Group items tagged

"HighWire Press is the largest archive of free full-text science on Earth! As of 11/30/12, we are assisting in the online publication of 2,121,227 free full-text articles and 6,690,060 total articles. There are 35 sites with free trial periods, and 61 completely free sites. 283 sites have free back issues, and 1342 sites have pay per view! "

Interesting article on the dark side of Wikipedia. Not an entirely balanced article, but certainly pointing out why critical evaluation of information found in Wikipedia is essential.

"How a handful of researchers are trying to save childhood" by Tom Barlett.... Interesting article on the range of research on the importance of play.... I will be buying some of the books mentioned in the article for the PD collection of the library.

Summary via The Scout Report (May 2012): "The journal Nature provides a range of peer-reviewed scientific works on a weekly basis, along with science updates and materials aimed at the general public. This particular feature on malaria is available at no charge to the curious public, and as the homepage asks, "What will it take to finally subdue this deadly disease?" Visitors will find a collection of recent articles in the Outlook area, such as "The Numbers Game" and "Vaccines: The Take Home Lesson." Moving on, the Collection area brings together peer-reviewed pieces on the story behind the efforts to eradicate the disease, along with some nice pieces about how the disease is transmitted. It's easy to see how this collection could be used in a public health course, or in another classroom setting. Finally, the site also includes links to popular articles from Nature, along with other open access materials. [KMG]"

Really interesting article by Katie Roiphe about why danah boyd thinks you should not monitor your kids' web surfing.

"Teacher Kelly Finn, left, works with students Rachel Mathews, center, and Sarah Xu during a writer's workshop at The Barstow School in Kansas City, Mo." - Photo to the right of the article.  Article advocating tech use in schools. One school is doing writer's workshop and using technology as part of the process. Not much detail on how they are doing that exactly, but interesting to see how schools are forging tech & writers workshop together

Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day In classrooms that use assessment to support learning, teachers continually adapt instruction to meet student needs.

article from October 2010 issue of "Science and Chlidren" -- re getting kids to act out scientific concepts

Article re how the color and shape of rooms affects the thinking that goes on inside the rooms... "They tested 600 subjects when surrounded by red, blue or neutral colors-in both real and virtual environments. The differences were striking. Test-takers in the red environments, were much better at skills that required accuracy and attention to detail, such as catching spelling mistakes or keeping random numbers in short-term memory. Though people in the blue group performed worse on short-term memory tasks, they did far better on tasks requiring some imagination, such as coming up with creative uses for a brick or designing a children's toy. In fact, subjects in the blue environment generated twice as many "creative outputs" as subjects in the red one. Why? According to the scientists, the color blue automatically triggers associations with openness and sky, while red makes us think of danger and stop signs. (Such associations are culturally mediated, of course; Chinese, for instance, tend to associate red with prosperity and good luck.) It's not just color. A similar effect seems to hold for any light, airy space."

another site like LongReads or The Browser or Arts & Letters Daily -- that curates great articles online

Social Media for PD - interesting article.

Really interesting article from Grant Wiggins on curriculum. Definitely worth reading!

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.

Based on research not just opinion. What is it about games that is transcendent? Perhaps it's the fact that games are optional, they are obstacles that we volunteer to overcome. Games are what we choose to do. They are what we are drawn to when we have a choice about how to spend our time and energy.  Games are freedom.

Article with lots of links to research around the subject of games being good for us.

Welcome to the Research In Action section of PE Central. In this section, we post research articles that we think will be helpful to PE teachers. 

Maryanne Wolf, author of "Proust and the Squid", discusses deep reading. The page also shows links to other great articles related to the digital landscape. From the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Fascinating article by Jane McGonigal on How Might Video Games be Good for us. Includes links to research in support of each of her claims. 

Article showing that threats to children online have been overblown.  Bullying biggest concern, not sexual solicitation.

Essential readings from #beyondlaptops conference at Yokohama International School. Some really good articles here

Really interesting article from the NY Times about gender fluidity. Makes me reflective about what happens at school...