Group items tagged

"The strategy that has worked best for me over the years has been to create a non-threatening atmosphere in which teachers can experiment and explore without repercussions as they become more familiar with technology tools. The key is to cultivate a climate of discovery and experimentation as opposed to one of judgement and unattainable standards. After all, we don't expect our students to be perfect the first time around. We encourage them to experiment and take risks. If everything had to be perfect right away, we'd never get anything done!" Interesting post to share with teachers

"The root cause of the American Civil War is perhaps the most controversial topic in American history. Even before the war was over, scholars in the North and South began to analyze and interpret the reasons behind the bloodshed." Another interesting problem that Voyant (and other data viz/textual analysis tools) could help us solve. Provide students with a little background and then give them the Articles of Secession for a variety of states. Have them analyze/interpret the overall reasons for Secession based on what they uncover.

Compilation of Digital Learning sites with a focus on Math and digital tools

Link to a specific time in a YouTube video. Easy to do yourself but possibly helpful to teachers/students and I always forget the structure.

online presentation tool- lots of templates- very nice

Lesson objective: In this lesson, students use coordinates to compute perimeters of polygons and areas of triangles and rectangles, e.g., using the distance formula. Pretty much all the steps to this lesson are on the website, which also includes a download link with all the materials that you will need. Something to think about if you plan on completing this lesson: When you first pose the problem to the students - Have the students discuss how they could represent the location of the different vertices for the Bermuda triangle. Give the students time to research/explore and find the latitude/longitude on their own rather than giving it to them directly. There are plenty of tools out there that can help the students complete this task, the most common being Google Earth and Google Maps

Possible base/tool for a future stats lesson

"Can we use primary sources and technology to promote civic engagement? Richard Hartshorne and Scott Waring of University of Central Florida say yes. They shared a great set of resources to help you structure your use of technology in the classroom.  They didn't really share specific examples about civic engagement activities with these tools - mostly a review of the different tools - but they do have one lesson idea online." Various thoughts on how to use technology in a history classroom.

"Mathsframe has more than 170 free interactive maths games. All resources are designed, by an experienced KS2 teacher, to help children to visualise numbers, patterns and numerical relationships and to develop their mathematical thinking. New games are added most weeks." Some of these seem more appropriate for elementary school, but there are definitely some that could serve as quick review for our 6th-8th graders. You could have students use these games for several minutes individually in the class, or have students use a Promethean board/slate to interact with the game in front of the class and discuss their reasoning for the answers they select. This could be a great informal feedback tool that would take very little prep time.

"Google News is already an awesome tool for finding resources for current events around the world. But if you know where to look, Google News is also great for finding old newspapers for use in your instruction."

Super quick rough example of a word map which lets you associate lots of different media content. I like the possibilities of this type of tool especially if it is organic and made by multiple students.

With the demand for JavaScript growing and expanding, programmers required an easier method and a library of tools to develop dynamic interfaces, presenting an opening in the computer language industry for JavaScript libraries.

Learning tool using musical intelligence, creative

Wow. Just wow. A lot of potential application here for a variety of topics. - My World History teachers are about to do a Socratic seminar on Rome. The topic is "Haves vs. Have Nots." This map fits perfectly into this discussion. - Use as a tool to discuss reasons for immigration/emigration - Locate the most/least poor areas of the US? Why do you believe this is the case? -Does geography impact poverty? How/Why? - Compare this map to other poverty maps from the past, specifically during the period of industrialization. Discuss how/why things have changed.

Real time data visualizations provide kids with real world connections to what they know and recognize. They pique their curiosity; that's their power. As with other visual content, there are a host of possibilities for using them in the classroom to demonstrate the strength numbers have on perception and success.

This is a Google Custom Search Engine for the "Math Twitter Blogosphere." Basically, this tool will search numerous blogs from math teachers, coaches, and other other educators from around the world. Type in your content and check out the ideas that appear.

"Called newspaper map, the relatively new webapp uses Google Maps to visually display newspapers from almost every country in the world. You can filter the map results by place, address, newspaper name and language. The further you zoom in, the more pins you see. The larger the pin, the larger the paper."

Using this article and the tools listed (http://mentalfloss.com/article/56120/how-far-does-mario-have-run-and-swim-super-mario-bros) as the basis for the lesson: How far does Mario travel in this speedrun? Calculate the proportion of the game that this speedrun completes and leaves incomplete. Based on the time it takes for this speedrun, what's the fastest that you could beat Mario if you completed EVERY level.

Put the internet to work for you. This is the service Tom discussed this morning that might help you route actions in the background.