Group items tagged

"Investigators determined that intervention to counteract friends' influence may have more of an effect in junior high than in high school, and that parents remain influential on smoking behavior through high school - indicating another possible intervention target. "Based on social developmental model research, we thought friends would have more influence on cigarette use during high school than junior high school," said first author Yue Liao, M.P.H., Ph.D. "But what we found was friends have greater influence during junior high school than high school. We think the reason may be that friends' cigarette use behavior may have a stronger influence on youth who start smoking at a younger age. During high school, cigarette use might represent the maintenance of behavior rather than a result of peer influence."

This musical site gives you a virtual synthesiser to create wonderful tunes and sound effects on. It's easy to use and versatile. You can play the middle octave with your computer keyboard or plot the music along a timeline for greater accuracy. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

An interesting guide from edutopia for parents that you can share with your parents and PTO. They share a lot of examples of 21st century learning and as you work to build support for these things, this is a great document to share. (Full Disclosure: The digiteen project is listed for middle school - after this was listed, we saw such an inundation of schools wanting to do the project, we created the DigiTween project for kids aged 10-12 and Digiteen is still for kids aged 13+.) There are a lot of other great sites including the World Peace game, information on Skype in the Classroom, World of Warcraft in School and the Digital Youth Network. Download and share.

Back in 2011 I was working in the Middle East when a colleague introduced me to Twitter as a tool for professional development and connecting with fellow educators. Prior to this I was aware of Facebook and Twitter, however I considered both as being about nothing more than apps for sharing cute cat videos and status updates. I had a Twitter account for years, however hadn't thought about how it might be a powerful tool to help me become a better educator and provide me with a wealth of new ideas and resources which I previously had not had access to. I had barely used the account beyond the initial setup...

"Children often seek answers from parents, friends and media to better understand their racial identity. Middle school boys who feel secure about their race during this ongoing information gathering will likely befriend diverse people, according to a new University of Michigan study."

Can giants exist? This question for middle and high school has students use volume and surface area to determine if giants can exist. This is for geometry. Inquiry based projects can have great results.

This lesson plan for middle school teaches about Haiku and also reviews the concept of syllables. Very extensive resources to use on this one.

Article about effects of speech-to-text on reading comprehension (population is middle schoolers) but it is interesting.

How should students analyze a painting? This middle/ high school project gives a writing structure for analyzing painting in this cross disciplinary unit.

This is the second in a set of featured articles on the best iPad apps for the classroom. Be sure to check out last week's '65+ iPad Apps Perfect For Elementary Schools' and stay tuned for more great app lists and resources! 

Siemens Stem applications due by February 9th. Here is the overview of how things will be this year. They will have a program at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and also at the Pacific Northwest national Laboratory. 50 middle and high school educators are invited to apply. do you teach Science, Technology, Math, or Engineering. Apply.

This blog is more reflection than information but hopefully others can relate. 

Great article on US news about initiatives in the US that have started but of special interest is the request that students and educators tweet. The biggest issues I've had with the town hall meetings is that most of them are in the middle of the day when everyone is teaching. On Thursday at 3 pm there is a chat about rural education. It is nice that they're having these meetings but if they REALLY want teachers to participate it will be when teachers are able to focus on the conversation. You can't have teachers teaching and Tweeting. It doesn't work. If you see me tweet during the day, most of the tweets are scheduled or I'm on break or lunch break. "February has been a busy month for K-12 education. On February 1, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan kicked it off by announcing that all U.S. schools should transition to digital textbooks within the next five years. On the 9th, President Obama waived 10 states from No Child Left Behind. And last week, the president proposed a 2013 budget that includes a $1.7 funding increase for education." Although these federal policy decisions may not seem directly connected to day-to-day classroom activities, the Department of Education is using Twitter to encourage teachers, administrators, parents, and students to play a more active role.

Great lesson that turns writing students into music producers to improve writing. Designed for the middle school classroom.

Two studies were released in an attempt to "quantify the benefits of mobile technology in education and the infrastructure needed..." In these students students had tablets and Internet access at home and at school. Of course, I'm not sure that it is tablet computers that give benefits, Internet access, cloud computing, or a combination, but I'm sure these studies will be touted by many far and wide. Of course, remember if they had strapped the tablets to the kid''s back and hadn't used them - they would have had lower scores. All improvement is all in how technology is being USED to teach. "The studies put Android tablets in the hands of students and their teachers in two schools - eighth-graders at Stone Middle School in Fairfax County Public Schools and fifth-graders at Falconer Elementary School in Chicago Public Schools - and provided wireless access to the students both in school and away from school. (The devices were HTC Evo tablets.) Researchers then followed the students' activities over the course of a year, with the aim of evaluating "how access to these devices for communication with teachers and classmates increases comfort with technology, extends the learning day, and allows students to develop digital citizenship skills within a safe and secure learning environment.""

Tool for mixing music.

This program comes highly recommended. Only the pay version lets you save music, but you can play with this flash interface to see how it works for mixing music - recommended for middle and elementary PC users.

Fun challenges including: Problem of the Week, Algebra in Action Middle School Madness Elementary Brain Teaser

put a subject in the middle circle e.g. movies, jobs, current projects, holidays - whatever is topical at the time - elicit this from your students if you like. Divide them up into groups and then encourage your students to ask each other questions.

Lots of games, activities, and interactives that work well with Interactive Whiteboards. Grouped by subject area, ability level, and finally specific disciplines within a content area, these websites would be great as review games, or ways to check for progress and understanding in the middle of a unit.

"Within the decade, it will either become the norm to teach this course (high school Algebra I) in middle school or we'll have finally woken up to the fact that there's no reason to give algebra weight over statistics and IT in high school for non-math majors (and they will have all taken it in middle school anyway)." - Shelley Blake-Plock

RT @ransomtech: A good discussion starter: "21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020" http://bit.ly/dTqAxj