Group items tagged

Science, being one of the more notable inquiries into anything and everything, thrives here. Anyone tasked with teaching kids (or even adults) of all ages might want to mosey over to some of the following examples - which cover a wide range of fields as well as general education - and check out the great resources and talks they have to offer the scientific classroom.

"The Stella Prize is a new major literary award for Australian women's writing. The Stella Prize celebrates Australian women's contribution to literature. Named after one of Australia's most important female authors, Stella Maria 'Miles' Franklin (1879-1954), the prize rewards one writer with a significant monetary prize of $50,000. The Stella Prize will also raise the profile of women's writing through the Stella Prize longlists and shortlists, encourage a future generation of women writers, and bring readers to the work of Australian women. The Stella Prize will be awarded for the first time in 2013, and both fiction and non-fiction books are eligible."

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.""

This could be kinda cool to play with.

Kids are growing up in a digital world. They connect, share, learn, explore, and play in way unimaginable just a  generation ago. This is the only world they know and their parents, teachers, political leaders and even the media  are all doing what they can to catch up. The emergence of social media, in all its extraordinary forms, is pushing the  boundaries of what we think of as private while giving us all, and our children, a platform to express ourselves anytime,  anywhere.  It can be an unnerving prospect to a parent or teacher to see their kids pack so much processing power in their  pockets. The media have played on these fears with screaming headlines and nightly news leads about cases of  online predators, pornography, cyberbullying and sexting. Some lawmakers have proposed online safety legislation  based on a single event, such as a suicide that had an online component to it. At least RQHVtate Dttorney  Jeneral suggested raising the age limit for kids accessing social media to 16 years.  While understandable, these reactions are not always helpful or healthy

" Written by an educator for educators, the free doctopus script gives teachers the ability to auto-generate, pre-share, and manage grading and feedback on templated Docs for group and individual projects. "

""Take a look at the smartphone in your hand," Jaime Casap, Global Education Evangelist for Google, told the crowd during his keynote at the FETC 2013 conference in Orlando Wednesday. "That smartphone is just a phone to a kid. And to many kids, it isn't even a phone." Casap pulled his own phone from his pocket. "What you have in your hand is going to be their Commodore 64. It's going to be their Apple IIe. When they're in their twenties, it's going to be the thing they buy at a thrift store and put on a shelf in their hipster apartment just because it's cool to have one." That's the generation, he said, that's coming into our schools, and we need to be ready for that."

BlogBooker produces a high-quality PDF Blog Book from all your blog's entries and comments. Archives can be generated from any blog running on WordPress, LiveJournal (and derivatives) or Blogger. May be useful for student / classroom blogs as a snapshot at the end of the year? 

"The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 7000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas. This is supplemented by a comprehensive range of multimedia artefacts from the Imperial War Museum, a separate archive of over 6,500 items contributed by the general public, and a set of specially developed educational resources. These educational resources include an exciting new exhibition in the three-dimensional virtual world Second Life. Freely available to the public as well as the educational community, the First World War Poetry Digital Archive is a significant resource for studying the First World War and the literature it inspired."

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]"

When TED launched its educational website for younger students last week, I think teachers everywhere realised they had to up their game. The 3-10 minute videos are designed to encourage curiosity and show how the world works using compelling animation and the audible explanations of a gifted teacher.  Even if you're not in high school, the videos are sometimes fascinating, sometimes kinda strange, but generally very cool. Here are some of the best videos that are designed to amaze and challenge your brain.

Interesting visual tool - you type in a word, it generates / finds words from the thesaurus and creates a mind map

Be Web Aware comprises a PSA campaign on television, radio, print and outdoor and this comprehensive Web site. The site, which was developed by MNet, is full of information and tools to help parents effectively manage Internet use in the home. In 2010, Bell funded the re-design and updating of www.bewebaware.ca. MNet would like to thank Bell for its generous ongoing support of this valuable resource for Canadian parents.

Does the thought of making a positive impact on the future generation scare the pants off you? Are you looking to get by your evaluations with just enough credibility and success to avoid any repercussions or tough questions? Here are a few tips for you...

A wiki sharing student-generated Math Movies.

Educational Flash web sites aside, the iPad is a great device for browsing the internet. At the heart of this is Apple's flagship browser, Safari. Overall, Safari is a capable browser on the iPad but there is some functionality missing from the app when compared to its big brother on Macs. Fortunately, iOS has enough tricks available for third party apps to fill in the gaps that Safari for iPad doesn't address. Here are three alternative browsers that I use regularly to perform tasks I think are necessary for educational use and general use that I can't do using Apple's default browser.

101 ways to use Tagxedo

Guide for using design thinking to generate innovative solutions for classrooms, schools, communities.

Between April 20 and July 15, 2010, a generally accepted estimate of nearly 5 million barrels (200 million gallons) of crude oil emerged from the wellhead drilled into the seafloor by BP from the now-destroyed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Now that the flow of oil has been stopped, the impact of all the spilled oil and natural gas is still being measured. The current moratorium on deep water remains in place as reports from varying scientific groups are at odds about the extent of the remaining oil, and some fishing restrictions have already been lifted. As BP finalizes its work in killing the well, here is a collection of photos from around the Gulf of Mexico over the past couple of months, as all of those affected enter the next phase of this event. (42 photos total)