Group items tagged

"This website contains the on-line versions of books previously published in hard copy by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress as part of the Country Studies/Area Handbook Series sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Army between 1986 and 1998. Each study offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the country or region's historical setting, geography, society, economy, political system, and foreign policy.

The food crisis has pushed the number of hungry people in the world to almost 1bn, in what the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation described on Tuesday as a "serious setback" to global efforts to reduce mass starvation.

Numbeo is the world's largest database of user contributed data about cities and countries worldwide. Numbeo provides current and timely information on world living conditions including cost of living, housing indicators, health care, traffic, crime and pollution.

Having children abroad? Your country may not want them 

Over the last few years K-12 schools and districts across the country have been investing heavily in iPads for classroom use. EdTechTeacher has been leading iPad professional development at many of these schools and we've seen firsthand how they approach iPad integration. While we've witnessed many effective approaches to incorporating iPads successfully in the classroom, we're struck by the common mistakes many schools are making with iPads, mistakes that are in some cases crippling the success of these initiatives. We're sharing these common challenges with you, so your school doesn't have to make them.

Twitter has turned into such an important part of modern society. But just fast is Twitter growing? Which countries are using Twitter? How do people use Twitter? This visualization shows us exactly what happens on Twitter and where.

"As the Council on Foreign Relations reported recently, America continues to slip down the international rankings in education, falling during the past three decades from first to tenth in the educational level of those leaving high school, and from third to 13th for college students. Education technology could reverse this trend-if it is not jinxed by politics, bureaucracy and outdated institutional structures. Countries where it is not now have the chance to race ahead. "

QuadBlogging is a leg up to an audience for your class/school blog. Over the last 12 months 70,000 pupils have been involved in QuadBlogging from 2000 classes in over 35 countries. The concept is simple, either watch the short video to the right or keep reading… A Blog needs an audience to keep it alive for your learners. Too often blogs wither away leaving the learners frustrated and bored. Quadblogging gives your blog a truly authentic and global audience that will visit your blog, leave comments and return on a cycle. Here's how it works:

Uses google maps to look up an address. type in an address slowly letter by letter, space by space, and watch each time where it takes you.  When typing an address, type in the number, followed by the street, suburb, state, country. could be used for young children.

If you had to leave your country and could take only one thing, what would it be?  What if you knew you would be abused and in danger on the journey? In Spanish with subtitles.... re issue of migrants moving through Mexico.... Socks is one thing they need....

Interesting read document the ways in which "education" is being reframed in this country at the peril, I think, of losing everything that is best about schools and teachers and classrooms.

"The JiTT strategy is based on the notion of a feedback loop between the out-of-class assignments and the subsequent classroom activities. Based on the student responses, the instructor selects an appropriate set of items that will make up the lesson. The classroom experience then informs the choice of the next set of web assignments. Over the past seven years faculty across the country have developed a rich set of JiTT resources. To look at some examples please visit A JiTT Sampler. "

"It began as a newspaper column, became an Internet hoax, was turned into a song by a hipster movie director and is now a hit on radio stations around the country. Along the way, it became an example of how words - known to the e-generation as "content" - morphed from one form into another, aided by misinformation and high-speed modems."

"Design that Matters (DtM), a 501c3 nonprofit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, creates new products that allow social enterprises in developing countries to offer improved services and scale more quickly. DtM has built a collaborative design process through which hundreds of volunteers in academia and industry donate their skills and expertise to the creation of breakthrough products for communities in need. Our goal is to deliver a better quality of service, and a better quality of life, to millions of beneficiaries through products designed for our clients."

"Welcome to Kids Around the World! This site will introduce your students to the lives, customs, and cultures of children in countries throughout the developing world. There are a lot of ways you can use Kids Around the World in the classroom! Explore the site yourself to get an idea of how you want to use it in your curriculum. The lesson plans provided are excellent tools to get you started. They include activities for Grades K"

A list of games related to: "Wars and military actions between countries or regions spurred by geographic, religious, ethnic or other differences."

A list of games related to:  "The state of not having enough resources to secure basic needs such as adequate food, water, shelter or sanitary facilities. Populations in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are especially afflicted. "

A free online university course, but some of the readings might be useful to teachers in primary/secondary  - DESCRIPTION: "This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor-or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?"

"The GPI, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, is the world's leading measure of global peacefulness. It gauges ongoing domestic and international conflict, safety and security in society, and militarisation in 153 countries by taking into account 23 separate indicators."

"What is constant multi-tasking doing to teens' brains? That's the question NewsHour Science Correspondent Miles O'Brien set out to answer as he interviewed teens and neuroscience experts around the country. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health are currently studying whether teens' addictions to technology are wiring their brains differently than those of their parents and earlier generations. During adolescence, brain connections are "pruned" - those that are used a lot are strengthened, while those that are rarely used fall off. According to a scientist at UCLA who also studies the effects of technology on teens' brains, the brain's release of the chemical dopamine has a lot to do with why technology can become addictive for young people. When the brain experiences something pleasurable, like connecting with others via social networking, it is hard-wired to want more of it by releasing dopamine. Yet other researchers say multi-tasking and playing intense video games can actually help develop some skills like better vision and improved short-term memory. Because modern technology is still in its infancy, scientists are only uncovering the beginnings of how it will affect the human brain functions of tomorrow.