Group items tagged

Stream Frontline videos off the PBS site.

"This site is a companion to the PBS special Misunderstood Minds, and profiles a variety of learning problems and expert opinions. It is designed to give parents and teachers a better understanding of learning processes, insights into difficulties, and strategies for responding. "

Paul Tough address the issue of intelligence as an indicator of value in education.  NB: The library has Tough's latest book - "How Children Succeed"

Reading images - lots of good strategies here

Reading photos

Turns out sitting your 5-year-old in front of the PBS Kids website while you make dinner or encouraging your fourth grader to play "Math Missions" on your iPad after school is not necessarily enough to ensure they learn from the experience.

" Creative Visions has developed educational curricula to accompany the GlobalTribe series. Each of the lessons is designed for grades 9-12 and can be adapted to fill a range of in-class hours. Lessons for each GlobalTribe episode are available as an Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file."

"SweetSearch is a Search Engine for Students.  It searches only the 35,000 Web sites that our staff of research experts and librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved when creating the content on findingDulcinea. We constantly evaluate our search results and "fine-tune" them, by increasing the ranking of Web sites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS and university Web sites.  "

"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.

great collection of games for your IWB

A video for kids discussing life on earth looked at in numbers, e.g., how many of each species, the heaviest biomass by species, by individual organism, etc. A new series.

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]"

Awesome vid about Visual Culture online. Not suitable for kids, but very interesting and funny. Finally I understand where Nyan Cat came from.  Watch to the end to see how to make a meme. Very amusing.

Great video for explaining graphic design