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Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change: The 21st century is a world in constant change. In A New Culture of Learning, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown pursue an understanding of how the forces of change, and emerging waves of interest associated with these forces, inspire and invite us to imagine a future of learning that is as powerful as it is optimistic. Our understanding of what constitutes "a new culture of learning" is based on several basic assumptions about the world and how learning occurs:

"Doe is the youngest of five children and says he's been inventing gadgets since the age of four. He gathers scrap metal and other materials to create electronic solutions for his town. His inventions have caught the eye of university professors and scientists at academic institutions in the U.S., including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard."

"Doe is the youngest of five children and says he's been inventing gadgets since the age of four. He gathers scrap metal and other materials to create electronic solutions for his town. His inventions have caught the eye of university professors and scientists at academic institutions in the U.S., including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard."

For teachers hoping to infuse multimedia into their classrooms, YouTube makes for an excellent starting point. Plenty of universities, nonprofits, organizations, museums and more post videos for the cause of education both in and out of schools. The following list compiles some of the ones most worthy of attention, as they feature plenty of solid content appealing to their respective audiences and actively try to make viewers smarter.

"Take a Tour of the Human Body! As a part of our study of human body systems, the fifth graders of Southfield Christian School used their imagination and the information that they learned to create "tours" of the various body systems. Be prepared to vacation at the "Pancreas Hotel," take a water park ride through the circulatory system, or rock climb up the muscular system! Click on the tours listed below, or click on "Go to Archive" (on the left) to see the entire list of 15 tours! If you wish to download them to your iPod, click on the subscribe button which will take you to iTunes."

"This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes. The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas: * AJAX Programming * Algorithms * Distributed Systems * Web Security * Languages In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases. The CS Curriculum Search will help you find teaching materials that have been published to the web by faculty from CS departments around the world. You can refine your search to display just lectures, assignments or reference materials for a set of courses."

From site: High Ability is a blog and information aggregator for parents, guardians and teachers of high ability children managed by the Ohio Association of Gifted Children (OAGC) for the benefit of high ability students in the State of Ohio.

"GTA DC Gadgets One of the highlights of the Google Teacher Academy is Ronald Ho's run through of hidden features in Google Spreadsheets. On the plane home I was thinking about how some of the gadgets he shared and how I could use them with my teachers. Here's a few I came up with."

Recently I've come to the idea that the question "how do you differentiate?" is the wrong question to ask (or at least coming in the wrong sequence). The essential question should be "what do you differentiate?" By differentiating instruction I am changing something for some group of students. To do this I have to ask myself "what can I change and what do I need to keep the same?" What follows are three cases of differentiation, all of which change a different facet of learning.

"No matter how much you know, there is always something new to learn about science. While your college courses may cover the basics, you can get a more in-depth look at a wide variety of topics from Internet resources such as these great documentaries. These selections will help you explore everything from the inner reaches of the human mind to the outer areas of our universe and just about everything else in between. Better yet, they're all free to watch online so you can learn more without spending a dime."

"When children work on science projects, experiments, investigations, or other science activities their curiosity can be stimulated by asking questions. This helps children develop a better understanding of science concepts. Questioning is part of the attributes of inquiry-based science and central to critical thinking."

"In Intelligence Reframed Howard Gardner contends that "literacies, skills, and disciplines ought to be pursued as tools that allow us to enhance our understanding of important questions, topics, and themes." Today's readers become literate by learning to read the words and symbols in today's world and its antecedents. They analyze, compare, evaluate and interpret multiple representations from a variety of disciplines and subjects, including texts, photographs, artwork, and data. They learn to choose and modify their own communication based on the rhetorical situation. Point of view is created by the reader, the audience and the medium."

Presentation done by Chris Mursky of Wisconsin DPI. She shares Elkhorn's model of RtI and Gifted 

WordNet® is a large lexical database of English. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept.

a collection of maps of past and future including climate history, Paleo-globes, earth history, and animations

Google Earth can be used across the curriculum. I put together this quick-start guide to introduce teachers to the basics of using Google Earth across the curriculum. This is part of a much larger document that I am developing.

Fascinating view of the skeletons and habitats of different primates on Earth.

Stage'D is definitely a work-in-progress, but already there's lots of fun to be had. You can pick characters and choose costumes for them. Then you can pick from a library of animations for them to perform, and don't forget to give'em some dialog! Pick some scenery and you officially have a comic, easy as that.

Sumanas develops animated tutorials in a variety of formats for many scientific disciplines. Click on the subject headings below to view samples of our animations. Also, don't forget to visit our Science in Focus section for animations that explain science topics that are in the news.