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Lifelong learning is essential for effective educators and should be modeled for our students. With so many changes occurring in the fields of educational technology, curriculum, pedagogy, and law, it is imperative that educators receive opportunities for growth in their school and beyond. One powerful way to grow is through developing a personal learning network (PLN). PLNs enable educators to learn in accordance with their diverse interests and passions. During a conversation with teacher leaders last year about improving how meaningful professional development is offered, a model from the business world was suggested;Training and other professional growth activities would be embedded within the school day. the light bulb went on for me. I quickly realized that the current school schedule presented the perfect solution to offering meaningful professional development during the day in the form of noninstructional duties, which are otherwise often a waste of time. The plan that my administrative team and I have developed drastically reduces the amount of noninstructional duties the teachers have, such as lunch, hall, or in-school suspension duty. It also reduces the pe

"Gallery Banner Beginning in 1946, two XS-1 experimental research aircraft (later redesignated X-1s) conducted pioneering tests at Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards Air Force Base) in California to obtain flight data on conditions in the transonic speed range. These early tests culminated on October 14, 1947, in the first piloted flight faster than Mach 1.0, the speed of sound. The XS-1 was the first high-speed aircraft built purely for aviation research purposes. The model was never intended for production. The XS-1 was designed largely in accordance with specifications provided by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) [now National Aeronautics and Space Administration], paid for by the Army Air Forces, and built by Bell Aircraft Inc. The XS-1 #2 (serial number 46-063) was flight tested by the NACA to provide design data for later production high-performance aircraft. The research techniques used in the X-1 program became the pattern for all subsequent X-craft projects. The NACA X-1 procedures and personnel also helped lay the foundation of America's space program in the 1960s. The X-1 project defined and solidified the post-war cooperative union between U.S. military needs, industrial capabilities, and research facilities. The flight data collected by the NACA in the X-1 tests then provided a basis for American aviation supremacy in the latter half of the 20th century. As a result of the X-1's initial supersonic flight, the National Aviation Association voted its 1948 Collier Trophy to be shared by the three main participants in the program. Honored at the White House by President Truman were Lawrence "Larry" Bell for Bell Aircraft, Captain Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager for piloting the flights, and John Stack of NACA for the NACA contributions. "

"N ew Philadelphia looked like a typical west-central Illinois pioneer town to travelers cresting the hill overlooking the place in the mid-1800s. Imagine villagers filling baskets with a bounty of apples, corn, and wheat, while chickens clucked and pigs rooted in nearby pens. Picture farmers hitching mules and oxen to carts filled with vegetables, fruit, and grain to sell at markets. Listen for loud clanging from the blacksmith's shop as hammers shaped hot metal into shoes for mules and horses. As in other frontier towns, smoke from cooking fires swirled from the dwellings that dotted small plots of land. But New Philadelphia was not a typical pioneer town. It was the first town platted and registered by an African American before the American Civil War. A formerly enslaved man called "Free Frank" McWorter founded New Philadelphia in 1836 as a money-making venture to buy his family out of slavery. Census records and other historical documents tell us that New Philadelphia was a place where black and white villagers lived side by side, but we know that the town's dead lie buried in cemeteries separated by color. By 1885, many villagers had moved away in search of jobs and better economic opportunities. Plows buried any material remains left behind, and grazing livestock and crops covered most of the site. By the 1940s, nothing of the town remained above ground. However, the town's descendants and neighboring communities did not forget New Philadelphia. Descendents continued to live in the area until the 1950s. Grace Matteson wrote "Free Frank" McWorter and the "Ghost Town" of New Philadelphia, Pike County, Illinois. Later, Lorraine Burdick remembered the town in New Philadelphia: Where I Lived. McWorter family descendants were members of the Negro History Movement led by Carter G. Woodson, and through their activities the story of Free Frank was kept alive. Helen McWorter Simpson, great granddaughter of Free Frank McWorter, wrote Makers of History. Juliet E. K. Wa

