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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?"

article talking about both the iPad 2 (which isn't out yet) and a rumored iPad 3 in the fall (????)

Gates & McArthur foundation looking to sponsor a version of Sim City for Educational use. 

"GlassLab is working with commercial game companies, assessment experts, and those versed in digital classrooms to build SimCityEDU, a downloadable game designed for sixth graders. Scheduled to be be released in the fall of 2013, it builds on SimCity's city management theme, but provides specific challenges to players in the subject of STEM. "The big pain point we've heard from teachers is that they cannot entertain their kids to the level that they are being entertained outside of the classroom," said Jessica Lindl, general manager of GlassLab. "They want to be able to create meaningful learning experiences and they just can't compete with the digital tools their kids are accessing all the time.""

"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 Education technology could reverse this trend-if it is not jinxed by politics, bureaucracy and outdated institutional structures.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. "

color film footage of WWII in Singapore

What penguins can teach us about resilience

"This is what psychologists call "metacognition," thinking about how we think. Trailblazer gave me an x-ray view of my own mental activity. Clicking on random memes triggered a curious search query and-boom-20 pages later I'd find a useful scientific paper. (I'm now more forgiving of falling down a Twitter hole.) Traditional academic citations never capture serendipity, the stumbling, associational nature of how knowledge relates to itself. Trailblazer does."

"Oxford's renowned biologist Richard Dawkins puts the history of life on earth in perspective, using simply a piano. This short video is a great jumping off point for this brilliant lecture Dawkins gave back in 1991. It's called "Waking Up in the Universe, Growing Up in the Universe," and the 57-minute video pulls you deeper into some big questions. What's the origin of life? Where do we fall in the scheme of life on planet Earth? What's our role in the larger universe? And how lucky are we to have the brains and tools to understand the awesome wonders that surround us? "

"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.

"Failing Forward" is a relatively recent entry into our cultural lexicon-at least as far has headlines go anyway-that has utility for students and teachers. Popularized from the book of the same name, the idea behind failing forward is to see failing as a part of success rather than its opposite. Provided we keep moving and pushing and trying and reflecting, failure should, assuming we're thinking clearly, lead to progress, So rather than failing and falling back, we fail forward. Tidy little metaphor.

"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.