TL2014 – Resources of the week… (weekly)
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What Teachers Need to Know about Creative Commons ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
An easy-to-understand explanation (including video and inforgraphic) of creative commons.
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An Open Letter to School Leaders Now Manning the Firewalls of Education
A thoughtful argument for unblocking social media sites in schools.
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ARTSEDGE | Perfect Pitch | Take the Field
Perfect Pitch is a nice little game produced by the Kennedy Center’s Arts Edge. Perfect Pitch teaches students about the instruments in an orchestra through a baseball game setting. The game introduces students to four eras of orchestral music and the instruments used in each. Students can create their own small orchestras and virtually play each instrument to hear how it sounds. After building an orchestra students then test their knowledge in short quizzes about the instruments and their sounds.
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Use Technology to Develop Global Competence | Asia Society
The article outlines three ways technology can be used to develop global competence: investigate the world; recognize and weigh perspectives; communicate ideas.
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How Can Teachers Prepare Kids for a Connected World?
A real-world example of how changing pedagogy can provide students with necessary skills, connect them to others in the world and help them meet the standards. Students can still meet the standards (and then some) through changed pedagogy.
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From Cave Paintings to the Internet
An amazing online project to document the history of information and media. The project has a huge scope, starting with entries from 2,500,000 BCE right up to the modern day.
The project also provides a great Google Maps based interface to explore the records geographically and thematically. The map allows the user to select from a large number of themes, from archaeology to writing and palaeography. The entries can also be explored by historical era and by regions. -
Five Questions to Ask about the Common Core
A thought-provoking set of questions to ask about the Common Core. “The efforts to develop common curricula nationally and internationally are simply working to perfect an outdated paradigm. The outcomes are precisely the opposite of the talents we need for the new era. A well organized, tightly controlled, and well-executed education system can transmit the prescribed content much more effectively than one that is less organized, loosely monitored, and less unified. In the meantime, the latter allows for exceptions with more room for individual exploration and experimentation. The question is what matters in the future: Do we want individuals who are good at taking tests, or individuals who are creative and entrepreneurial?”
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Jazz on PBS Kids Go is a nice little site on which children can learn about the history of jazz music, styles of jazz, and the instruments used in jazz music.
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“John Green teaches you Literature and Hank Green teaches you Ecology. Check out the playlists for past courses in World History and Biology”
TL2014 – Resources of the week… (weekly)
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27 Ways To Publish Student Thinking
Publishing student thinking can be among the most powerful ways to improve learning. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the biggest reason is that the “threat” of publishing moves the lodestone from the classroom to the “real world.” This, of course, changes everything. Note that publishing finished products and the thinking process itself are two very different things–and the idea here is to publishing the thinking itself:”
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Why (And How) Teachers Should Start Using iTunes U
iTunes U is a little discussed gem that more K-12 schools should be taking advantage of. This post provides examples of how teachers are using this as a means of publishing.
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ThinkB4U offers interactive videos to educate viewers about things like protecting online reputations, avoiding scams, research and critical thinking, and responsible text messaging.
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Animated explanations of topics in technology and science. Some of their offerings are videos and some of their offerings are interactive animations.
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Redefining Technology with Instruction (RTI) – ECISD Technology
This site has some useful videos on the SAMR model of technology integration.
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Creating infographics | screencast tutorial on Vimeo
This video walks through two infographic creation sites: easel.ly and infogr.am
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The official DreamWorks companion site to Lincoln, the movie. There are four main features of the Lincoln Learning Hub. Those features are a timeline, What Would Lincoln Do, Team of Rivals, and Who’s Who of Congress.
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12 Digital Tools To Implement Exit Slips – Edudemic
Some tool suggestions for taking exit slips to the next level. Also includes some information on different kinds of exit slips: document learning; emphasize the process of learning; evaluate the effectiveness of instruction.
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Teaching Kids to Curate Content Collections [ACTIVITY] – The Tempered Radical
This is an excellent real-world example of content curation using Scoop.it. The teacher explains the purpose of the curation and provides a link to the criteria for a good source and a good collection.
TL2014 – Resources of the week… (weekly)
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Flow Chart Maker & Online Diagram Software | Lucidchart
As a popular diagramming web application, Lucidchart offers a modern solution to the age-old challenge of visual learning. They recently added graphic organizer templates to their educational template section, so you can make great-looking graphic organizers in a snap.
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Graphing Stories – 15 seconds at a time
Graphing Stories features 24 short videos that tell a story that students can graph to tell the mathematical story happening in the video.