Lumiere Technology, a start-up based in Paris, reveals the true colors of the Mona Lisa. Pascal Cotte, engineer and founder of Lumiere Technology, largely contributed to the knowledge of the Mona Lisa thanks to the multispectral digitization of the famous painting, whose report is detailed in the famous book "Mona Lisa - Inside the Painting", recently published by Abrams in USA, Gallimard & the Editions of the Louvre in France, Shirmer Mosel in Germany. The hidden knowledge of the true colors was revealed by multispectrally scanning the painting in thirteen channels - from Ultra Violet to Infra Red. Then the spectral response curve of the varnish in each pixel was isolated and subtracted from the digital file to virtually reveal the surface of the painting when it had freshly exited Leonardo da Vinci's workshop. This virtual removal of years of accumulated varnish is an illustration of Lumiere Technology's technical knowledge that will now be marketed as an exclusive digitization service to museums and private fine art collections worldwide. The true revolution that Pascal Cotte developed enables the in-depth study of fine art paintings using a numerical file to reveal the true pigments for viewing and analysis without touching or damaging the paintings. Lumiere Technology offers this service to museums worldwide as a unique, single tool to assess, analyze, authenticate, restore and reproduce their masterpieces of fine art.

"A book club, also referred to as a reading group, is a collection of readers who participate in the regular discussion of books. Traditionally, a book club consists of several members who meet in person each month to talk about a specific work. A Book Club is also... In addition to discussion-oriented book clubs described here, a book club can also be a place to purchase books. These discount book clubs offer great deals for readers who wish to purchase several books each year. Many of these are available online, where readers can use the book club's website to choose their books. However, the advent of web forums and email has made it possible for book clubs to exist online. While both traditional and online book clubs offer readers the opportunity to participate in spirited discussions, each type has its own set of advantages. Traditional book clubs offer the benefit of having all members in the same room, which makes for a much more personal and intimate experience. Since most traditional book clubs are somewhat small in size, each member typically has more control over what books are selected to read (often members will vote on a list of suggested titles that have been submitted or take turns selecting). At the same time, it is often difficult to organize and maintain a book club that meets regularly. In addition to the challenge of recruiting quality members for a book club, a regular meeting time and place may be difficult to establish, especially if members have busy schedules. Also, the small size of the traditional book club typically limits the diversity of views and perspectives that enter into the discussion. Online book clubs offer several advantages over the traditional reading group model. Due to the vastness of the web and the variety of book clubs available, readers who turn to the Internet to find a book club enjoy a much wider selection of clubs, including many dedicated to a specialized interest or genre. In addition, online book clubs

"In 1481 the monks of San Donato a Scopeto near Florence commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint an altar-piece celebrating the Adoration of the Magi. In one of the preparatory drawings, Leonardo drew with meticulous accuracy a refined perspective grid in order to place the architectural structures, the human figures, and the animals in a realistically proportioned way.This precious study, kept in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is shown for the first time ever in the United States on Finmeccanica's initiative and because of the collaboration between the Uffizi Gallery and the Library of Congress."

"The National Economics Challenge is the only national competition to foster interest in economics among high school students by recognizing their achievements and offering a fun and competitive way to showcase their knowledge. The Challenge applies the excitement of an athletic competition to academic excellence and encourages students to apply their economics knowledge, work in teams, and is not only fun, but offers prizes. In each competition teams of students answer rigorous questions on microeconomics, macroeconomics, international economics and current events. At the National Championship Finals, the title is decided in a heated competition in a quick-paced oral quiz-bowl round. Try out some sample test questions. Competitions are held at the state, national semifinal and national championship levels. At the national level there is one open division, and all students currently enrolled in high school may compete in the Challenge. Check the rules for more details."

"Reconsider the Use of the SAMR Model December 4, 2017 - Leave a comment The four-stage Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) model introduced by Rueben Puentedura back in mid-2000 has not only grown in popularity there are people building upon this its unsubstantiated foundation. The SAMR model was initially intended to help K-12 teachers move the up the ladder of technology use by using tech for the creation of new tasks, tech for a significant redesign, tech as a direct substitute with functional improvement, and tech as a direct substitute, with no functional change. SAMR not only looks like an innocuous model of using technology it also seems to appeal to the way many people tend to approach the use of technology. If we look closely at the fundamental presupposition of its use then we will see that there are serious issues in how the model can enhance learning. The first time I was introduced to the SAMR model was over a decade ago and I recall thinking that this model has a fundamental flaw that many people will tend to overlook. While using technology to simply make an activity or task more efficient or to explore ways to enhance or even redefine that activity or task may seem innocuous or even worthwhile the problem that we run into with this sort of thinking is that we are ignoring the validity of the original task that SAMR is being applied to. For example if you use SAMR to move your paper-based fill in the black worksheet to a digital model (substitution) and then add some branching questions in a google form (augmentation) and then add enabled voice responses (modification) and finally allow your class to create a video to answer the questions (redefinition) the problem is you are still asking your students to regurgitate content regardless how sophisticated the regurgitation becomes. I have also noticed in my time working with hundreds of teachers and faculty that there is a tendency for most people to NOT move beyond t

