Interesting article that I'm going to share with my English teachers. If they are interested, I'm going to look for/recommend similar functioning tools that they could use with their students. "Instructors at the New Jersey Institute of Technology have been using a program called E-Rater in this fashion since 2009, and they've observed a striking change in student behavior as a result. Andrew Klobucar, associate professor of humanities at NJIT, notes that students almost universally resist going back over material they've written. But, Klobucar told Inside Higher Ed reporter Scott Jaschik, his students are willing to revise their essays, even multiple times, when their work is being reviewed by a computer and not by a human teacher. They end up writing nearly three times as many words in the course of revising as students who are not offered the services of E-Rater, and the quality of their writing improves as a result. Crucially, says Klobucar, students who feel that handing in successive drafts to an instructor wielding a red pen is "corrective, even punitive" do not seem to feel rebuked by similar feedback from a computer."

"FluencyTutor for Google is a new offering from Texthelp. FluencyTutor for Google is a Chrome web app (works on Chromebook, PC, Mac) that allows teachers to share selected reading passages with their students. Students can hear the passages read aloud. The text being read aloud is highlighted to help students follow along with the reading" Might be useful for ESL and SPED classes

"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."

Interesting system that may be useful for teachers who are "afraid" of ActivEngage.

"Empower your students to think critically about data, ask meaningful questions, and communicate their conclusions."

Variety of applications for perimeter, area, measurement, etc.

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.

Why technology matters for out students. May be useful for a faculty meeting, PD session, etc.

"As brilliant reader John D. asked, how many miles does Mario have to travel before he finally gets to Princess Peach?" This could be a great lesson starter for ratio, proportion, and estimation. Show your students one of the levels, ask them to predict, and then have the students create a process in order to answer the question. Reveal the article after students have made their calculations.

"For the non-innovators, everything gets in the way.  But for the general innovators, the main barriers are learning challenges and contracting constraints.  The big finding is that for the novel innovators, there are no external barriers." I like this article a lot and I think I will use it in a faculty meeting. Ask the teachers to create a list of barriers to good instruction. After they come up with a ton of stuff, have them read the article for shock value. Then, discuss.

"This could be an interesting tool for creative writing prompts and/or vocabulary work. Here are a couple thoughts on how you could use Endless Interestingness in the classroom: Challenge the students to find a "string" of 5-10 photos in a row and connect those images by writing a creative story that incorporates the subjects, themes, moods, etc. of those photos. Provide the students with a vocabulary word. Have the students go to the website and choose one photo that best represents that word. Students could explain and justify their choice to the rest of the class. A Padlet wall would be a great tool for this assignment, so that all students could quickly share their work and view their classmates' ideas."

"Map of Life is a mapping project sponsored in part by Yale and the University of Colorado, Boulder. The map offers the option to see distribution of a species around the world. To do so, select a species from the species menu and placemarks for that species will be displayed on the map. Map of Life also provides the option to see a distribution of animals closest to you. To do that select "what lives near me.""

"Are you an aspiring rap lyricist? Have I got the tool for you! RapPad is a site where you can compose your raps with the help of rhyme lookups, syllable counters, and a library of beats. It also puts you in touch with a community for discussion, feedback, and online rap battles. But even if you're not planning on writing raps, it offers a unique kind of linguistic fun. With the "Generate Line" feature, you can give RapPad a line, and it will write the next line for you by pulling from a library of successful rap songs. I entered a bunch of famous first lines from literature, and got RapPad to give me back some gems. Are they literature? Are they rap? Let's call it raperature. Or maybe literatrap? Anyway, here are 18 literary first lines paired with rap lyrics." I don't know what the lesson is exactly, but there's some sort of lesson on creativity, writing, vocabulary, etc. waiting to be created here...

Best Slate Article Ever? You decide

""I think competitive character people don't want to be manipulated constantly to do what one individual wants them to do," Popovich said, "It's a great feeling when players get together and do things as a group. Whatever can be done to empower those people."" Applications for classroom and for our job as ITRTs. ...and I just love Popovich.

Lesson ideas for this resource @ http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/waberry/2014/03/06/tuvalabs-datasets-to-promote-critical-thinking/

"David Cox sent his students through Function Carnival where they tried to graph the motion of different carnival rides. (Try it!) Every student's initial graph was wrong. No one got it exactly right the first time. But Function Carnival doesn't display a percent score or hint tokens or some kind of Bayesian probability they'll get the next graph right. It just shows students what their graph means for that ride. Then it lets them revise."

How Wikipedia works. Could be useful for classroom research assignments.

"While preparing for the upcoming school year, Twisted Sister's epic protest song began playing as I read the Declaration of Independence. Obviously my mind drifted to imagined Thomas Jefferson and John Adams letting their hair down and dancing around the streets of Philadelphia during a break from drafting the epic document. I realized then that I serendipitously uncovered something that I could use in the classroom - pairing music to primary documents to demonstrate understanding!" Taylor - I read this and immediately thought of you. Assignment for student - Remix the text of a primary document or famous historical speech with a song or multiple songs that add to the theme of the document/speech. Example included in the post.

"Merriam-Webster's website has a neat feature called Trend Watch that highlights words that are trending in news and popular culture. Trend Watch includes an explanation of why each word is trending, a definition for the word, and a picture that is representative of either the word or the cause of the trend." Plenty of interesting applications for teaching new vocabulary.