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.
Just announced - Chromebooks dropped to the sub-$200 price point.
Some of the differences: $50 cheaper, a 320 gb HDD instead of a 16 gb SSD, a VGA port, only 3.5 hours of battery life.
Courtesy of Lifehacker, thought Sallie and her boys might be interested in this one. Could probably find some "educational" games to play on here as well... maybe not :).
This is the teacher who "designed and deployed the world's first whole-school 1:1 iPad deployment."
He has a podcast called Canvas where he and another guy (Federico Viticci) talk about how they play and work only with an iPad.
He also has a podcast called Out of School.
He also has a killer Scottish accent.
From the CLS eNews 10/29/14 - In order to promote Christian education and the role their school plays in offering it to young children, St. John's in Neillsville, Wis. posts a quaterly video to their Web site. The St. John's Connection highlights Pre-K through 8th grade events throughout the quarter and gives parents and prospective families insight as to what St. John's has to offer its students.
Tom - Do you have a RaspPi?? My guys are currently working on using it to play sounds when someone walks between two infrared sensors (think musical stairs at St. John's). Fun stuff!
Concurrently they are dabbling with an Arduino to run a DIY 3D printer they are building.
I'm in over my head here!
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