"Teachers, librarians, and interested adults! Sign up now to participate in the annual ACPL Mock Caldecott Election. Help us pick the most distinguished American picture book for children published in 2010. No experience necessary! We invite you to join in the discussion of new picture book titles currently underway on the ACPL Mock Caldecott Blog. Our plan is to narrow down these titles to four short lists over the course of the year -- and your comments on the blog will help us do so. Look for our first short list to be published in June 2010. Registration is open for our Mock Caldecott Election, which will be held on Saturday, January 8th, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Main Library in Fort Wayne. We'll meet in person for a final discussion, and then we will vote on our favorites, following the ALSC Guidelines as closely as possible. "

Two original albums of photographs of paintings and furniture looted by the Nazis were recently discovered. The albums have been in private hands since the end of World War II and will be donated to the US National Archives in Washington, D.C. These albums were created by a special Nazi task force engaged in the theft of cultural treasures in occupied countries. In the closing days of World War II, US soldiers entered Adolf Hitler's home in the Bavarian Alps

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to introduce a group of high school teachers to the free Socrative student response system. The response from the teachers was overwhelmingly positive to the point that one math teacher stayed with me for an extra twenty minutes just to brainstorm more ways to use Socrative in her classroom. Socrative is a free service that allows teachers to post questions to students during a class and gather feedback through responses submitted from cell phones, tablets, and laptops. Socrative gives teachers a virtual room in which they gather responses from students. Students sign into a teacher's virtual room by simply visiting the Socrative website and entering the room number distributed by the teacher. There are a variety of ways in which teachers can pose questions to students and gather their responses. The simplest way to pose a question is to simply ask verbally or post it on a whiteboard and then telling students to submit their answers. Teachers can also create quizzes ahead of time, store those quizzes in their Socrative accounts, and then make the quiz go "live" in the virtual room when they want students to take the quiz. Teachers can activate an instant feedback option so that students know when they have answered a question correctly or not. A fun way to use Socrative is to host a team "space race." A space race is a competitive format for quizzes. Space race can be played as a team or individual activity. Each correct answer moves a rocket ship across the screen. The first person or team to get their rocket across the screen wins. I've included below, a video of space race being used in a classroom.

"We've already learned that the main difference between drawing and sculpture is one of dimension. While you can draw a picture so that objects appear to look three-dimensional, the surface on which you work is flat. Sculpture, however, has depth as well as length and width. The two kinds of sculpture are relief and in the round. Details project or stick out from a background in a relief sculpture, so they can be seen only from the front and sides. Figures on architecture, such as those found on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, are good examples of this type. An in the round sculpture is free-standing, however, so it can be viewed from all sides. Henry Moore's Large Arch, which is located here in Columbus, is an example of an in the round sculpture."

"Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time. Born in Slavery was made possible by a major gift from the Citigroup Foundation. "

"Top 10 Apps for Digital Storytelling Feb 15 Written by: 2/15/2012 8:47 PM A while back I did a post on top sites for Digital Storytelling. This has been a skill that is being taught in school districts all around the world, and is a key for developing technology literacy. With the recent wave of mobile devices and technologies, a giant step has been taken in how students develop these skills (via touch screen) in a brand new way . Toontastic - A wonderful free iPad that allows children to create animated cartoon stories. They can choose from stock characters or draw their own while animating them and recording their voice for narration. Also, Toontastic's built-in story arc takes students step-by-step on how to create a story. i Tell a Story - A excellent free iPad that works very similarly to how Garageband creates a podcast. A user uploads a photo and then can record their voice for narration while adding stock sound effects. Voice Thread App - A great free iPad/iPhone app that compliments the Voice Thread very nicely for storytelling. A user can manage their Voice Thread account as well as make digital stories by uploading photos and drawing/recording their voice. Story Patch - An iPad app ($2.99) that is ideal for digital storytelling. A person can create a story from scratch or use one of their well-designed templates to complete all the parts of a story. Sock Puppets - A free iPad/iPhone app that is a lot of fun for kids to create animated stories. This is done by selecting your sock, background, and props and then recording your voice as the socks talk. Art Maker - A wonderful free iPad app that allows children to create a digital story from scratch. A user selects their background, characters, and props and then moves them around the screen while recording. Puppet Pals - A excellent free iPad app that lets users create a

