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California is often said to have two beating hearts: culture in the South, around Los Angeles and Hollywood, and technology in the North around San Francisco and the Silicon Valley.
Their complementarity is key to the region’s success, and has generated widely popular combinations such as Netflix or Apple Music. And of course, they both rely on heavy doses of innovation.
It’s no coincidence that they were both born in a garage.
Via John Evans
"Research on effective learning reveals that an awful lot of what goes on in the classroom simply doesn’t matter. There are many pointless activities that take up valuable time in the name of engagement, merely demonstrating progress as opposed to actually making progress. Often, these approaches not only have limited impact on student learning but can have a hugely detrimental impact on teacher workload and wellbeing.
There is significant evidence to suggest that teachers should prune back what they do and focus on a more streamlined approach in the classroom. So it’s less about spending hours cutting things up and putting them in envelopes, and more about creating conditions in which students can gain long-lasting knowledge that can be applied in a range of situations. The following six principles are a distillation of key research on what really matters in the classroom."
Via John Evans
TOPIC: STEM GRADES: Elementary School:
Classroom Ideas
25+ STEM Books to Update Your Collection
Get kids excited about science, technology, engineering and math!
Elizabeth Mulvahill on September 19, 2017
Recently teacher DG wrote into our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE looking for advice about adding STEM books to her school’s library collection. She wrote, “I am a K-8 librarian media specialist. This is my second year on the job and I’m trying to update large sections of our school library. Our collection of nonfiction books is sorely lacking. Some of the books are 20 years older than me! Are there any STEM-related books that our library must have? I’d love any suggestions! Thanks so much!”
Here are 25+ awesome suggestions from our friends on the Helpline:
Via John Evans
Teachers will be looking forward to a well-earned rest this Christmas. But it can be tough to switch off from – and avoid catching up on – work. It might be good for you to shun your marking and instead plan for a proper break this year, though. Why? Well, for a start, research says you should.
Via John Evans
The distribution of medals shows the existing Olympic inequalities: The overall patterns are a reflection of wealth distribution in the world, raising the question whether money can buy sporting success. Besides investment in sports by those countries who can afford it, the medal tables also reflect a battle for global supremacy in political terms. Tags: sport, popular culture, mapping, historical, cartography.
Via Seth Dixon
If you happen to teach in a 1:1 classroom then you will definitely be concerned about the educational apps to use with your students. There are tons out there for sure, but many of them are not worthwhile. To this end we curated this selection of some of the most popular apps and tools among 1:1 classroom teachers. Browse through the suggested titles and see what you want to adapt in your class. Enjoy
Via John Evans
A podcast that walks the line between funny and serious; Techlandia gives you the feeling that you are listening in on a staff meeting at a school where they discuss technology and the state of education.
Via Jon Samuelson
If there’s any video game that has successfully made its way into the classroom, it’s Minecraft. There’s a small subset of teachers using all kinds of digital games in interesting ways, but the blockbuster hit Minecraft and its educational counterpart MinecraftEDU have reached much wider audiences. But getting started with MinecraftEDU can be intimidating for teachers who don’t consider themselves “gamers” and aren’t sure how to harness the engagement and excitement of Minecraft. Luckily, there’s a robust and global Minecraft teacher community to supply tips, support and even lesson plans.
Via John Evans
Leaving school is a big deal. Students must be prepared for the world outside with not only curricular knowledge, but life literacy skills like these.
Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)
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Rescooped by
MSTA
from Edtech PK-12
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Two educators put the research to the test. When (and how) are iPads in the classroom most effective?
Via Cindy Rudy
When I'm not busy working on our teaching websites, I can usually be found playing Lego with our children! It's an incredibly creative toy, but it can also be used to support work in a number of different curriculum areas. Here is our HUGE list of ways to use Lego in the classroom. Many of these ideas have been contributed by our wonderful Facebook community. If you have any other suggestions, please add a comment at the bottom of the page.
Don't forget that many of these activities could use Duplo too!
Via John Evans
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"s states have upgraded their commitment to pre-K education over the past two decades, questions have arisen. Critics argue that program effects are likely to fade out or disappear over time, ...We conclude that some positive effects of a high-quality pre-K program are discernible as late as middle school."
Via Steven Engravalle
"Many people believe getting our learners to begin thinking independently is the main goal of education. “Teach students so that they don’t need the teacher.” But what if that wasn’t the case? What if there were something higher than independence? After all, Stephen Covey reminds us: independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality.
Thinking independently comes as a part of working together collaboratively. In order to get there, these are the stages that we want to lead our students through: dependence to independence to interdependence. If we can get them from dependence to independence, we’re almost there. Interdependence comes with applying their hard-earned skills toward relationship building.
