Group items tagged

Build a space craft to survive other planets' weather.

Suggested by CoolCatTeacher Vicki Davis; She uses it for multiple things in her classroom: 20%/Genius Hour projects/tracking, Suggestions from kids on what they want her to teach, etc. Mentioned here: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2013/04/7-key-ingredients-in-successful-21st.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CoolCatTeacherBlog+%28Cool+Cat+Teacher+Blog%29

The article is mostly an interview with Covenant Eyes, who makes accountability software and recently produced a free e-book for parents. I downloaded it to check it out and ended up reading the first four chapters just today. Chapters are short and include discussion questions. For a non-WELS resource, so far they do a fairly good job of being gospel-centered/grace-driven. Looks like a great resource.

A great reminder of why we use technology in the classroom. Check out the posters at the bottom of the post. Great for inservice........

Saw this the other week and made it my desktop as a reminder.

Brilliant.org article - 7/23/13 - NPR

The Stock Market game gives kids a chance to see how the stock market works, and reinforces economic concepts.

This is a great site to get your kids involved in some inquiry base projects involved collaboration - 21st century skills and ISTE standards. You do not have to do the legwork as it has been done for you. Just sign up and participate and expand your kids' world view!

Great logic and pattern games gr. 3-5, but also games you can create yourself t use with your smartboard! Could we create some and share with one another?

Trying to connect kids all over the globe. Interesting idea from a couple of my friends here in Omaha.

A witty parody picture book for the gadget-crazy kid in all of us.

Girls Who Code unveils 2 coding-themed books Girls Who Code is releasing two books this week, a fiction novel called "The Friendship Code," and an illustrated coding manual. "I wanted to create a series of books that girls could see themselves in, where you could sneak in the algorithms and you sneak in the coding," said founder and CEO Reshma Saujani, whose organization has taught about 40,000 to code over the past five years.

Has anyone ever used something like this in his classroom?  I have students that greatly enjoy having some music playing in the background (I limit it to classical piano, mostly).  Anyone know of a study that demonstrates if this helps students learn?

I've used Simply Noise in my classroom of 5th graders and I have had mixed results. Some kids really like it and some hate it. I tend to prefer the brown noise as opposed to white or pink noise. I think I might make less of a deal of it with my next class next year and just use it for a little longer period of time to get a better read on its effectiveness. I took my students to on a field trip to Environmental Systems Inc in Brookfield, WI and they use brown noise generators throughout their office/cubicle area to mask ambient noise. I found it very soothing. They used to have it timed to go off at 4pm and they found that their employees subconsciously sensed it was time to leave for the day. Not wanting to encourage them to leave early, they decided to gradually bring the volume of the noise down over the course of 30 minutes and that took care of their issue. Not necessarily applicable to what you were asking about, but kind of interesting.