"Teenangels are a group of thirteen to eighteen year old volunteers that have been specially trained in all aspects of online safety, privacy and security. After completion of the required training, the Teenangels run unique programs in schools to spread the word about responsible and safe surfing to other teens and younger kids, parents, and teachers. They write columns for Web sites and become expert public speakers and researchers. They work with companies like Disney, Microsoft and AOL and are trained by law enforcement agencies; their tuition includes experience in making presentations to groups of students in schools and/or at community events. Teenangels have even been to the House of Representatives in Washington D.C., for the WiredKids Summit, where they presented their research to a powerful and influential audience. At the urging of our Teenangel volunteers, a special group of volunteers will be able to continue as Teenangels after they become eighteen years old and a new group of Tweenangels has been formed for those between seven and twelve years of age. "

"A SPECIAL INVITATION FOR TEACHERS FROM EDUCATIONWORLD.COM... LEARN MORE CLOSE EducationWorld.com would like to take a moment to let you know about Concordia University's Master's Degrees in Education that you can complete online in just one year! Available Master's Degrees in Education include: * Educational Leadership * Curriculum & Instruction: Reading * Curriculum & Instruction: Mathematics (K-8) - New! * Curriculum & Instruction: Science (K-8) - New! * Curriculum & Instruction: Special Education- New! * Curriculum & Instruction: Methods & Curriculum * Curriculum & Instruction: English to Speakers of Other Languages These programs can help you: * Open the door to a variety of school leadership career opportunities like higher education teaching, department chair, ELL consultant, literacy coach, or curriculum coordinator * Complete your degree in one year, on your schedule, from the comfort of your home * A Master's Degree could mean an automatic salary increase in your school district! Concordia University Online Find Out More! A national university system with 10 campuses throughout the United States, Concordia was founded more than 100 years ago and is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. CLOSE"

"Introduction We live in a three-dimensional world. Every object you can see or touch has three dimensions that can be measured: length, width, and height. The room you are sitting in can be described by these three dimensions. The monitor you're looking at has these three dimensions. Even you can be described by these three dimensions. In fact, the clothes you are wearing were made specifically for a person with your dimensions. In the world around us, there are many three-dimensional geometric shapes. In these lessons, you'll learn about some of them. You'll learn some of the terminology used to describe them, how to calculate their surface area and volume, as well as a lot about their mathematical properties. "

"aimaward Rubrics may be used as a teaching tool and as an authentic assessment tool. Students are more likely to perform well if they know in advance what constitutes quality. When students receive rubrics beforehand, they understand how they will be evaluated which will lead them to assess their works-in-progress and guide revision As an assessment tool, they provide students with informative feedback about their strengths and areas in need of improvement. The advantages to the teacher are that rubrics help clarify assignment expectations, reduce repetitive questions from students, improve consistency in grading, decrease the time spent writing comments on student papers, and improve communication with tutors and parents. Tips for using in the classroom: * Give copies to the students at the beginning of the assignment. Discuss the expectations. * Have students assess their own progress by referring to the rubric. Allow students to revise their work. * Use the rubrics for peer-assessment. * Share the rubrics with parents. * Use the rubrics for grading. "

"Sarah Josepha Hale was born on October 24th, 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire to Revolutionary War Captain Gordon Buell and Martha Whittlesay Buell. Well educated in the classics, Sarah continued her private studies after her marriage in 1813 to David Hale, a lawyer and Freemason. Sarah was widowed in 1822 with five children to support, four under the age of seven. After a brief stint with a millinery shop, she published her first book of poems, The Genius of Oblivion, with David Hale's Freemason lodge paying for the publication. Her career was firmly established with her first novel, Northwood, released in 1827. That same year, she began her most remembered literary position - that of editress."

Categories: Teacher Use, Student Use Brief Description:  IThinkIcon is a search engine designed to simplify the process of finding high quality, free icons. We're constantly adding to our database of icons in multiple formats and sizes. We've tried to provide both ease of use and high functionality all in one for both the web designer/developer and for the personal user. A database of over 200,000 copyright-free, royalty free icons. Many are downloadable in different sizes. It was created with the website developer in mind, but it works for student projects also.