How are we going to help our students to start thinking independently so that they may eventually use those skills in practicing interdependence?"
Via John Evans
Math learning and teaching can be so much fun especially when done through the right strategies. One of these strategies is through engaging video content. To this end, we have compiled 20 of the best and most popular YouTube channels for math teachers. These channels provide a wide variety of videos, tutorials and animated courses covering different mathematical concepts from algebra to geometry.
Via John Evans
"The phrase “don’t play games with me” is about to get a turnover. Play games all you want—your brain (and especially your students’ brains) will thank you for it!
When your students learn to recognize patterns and develop problem solving strategies, their probing questions and insightful answers will enhance instruction in every subject you teach. Gaming is a great way to develop these kinds of skills.
The following are a few short lists of great tablet games that develop and refine critical thinking skills. They’re separated by grade levels, and are among some of the best ones out there."
Via John Evans
A map produced by real estate website Estately found the weirdest town name for every state in America, including Booger Hole, WV, and Old Roach, CO.
Via Seth Dixon
When teachers know their students well, they can build strong connections that lead to better learning. Knowing students’ interests, strengths, and weaknesses help teachers tailor learning experiences for their students. Formative assessment is how teachers collect information about what students know, don’t know, and want to learn. Formative assessment takes many forms, including exit tickets, discussions, games, and quizzes. These kinds of informal assessments can also help teachers get to know their students as learners and as people.
There is a very wide variety of digital formative assessment tools that can be used for free (often charging for extra features). I’ve written a little about 15 of them below. Most of these tools work with any web browser, so they are great for laptops, computer labs, iPads, Chromebooks, tablets, and smartphones.
Via John Evans
We share evidence and practitioner-based learning strategies that empower you to improve K-12 education.
Via Elaine J Roberts, Ph.D.
By Bethany Petty The classrooms of today have the potential to look vastly different than those of the past. Many teachers have access to a vast array of technology tools that can be used in the classroom to increase student engagement.
Via Rui Guimarães Lima
Awesome truths about our educational world via Krissy Venosdale.
Via John Evans
Does the thought of doing long division, or solving a bit of algebra give you the shivers? You’re likely to have maths anxiety. In our recent research, my colleagues and I found that in 80% of countries, girls have more negative feelings towards maths than boys.
But this higher level of maths anxiety in girls is not justified by their actual level of performance and may put them off continuing a career in maths-related subjects, such as physics and computer science.
Via John Evans
Is failure a positive opportunity to learn and grow, or is it a negative experience that hinders success? How parents answer that question has a big influence on how much children think they can improve their intelligence through hard work, a study says.
"Parents are a really critical force in child development when you think about how motivation and mindsets develop," says Kyla Haimovitz, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She coauthored the study, published in Psychological Science with colleague Carol Dweck, who pioneered research on mindsets. "Parents have this powerful effect really early on and throughout childhood to send messages about what is failure, how to respond to it."
Although there's been a lot of research on how these forces play out, relatively little looks at what parents can do to motivate their kids in school, Haimovitz says. This study begins filling that gap.
Via John Evans
This is the last in a six-part series titled Making in Schools. https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/categories/making/making-in-schools/ ;
When I talk with other educators about our work at the Creativity Lab, they say, “Great! What do we do to get started?”
Often they want to do it all — fully integrate making into their class, start an elective or club, set up a school makerspace. I encourage them to pick one small thing they can do — do one making project, start a club, find an area of their classroom to use as a makerspace. Taking on too much at once is overwhelming and soon gets dropped, becoming another one of those things you tried once. But starting small and building from there allows making to take hold and become what you do.
At Lighthouse, where making permeates many aspects of our program, we’ve built our program slowly over the last seven years, one block at a time. At the same time, we adopted a bias toward action, meaning we worked towards our long-term vision, but we didn’t wait to come up with the perfect plan or to find the perfect program. Once we decided to move forward with a new part of the program, we jumped in and supported teachers in designing and implementing their vision.""
Via John Evans
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Most likely, these lights represent urban areas which contains a higher population. As we can see in this photo, one territory stands out more not because of it's lights, but because we know that it is a higher population. Also we see urban areas that "never sleeps." What I mean by "never sleeps" is that the city functions late at night and still has people explore it 24/7.
The view from space is always life changing. The image underscores the conflict taking place in the region. Only from the sky, can use see the vastness of the conflict taking place. Television and film cameras can only capture so much of a war. Looking down from the sky gives us a better view of the overall devastation taking place. The Middle East is truly on fire.