Group items tagged

Cool online magazine for older kids...about children and girls access to education...

"wcsmusic, formerly i music, is an exciting concept aimed at widening access to musical excellence through the production of revolutionary interactive learning materials. Due to the generosity of our funding partners, our products are available completely - FREE OF CHARGE. These include our award winning software, The Virtual Javanese Gamelan, and our second module, Virtual West African Drumming. These materials will offer a full 'hands on' practical exploration of an aspect of music from a computer workstation, integrating performance, composition and aural perception. Follow the links to discover more about the materials we are offering. wcsmusic is the trademark of Wells Cathedral School."

". a free and simple online service for people who manage their time using a Google Calendar. Log in using your Google account, approve our access to your calendar and you immediately get a simple dedicated web page that lets your customers/students/colleagues see when you are free. Then, with just a couple of clicks, they can book you. Add your logo at the top of the page, and a few words of instruction, and you have a simple booking web-presence in a few minutes. Alternatively, grab the emebed code to include the calendar on your blog or website." NB: must be turned on by the administrator for GAPPS accounts

"Welcome to the AAAS Project 2061 Science Assessment Website The assessment items on this website are the result of more than a decade of research and development by Project 2061, a long-term science education reform initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Here you will find free access to more than 600 items. The items: Are appropriate for middle and early high school students. Test student understanding in the earth, life, physical sciences, and the nature of science. Test for common misconceptions as well as correct ideas. This website also includes: Data on how well U.S. students are doing in science and where they are having difficulties, broken out by gender, English language learner status, and whether the students are in middle school or high school. "My Item Bank," a feature that allows you to select, save, and print items and answer keys. Intended primarily for teachers, these assessment items and resources will also be useful to education researchers, test developers, and anyone who is interested in the performance of middle and high school students in science."

The American Association for the Advancement of Science's Project 2061 (an imitative to improve science, math and technology literacy) -- "A new Web site is taking aim at this challenge, providing educators with quick lists of scientific statements broken down by subject matter, highlighting concepts that tend to be misunderstood by students.... The site (which is accessible after free registration) also provides teachers with some 600 multiple choice questions for tests that could help pinpoint conceptual sticking points. Multiple-choice tests have drawn criticism for being too reductive, and DeBoer acknowledges that "too often test questions are not linked explicitly to the ideas and skills that the students are expected to learn." So to figure out just what kids know-or think they know-researchers involved in the seven-year-long project tested more than 150,000 students in some 1,000 classrooms and conducted interviews with many of them to try to figure out how well the questions were getting at the underlying understandings."

"Would you like to develop an iPhone or Android application? If so, it just got much easier with the Buzztouch content management system. Visitors don't need to know any coding, and after creating a Buzztouch account they can get started building their own application. Visitors should look over the "How Buzztouch Works" area to get acclimated to the program and they should also check out the "FAQ" section. This version is compatible with all operating systems and users will need to have access to an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone to test their application's functionality. "

ABSTRACT This article outlines a learning intervention which the authors call Learning by Design. The goal of this intervention is classroom and curriculum transformation, and the professional learning of teachers. The experiment involves the practical application of the learning theory to everyday classroom practice. Its ideas are grounded in pedagogical principles originally articulated in the Multiliteracies project, an approach to teaching and learning that addresses literacy and learning in the context of new media and the globalizing knowledge economy. The need for a new approach to learning arises from a complex range of factors - among them, changes in society and the economy; the potential for new forms of communication made possible by emerging technologies; and rising expectations amongst learners that education will maximize their potential for personal fulfillment, civic participation and access to work. The authors first brought together the Learning by Design team of researchers and teachers in 2003 in order to reflect upon and create new and dynamic learning environments. A series of research and development activities were embarked upon in Australia and, more recently, in the United States, exploring the potentials of new pedagogical approaches, assisted by digital technologies, to transform today's learning environments and create learning for the future - learning environments which could be more relevant to a changing world, more effective in meeting community expectations and which manage educational resources more efficiently. One of the key challenges was to create learning environments which engaged the sensibilities of learners who are increasingly immersed in digital and global lifestyles - from the entertainment sources they choose to the way they work and learn. It was also about enabling teachers to explicitly track and be aware of the relationship between their pedagogical choices and their students' learning outcomes.

Helpful tutorial from Luis Perez.

For centuries, becoming an "inventor" has been a hard gig to crack. Complexities relating to financing, engineering, distribution, and legalities have stood in the way of brilliant people executing on their great ideas. Since launching in 2009, Quirky has rapidly changed the way the world thinks about product development.

Interesting blog post advocating for the use of analysing images in support of literacy skills.

a platform which brings world heritage sites of the modern and ancient world online. Using Street View, 3D modeling and other Google technologies, we have made these amazing sites accessible to everyone across the globe. With videos, photos and in-depth information, you can now explore the world wonders from your armchair just as if you were there.

Another colorful QR code generator

Blog post from CIS teacher Ben Grundy about handwriting's slow demise. "With the continual development of technology features such as predictive text, autocorrect and speech recognition, along with the rapidly developing field of mobile technology giving us access to these tools whenever we need to 'write', it's safe to say that we no longer need to handwrite. Well, at least not in length."

Interesting article - The age of teaching handwriting is finished!

In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. We need schools that are developing these skills." That's why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn't a commodity that's delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students' own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion-and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.

Very interesting statistics on American teens' use of social media and technology.

Sugata Mitra's second TED talk (2010) in which he talks about how far he has taken his experiment.... children teaching children technology.... SOLEs (Self-Organizing Learning Environments)

Using speech-to-text takes time to practice. Great article explaining the impact it had on one young learner.