This is a handy reference tool with easy to read examples for your students.

This is a great article about brain health and how diets that include large quantities of gluten have been linked to maladies such as Alzheimer's, anxiety, depression, chronic headaches, ADHD and others. The book, Grain Brain: The surprising truth about wheat, carbs, and sugar; your brain's silent killers has been on the best seller list since September. It's being published in 15 countries. The New England Journal of Medicine has also conducted numerous studies and supports some of the claims of the book, though there are differing opinions in the medical field and at the end of the article, the author is not convinced that gluten is dangerous to most people. We see a tremendous numbers of students in our schools that suffer from some of these ailments. The article is suggesting that nutrition is absolutely linked to our neurological health. A few years ago our food services changed the menus in our schools. Children in middle school can no longer eat 6 cookies and 2 ice creams for lunch. Though lunch duty isn't my favorite responsibility, it gives me the opportunity to see the changes happening in our cafeteria. In my observation, kids are actually ordering and eating the healthier options that they are offered. I recently experimented with changing my diet to be gluten free and I've never felt better. I didn't lose weight, but I lost my craving for carbohydrates after a few days and my focus on everything else seemed to be a little keener. It lasted about 6 weeks and I only fell off the wagon with my mother's bread stuffing at Thanksgiving. I instantly felt cravings for all things with flour. If I try it again I will pay more attention to see if I can tell if my diet really does effect my brain.

During Monday's class I overheard Sharon Burke talk about the possibility (or probabilty?) of the high school getting a 3D printer. I heard her say that one of the kids really wanted it "because it was fun". This article about a middle school experience with their 3D printer included the beliefs of play, passion and purpose. One of the students featured even wrestled with persistance. I hope we hear more about this 3D printer in the future and how our students are using it for their learning opportunites.

This is a great site for anyone interested in learning about infographics. I like the fact that it is a marketing company and they use their actual examples to "sell" their product to others. Visual literacy is another 21st century skill that we should be teaching students especially because we are increasingly asking them to produce their own visuals for their work. Like coding, this could be of interest to many kids if they are exposed to it.

I've been searching for some great examples this week and am really impressed with what I've found on Google and this site. I'm co-teaching an ABC class with an 8th grade teach and am hoping to have students use Newsela articles as the source of the infographic. I did one myself and it's not as easy as it looks. I was surprised that it took me as long as it did, which will help me determine and appreciate how much time this will take students to complete. The challenge is synthesizing the information without using much text. You could easily use Glogster with an assignment like this.

Would schools get better results if they were run like a corporation?

Would schools get better results if they were run like a corporation?

This is a great site for primary source material that was collected through the National Archives. Using primary sources actively engages kids and motivates them to think. This was one of the nuggets of information I saw at MassCUE. There is an amazing amount of content on this site.

Kathy Favazza sent this site out to our staff at Parker. This is the email message: At the PARCC and CCSS trainings that I attended in Chicago I learned of an amazing tool. It's called Newsela. It is a website that takes articles in various topics: War & Peace, Money, Kids, Science and Law and links them to the anchor literacy standards that we all need to address in our subjects. You can set up classes and assign articles for students to read. Some articles have text based follow up questions (those with a small anchor in the top right) that you can assign to students. The coolest feature however is that you can adjust the reading level of the articles!!!!

I've played with this site and it is awesome. You can adjust the reading level of the texts. It has built in assessments like main idea. I highly recommend this resource for grades 4 through middle school.

I found this article while searching the "community" tool in Diigo. It's a great companion to Kerry's top 3 apps she can't live without.

People are using QR codes to differentiate learning or create stations within your class. I can see applications for kindergarten on up to use this tool. The article mentions Viualead as tool to create unique looking QR codes. My ADD is kicking in and now I have to find out about Visualead!

This is a great site for teachers to teach students about copyright and begin conversations about intellectual property.

I've been using this site with middle school student for a few years to help teach copyright. It's written in kid-friendly language (middle school) and has lots of resources for teaches who might need a refresher course for themselves. There is an interactive quiz that sparks lots of conversation around intellectual property and fair use. The site is easy to navigate though beware there seem to be a few broken links.