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Boost retention and speed of your learning now! We will compute optimum intervals between your repetitions. It will boost retention and speed of your learning! Things you can do with omnimemo: The goal of omnimemo is to help you learn material in a fast and efficient way. * Find material to learn * Learn * Add new material * Check progress

I'm recording another episode of "Every Classroom matters" interviewing some of the teachers and organizers in the Chicago Early STEM college movement. As I researched for this show, I found this report out of North Carolina reporting an increase in test scores. A county here in Georgia is also implementing Early college stem as well. STEM is something every school needs (listen to the earlier show I recorded w/ Kevin Jarrett) but this is an interesting approach. "Just two years after it opened, a North Carolina high school has found that teaching students the principles of STEM can boost test scores and keep learners engaged. That's prompting the school to ask, "If we can do it, why can't other schools do it, too?" The school has a mouthful of a name: the Wake NC State University STEM Early College High School. It has attracted many students to its Raleigh campus - first generation-college students, minorities, and students from poor backgrounds - who are underrepresented in STEM fields. But in 2012, students did far better than average on the state's standardized exams, with more than 95 percent passing."

The recent Kindle updates over the past few months have quite a few teachers. In particular, if you have a textbook on Kindle, you can collate notes by color, which is a major enhancement.  This article does a nice job of summarizing the features important to educators. "The update also brings some changes that should be especially helpful for students and teachers, like the ability to highlight long passages that span multiple pages. In addition, the Notebook feature for textbooks has new filtering options, which should help you more quickly and easily find all your notes, bookmarks, and highlights by colour"

New research questions the strong claims that have been made about the benefits of 'brain training' - enhanced mental skills, a boost to education, improved clinical outcomes and sharper everyday functioning. This new study found evidence that 'brain training' changed brain signalling but no indication of other benefits...

If you want plants to grow add rain, sunshine and warmth. The same works with children. A warm, caring environment where students and teachers have positive relationships, where they feel safe and have supports to help them succeed improves test scores. This is no surprise to good teachers. Those who put inordinate stress on teachers in ways that causes stress and harshness are likely hurting test scores and having the opposite effect, if one is to interpret this. Take a read and take action - on my blog I and many commenters have been discussing getting along with colleagues and having warm relationships with students. It isn't fluff but rather, is the stuff that test scores are made of. "It's the million-dollar question or, given the size of the California education budget, the $50-billion-dollar question: What makes extraordinarily successful schools different from other schools? The answer: school climate, according to a new study from WestEd, a San Francisco-based research agency. In recent years, the concept of school climate has gained increasing currency in education reform circles and the California Department of Education has received federal grants to evaluate school climate in 170 schools, as well as Safe and Supportive Schools grants to fund programs that enhance school climate. As defined by the WestEd study, a positive school climate includes caring relationships between teachers and students, physical and emotional safety, and academic and emotional supports that help students succeed. The goal of a positive school climate is "a sense of belonging, competence and autonomy" for both students and staff, the report said."

Ribbon Hero is a game for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel 2007 and 2010, designed to help you boost your Office skills and knowledge. Play games (aka "challenges"), score points, and compete with your friends while improving your productivity with Office

a mobile video platform that lets you record and upload videos with your cell phone.Though the app has been around since 2008 it's now qualifies as an essential download, thanks to a host of new updates, including the addition of auto-focus and a boost to the capture speed to 15 frames per second. Another new feature is the ability to instantly auto-sync with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a variety of blogging services.  You can also send video to friends and relatives as a text message, or simply save it to your Qik profile (for safekeeping). In terms of functionality users can now zoom and edit movies on the spot (including altering brightness and adding effects, like the one that allows you to transform subjects into Na'vi from Avatar.) Qik recently teamed up with a global WiFi provider, which means you can keep connected even if you're out of reach of your cell carrier's coverage.And it's available on nearly every major platform (with the exception of Palm WebOS), including Google's Nexus One.

Specific writing strategies can play an important role in boosting reading comprehension. That's the bottom-line finding of a new analysis of research. The report, out today from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, says that teachers can improve students' reading skills by having them write about what they are reading, teaching them writing skills, and increasing how much they write.

5 Trends in Education Technology Leadership SETDA's "National Educational Technology Trends Report" spotlights state efforts to boost learning through the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology program. By David Nagel04/23/10

"As Congress and the Obama administration weigh a major reform of education policy, the government should overhaul testing methods that have handcuffed teacher creativity and done little to boost student achievement, according to a new report from the National Research Council."

The job role that should be available in every school is: Drumroll please…Digital Literacy Coach. The job entails teaching digital literacy, technology integration, and teaching both students and teachers how to safely harness the power of the Internet and technology to boost the end result, student engagement and achievement. 

Natural ways to boost endorphins in your brain.

An iPad and junior version of the well know programming platform Scratch. The app has been designed for 5+ year olds and boosts simplified versions features of the more mature version. Children still snap programming blocks together to build amazingly creative things. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

"Thousands of new school places are being created for children with special educational needs or those facing additional challenges in mainstream education, providing tailored support to help children thrive. Every region in the country will benefit from a new school, which include 37 special free schools and two alternative provision free schools. This will create around 3,500 additional school places, boosting choice for parents and providing specialist support and education for pupils with complex needs such as autism, severe learning difficulties or mental health conditions, and those who may have been or are at risk of being excluded from mainstream schools."

"Investing in education may help boost economic opportunities for the next generation, according to a team of economists. In a USA study, researchers suggest that investing in public education can lead to more upward economic mobility and lower teen pregnancy rates, as well as provide a way to ease income inequality."

Does your toddler use a touchscreen tablet? A recent study published in Frontiers in Psychology has shown that early touchscreen use, and in particular actively scrolling the screen, correlates with increased fine motor control in toddlers...

This is an interesting article about the move to mobile learning even though it only has one example. (You have to register to get the PDF with the 10.) I also think that perhaps we are seeing a massive misuse of the term "microlearning" as it seems to be meaning different things to different people. But, either way, this is a nice summary of the move to mobile learning or mlearning as some are calling. But hold on, there's lots of buzzwords in this one.

"Storytime: While reading to children has many benefits, simply speaking the words aloud may not be enough to improve cognitive development in preschoolers. A new international study, published in the journal PLOS ONE and led by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, shows that engaging with children while reading books to them gives their brain a cognitive "boost.""