problem solving, and fun science.

Soungle is a sound search engine. Great for PowerPoints and sound effects when making movies. And sometimes it is good to release your inner child and have your computer burp at you! http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

Giphy (a search engine for GIFs), created a code that makes GIFs actually loop on Facebook & Twitter. It works simply like posting a link to a video. Either copy paste the URL of the page for the GIF you've selected, or embed straight to Facebook & Twitter from that page from the portion where it says "share GIF.

Life science videos from VCU covering topics such as evolution, genetics, biotechnology, research careers. I really like how the videos aren't just informative but focus on relevant or interesting topics, giving a real-world connection for students. For example, within the biotechnology videos, there is a focus on topics such as silk making, individualized drugs, tissue engineering, alternative transplants, etc. Videos tend to be short as well and won't take an entire period but can easily be incorporated into your lesson at any point.

Nice get! You need Realplayer installed to play the videos online or when you download them.

Is it a given that technology enhances the acts of writing, as it does the arts and sciences of film-making, design, engineering, data collection and analyses, and so forth? What about the teaching and learning of writing?

A simple sound effects search engine. Enter text to search and download to your computer by right clicking on the link. Great for making podcasts and movies. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products.  We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. 

This image editor does only one thing, but does it well. It adds speech and thinking bubbles to photos and images. Really easily and the results look great. Good for making comic strips with your class. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Photos+&+Images

The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products.  We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product.  We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products.  This is our mission statement:

Central location for information on how to move your data in and out of Google products. 

A search engine that presents search results visually which makes it easy to distinguish between text, image and video sources. Images can be enlarged and videos can be watched on the search page.

This is very cool.