Group items tagged

"Upgrade the typical book report with a digital spin! Integrate reading, writing, and 21st century literacy skills into an interactive and engaging project. Participating teachers will be helping students meet the demands of the Common Core, which include requirements for students to present ideas with "multimedia components (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.""

"Players aged 8 and up shape the future of a new society while learning how to recognize ethical issues and deal with challenging situations in their own lives. Players lead a new human colony on a distant planet. They must make difficult decisions in which there are no clear right or wrong answers but important consequences - to themselves, to others in the colony and to the planet Braxos. Players develop skills such as critical thinking, perspective-taking and decision-making. Quandary provides a framework for how to approach ethical decision-making without telling players what to think."

"Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed an iPad app that helps students learn spatial visualization, an essential skill for doing well in science, math and engineering. They have been testing the app during a high school summer program at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, as well as on undergraduate students at the school."

Although the app is not released yet, they do have a form to sign up for news releases and updates on its progress.

"Code.org has developed a free elementary school curriculum that allows even the youngest students to explore the limitless world of computing. The courses blend online, self-guided and self-paced tutorials with "unplugged"activities that require no computer at all. Each course consists of about 20 lessons that may be implemented as one unit or over the course of a semester. Even kindergarten-aged pre-readers can participate."

Each activity-creation tool helps students develop historical thinking skills and gets them thinking like historians. Choose one of the tools below to begin. Then find and insert primary sources and customize the activity to fit your unique students.

I saw on Twitter that one of my peeps was told that this year they will develop their own /Professional/Personal Learning Network. Just in case that happens here, this may help get someone started.

"The Virginia Department of Education has teamed up with the Professor Garfield Foundation, Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, and the Verizon Foundation to provide the first lessons on Internet Safety along with guidance for students, teachers, and parents. Apps for these lessons have also been developed to promote student-directed learning and enrichment beyond the classroom. "

The Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking aim to improve education in colleges, universities and primary through secondary schools. We present publications, conferences, workshops and professional development programs, emphasizing instructional strategies, Socratic questioning, critical reading and writing, higher order thinking, assessment, research, quality enhancement, and competency standards.

This is an online learning environment dedicated for educators and students to learn how to effectively use Google Apps in an educational context.

Free google apps training.

Google Apps Education Training Center is a new online learning environment designed for educators and students who want to effectively use Google Apps in an educational context. The site offers six modules, including Google Apps Education Edition, apps Mail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, and other tools. The training will cover customizing apps for individual schools; organizing e-mail effectively; creating shared calendars; collaborating with others online; using documents, presentations, and spreadsheets; delivering and collecting surveys, quizzes, and feedback; developing media-rich websites; and setting up internal video portals for schools.

twiducate.com is a free resource for educators. Developed in 2009, our goal is to create a medium for teachers and students to continue their learning outside the classroom. We attempt to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners in a social networking environment. We understand that many social networking sites exist, however the control of content is limited for teachers. Also, many of these social networking sites are continuously being blocked by school firewalls and administrators. Our service proudly differs in that only teachers and students may view classroom posts, thus creating a private network for you and your students and a safer online learning environment.

Debatepedia is "the Wikipedia of pros and cons". Its mission is to "clarify public debates and improve decision-making globally". Debatepedia is a project of the International Debate Education Association (IDEA), a 501c3 non-profit. It utilizes the same wiki technology powering Wikipedia to engage you and other citizen-editors in clarifying public debates by centralizing them into a single pro/con encyclopedia. This helps you, other citizens, and leaders better weigh ALL the pros and cons, develop positions, and make more informed decisions, votes, etc... And this significantly improves democracy and people's lives.

A collaborative project to develop interactive, sound-integrated language learning resources.

What Twitter can be to users . . . Broadcast medium, PLN builder, Professional Development, Edchat, Virtual conference attendance, Live blogging, Backchannel, Complaints dept., Tech support, Subscription service, Disaster and emergency tool, Share your tastes and activities, Real time search, News on demand, Broadcast the revolution, Journaling, Look at me, look at me!

For teachers of mathematics, we: * Offer you FREE enrichment material (Problems, Articles and Games) at all Key Stages that really can help to inspire and engage learners and embed RICH tasks into everyday practice. * Help to promote RICH thinking in classrooms by offering on-line and face-to-face support at Primary and Secondary level. * Deliver professional development courses and workshops in rich mathematics. * Help teachers to think strategically about 'next steps' and progression in problem solving.

"Copyright laws can be vague and confusing. We hope that you can find your way with the help of this information. Although this website was developed for North Carolina educators, it should be of use to teachers and librarians everywhere."

"The National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council held a symposium to coincide with the release their report "Engineering in K-12 Education: Understanding the Status and Improving the Prospects." Participants spoke about the recommendations and implementation of programs to include more engineering topics in primary math and science classes. The report assessed the value of developing and implementing engineering curricula for kindergarten through grade 12. It also describes what engineering concepts children are able to understand and at what age, and provides an analysis of more than a dozen engineering curriculum projects. "

Digitales is a great site to assist in the development of evaluation rubrics for a variety of project types.

Like the variety of projects to choose from for which you could create rubrics. Very easy and the final rubric looks very nicely organized.

The National Academy of the Sciences has launched this new website that gives an overview of the U.S. energy system. It covers 4 main topics: energy uses, sources of energy, the cost of energy (in terms of the environment, national security, and sustainability), and energy efficiency. The site has easy to navigate content and links to source material, and it includes n energy quiz, a glossary, and a source library. The site's producers are also developing curriculum-based materials for high school and middle school classrooms. Two special features--Our Energy System and Understasnding Efficiency--are designed to actively engage visitors and enhance their understanding of energy, including what it is, h ow we use it, and ways to conserve it.

Good Professional Development Site created by ITS

DesignBlocks is a drag-and-drop programming language based on Scratch, TurtleArt and Processing. It is being developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab.