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"It's very important for us to build this into our understanding of what it means to teach writing. We need to be able to make that part of our understanding of the new normal of writing -- not an additional piece -- but the new normal."

Game to practice number bonds to 20

Today, worldwide, hundreds of millions of people play video games. The vast majority of those players are perfectly normal people, meaning that nothing newsworthy ever happens to them, but some small percentage of them are killers, some are extraordinarily depressed, some are suicidal; and every day some video gamer somewhere does something terrible or experiences something terrible. All this is also true of the hundreds of millions of people who don't play video games. 

Article from Psychology Today about whether video game addition occurs.

Summary via the Scout Report (May 2012): "This site was created by two German physicists (Ute Kraus and Corvin Zahn) and it offers a "visual and intuitive approach to the theory of relativity." The site does not offer the basics dealing with the theory of relativity, but rather a novel approach to understanding what an object might look like while moving near the speed of light or what it might be like to "travel to the vicinity of a black hole and take a look-around." As the site notes, "Part of the difficulties in understanding relativity are due to the fact that relativistic effects contradict everyday experience." On the homepage, visitors can learn more in the Content area. Here they can watch remarkable visualizations such as Rolling Wheels, Sights that Einstein Could Not Yet See, and Accelerated Motion. The site also offers brief explanations of each visualization, along with links to additional resources. Finally, the site also includes a gallery of images and an FAQ area. [KMG]"

Summary via The Scout Report (Apr 2012): "After watching this erudite (and fun) program from NOVA, you'll never again wonder "Where's selenium?" This two-hour program is hosted by David Pogue (the host of NOVA's "Making Stuff" program) and it "spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe's most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare." It's a fascinating way to learn about the history of the periodic table, and the discovery and properties of the elements. The site also contains fourteen additional features, such as the Name That Element! quiz, an iPad app, a chemical bonds quiz, an interactive periodic table, and an exploration of the "amazing atomic clock." It may make chemistry junkies out of neophytes, and the already-converted will find much to keep them occupied here. [KMG]"

Join over 200 projects designed and facilitated by teachers and students. In addition to connecting students' learning with local and global issues and meeting specific curriculum needs, every iEARN project must answer the question, "How will this project improve the quality of life on the planet?" This vision and purpose is the glue that holds iEARN together, enabling participants to become global citizens who make a difference by collaborating with their peers around the world.

"Neuroscience & the Classroom: Making Connections is a self-contained distance-learning course distributed free of charge on the Web. The course is designed by Kurt Fischer, director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Program at Harvard University Graduate School of Education; Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, assistant professor of education at the Rossier School of Education and assistant professor of psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California; and Matthew H. Schneps, George E. Burch Fellow in Theoretic Medicine and Affiliated Sciences at the Smithsonian Institution and director of the Laboratory for Visual Learning at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The multimedia course consists of six units, with an introduction and a conclusion. Each unit contains many integrated videos and sidebars of additional information, as well as a list of resources."

The Chicago Homer is a multilingual database that uses the search and display capabilities of electronic texts to make the distinctive features of Early Greek epic accessible to readers with and without Greek. Except for fragments, it contains all the texts of these poems in the original Greek. In addition, the Chicago Homer includes English and German translations, in particular Lattimore's Iliad, James Huddleston's Odyssey, Daryl Hine's translations of Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, and the German translations of the Iliad and Odyssey by Johan Heinrich Voss. Through the associated web site Eumaios users of the Chicago Homer can also from each line of the poem access pertinent Iliad Scholia and papyrus readings. The data of the Chicago Homer have also been integrated into WordHoard, an application for the close reading and scholarly analysis of deeply tagged literary texts. WordHoard does not replicate all functionalities of the Chicago Homer but has some features of its own, notably the simultaneous display of all forms of a given lemma, a metrically parsed version of the text, and the display of the scholia adjacent to the text.

"A survey of teachers who instruct American middle and high school students finds that digital technologies are impacting student writing in myriad ways and there are significant advantages from tech-based learning. Some 78% of the 2,462 advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project say digital tools such as the internet, social media, and cell phones "encourage student creativity and personal expression." In addition: 96% agree digital technologies "allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience" 79% agree that these tools "encourage greater collaboration among students" According to teachers, students' exposure to a broader audience for their work and more feedback from peers encourages greater student investment in what they write and in the writing process as a whole. At the same time, these teachers give their students modest marks when it comes to writing and highlight some areas needing attention. Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts.""

Visual interactive display of the size and scale of cells -- with the starting point the "large" coffee bean (12 x 8 mm).....\nOne page of a broader educational website from the Univ of Utah, Genetic Science Learning Center -- other pages are definitely middle/secondary school (if not univ) level...\n<

This list of top tweeters is specifically designed with maths teachers in mind.  Many of the tweeters are fellow maths teachers from across the globe whilst others are people who get very excited about maths and just love to tweet about it.  Many of these people tweet about a lot besides maths but I think each of them would be a valuable addition to your timeline if you're a maths teacher or interested in maths.  Follow them if you'd like links, ideas and conversation about maths and maths teaching.

There is an argument for creating videos as a means of engagement, as an approach involving doing something a little different; something that will hopefully result in a higher likelihood of it being committed to long term memory. These are additional benefits. The real value in these tasks is their requirement for genuine higher order thinking skills, and the resulting assessment of student understanding that can be used in a meaningful way.

"A striking assumption animates arguments on both sides, namely that nonfiction is seldom literary and certainly not literature. Even Mr. Coleman erects his case on largely dispiriting, utilitarian grounds: nonfiction may help you win the corner office but won't necessarily nourish the soul. As an English teacher and writer who traffics in factual prose, I'm with Mr. Coleman. In my experience, students need more exposure to nonfiction, less to help with reading skills, but as a model for their own essays and expository writing, what Mr. Gladwell sought by ingesting "Talk of the Town" stories. I love fiction and poetry as much as the next former English major and often despair over the quality of what passes for "informational texts," few of which amount to narrative much less literary narrative. What schools really need isn't more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. Most students could use greater familiarity with what newspaper, magazine and book editors call "narrative nonfiction": writing that tells a factual story, sometimes even a personal one, but also makes an argument and conveys information in vivid, effective ways."

"What schools really need isn't more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. "  Totally supports my belief that nonfiction longreads are out there on the internet and are not being taken advantage of by teachers -- enough.

"A learning environment expert and education advocate, Elyse is dedicated to improving the teaching of writing by helping educators understand the changing nature of the discipline in a digital age."

"For readers who heretofore have been spared exposure to this little concatenation of capital letters, or who have, quite understandably, misconstrued its meaning, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, supposedly the major food groups of a comprehensive science education."