UWCSEA Teachers

If you are a parent who has been limiting your child's computer play because of the claims you have read of harmful effects, the research summarized here and in my previous posts on video gaming might give you pause.  The bulk of the research suggests that the claims about negative effects of video gaming are largely myths and the positive effects are real.  As children know in their bones, the kinds of mental skills that video games help to develop are among the skills that are increasingly important in today's world.

I love Instagram because it prompts me to take and share pictures of things that I might otherwise glance at then forget about. Before cell phones entered my life I rarely took pictures. Last week I took the picture that you see below. Almost as soon as it appeared in my Facebook feed via Instagram, my friend Kelly commented with, "shouldn't they be more concerned about weight than the number of people?" Kelly is a middle school math teacher so this picture was right in her wheelhouse of math prompts.

There is an argument for creating videos as a means of engagement, as an approach involving doing something a little different; something that will hopefully result in a higher likelihood of it being committed to long term memory. These are additional benefits. The real value in these tasks is their requirement for genuine higher order thinking skills, and the resulting assessment of student understanding that can be used in a meaningful way.

Gaming can help growth of new neurons. 

Piktochart design series - 8 articles to design great infographics

Good visual arrangement for infographics is putting together graphic and visual elements in a manner that draws your reader's attention. The key to achieving simple, elegant and attractive content are ample whitespace and a well arranged layout. What is whitespace? White space is as its name defined-space that is unmarked in a piece of infographic or visual representation. It could be margins, padding or the space between columns, text and icons and design elements. Whitespace matters to create visually engaging content A page crammed full of text and images will appear busy. This makes the content difficult to read. It makes you unable to focus on the important stuff too. On the other hand, too much of white space can make your page look incomplete. It is always crucial to remember visually engaging content is usually clean and simple.

Many educators are interested in the idea of connecting their classes to other classes or individuals that could have a positive influence on their students. They just aren't sure where to find people to connect with. Thankfully, the Internet is full of resources to help classes get connected. Here are 10 places where you can turn

"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 to deal with cruel comments on twitter/blog/youtube

Really neat, concise article about advantages to Twitter for principals.

How photography can help improve students' writing.

Design resources - links to online self-study