TL2014 – Resources of the week… (weekly)
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MIT launched the MIT + K12 program, encouraging its students to create videos teaching basic engineering and science concepts to younger students. Produced in partnership with Khan Academy and found on the popular video site YouTube, the videos are geared towards K-12 students and aim to interest these younger students in the STEM subjects.
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BioDigital Human | Human Anatomy and Conditions in Interactive 3D
The BioDigital Human is a great free resource that can provide education and fun by giving you a new way to look at and learn about the human body in general and even specific systems.
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Welcome to the Visual.ly Learn Center | Visual.ly
“Here, you’ll find resources to help you understand, design & create infographics.”
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Skype in the Classroom is a website on which teachers worldwide can post ideas for Skype lessons, connect with other classrooms and come up with ways to collaborate via Skype.
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COERLL | Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning
COERLL’s mission is to produce and disseminate Open Educational Resources (OERs) for the Internet public (e.g., online language courses, reference grammars, assessment tools, corpora, etc.). The term OER refers to any educational material offered freely for anyone to use, typically involving some permission to re-mix, improve, and redistribute. Thus, COERLL seeks to promote a culture of collaboration that lies at the heart of the Open Education movement. In addition, COERLL aims to reframe foreign language education in terms of bilingualism and/or multilingualism. As such, all COERLL resources strive to represent more accurately language development and performance along dialectal and proficiency continua.
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The game begins by challenging players to inflict injuries on a loveable, unwitting protagonist. Using their arsenal of placebos, painkillers and spider venom, players then defend a pulsing brain against waves of pain signals.
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What Could Disappear – NYTimes.com
“Maps show coastal and low-lying areas that would be permanently flooded, without engineered protection, in three levels of higher seas. Percentages are the portion of dry, habitable land within the city limits of places listed that would be permanently submerged.”
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Measuring Student Achievement in the New Digital Landscape| The Committed Sardine
Measuring student achievement with a standardized test analogous to measuring a person’s health by determining height and weight. There are many more measures that indicate overall health as there are measures that indicate what students have achieved. There are skills and abilities beyond “information recall and low-level understanding of concepts” that our students will need for success in a rapidly changing world.
TL2014 – Resources of the week… (weekly)
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ScootPad :: Practice. Learn. Succeed.
ScootPad is geared towards math and reading skills, and are specific to the common core standards. It offers self-paced and personalized practice for each student, and is currently in use by over eleven thousand school districts. It offers great resources for parents, teachers, and administrators alike. Like the other resources mentioned, it is also free, and for teachers, it includes a lot of classroom resources for things like homework management and tracking students progress with the common core standards
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PowerMyLearning doesn’t focus solely on the common core, but many of the free educational activities you can choose from address the standards. The site offers lessons and activities for Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Languages, Art, Music, and Technology, and are all grouped by grade/age level. The one disadvantage of this site vs. the others is that you might need to be more familiar with the common core standards to understand clearly if an activity pertains to a standard or not – the site doesn’t generally designate that.
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LearnZillion is a site that aggregates lesson plans that focus on common core standards. They’re created by a “Dream Team” of teachers (who are actually teachers). The lessons are for both Math and ELA , are free to use, and include videos, slides, notes and commentaries from the teachers who created them to help you get the most out of each lesson.
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TED Blog | 9 musical performances by young TEDsters
We have compiled a list of some of our favorite kids, teens and young adults on TED.com sharing beautiful melodies from around the world.
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TED Blog | 8 math talks to blow your mind
Mathematics gets down to work in these talks, breathing life and logic into everyday problems. Prepare for math puzzlers both solved and unsolvable, and even some still waiting for solutions.
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“This site is the work of Dr. Kevin Cordi and Adjunct Professor Kim Masturzo and countless students who have created videos to help educate others about what to do if someone bullies them. They have created videos, planed activities, and provided resources to help people know that when they tell thier story, it counts.”
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It is our hope that through this project and wiki, we can help students understand and reach their full potential as 21st century digital citizens. We also hope to initiate conversations at sites and districts around the importance of digital citizenship skills being taught as an integral part of the core curriculum, as opposed to a set of lessons or unit taught in isolation.
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When Bullying Goes Digital: What We Can Do about Cyber-Bullying by Kevin Hodgson on Prezi
A Prezi presentation by Kevin Hodgson on cyberbullying. Contains some useful tips school leaders and teachers can embrace.
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Tackling Truancy, Suspensions, and Stress | Edutopia
Teaching mindfulness to our students is an important habit in a world where we are all constantly bombarded by stimuli which create stress.
