Featured 7-9-2014: Global Writes

 

Global Writes works with schools and school districts to develop and implement programs integrating performing arts techniques with literacy programs.

 

Global Writes helps schools develop technology applications to share student-created work for publication and feedback. This includes the use of digital media, videoconferencing, podcasting, and blogging.

 

Schools and districts can get assistance in finding local arts partners as a classroom collaboration resource as well as in seeking local funding to sustain arts integration programs.

 

Global Writes helps schools around the world work together to foster communication and collaboration among students around literacy-based projects integrating the arts using technology as a resource.

 

 

Professional development opportunities focus on arts integration with existing literacy curriculum, providing teachers with opportunitites to develop an appreciation of the arts across the curriculum and confidence in using performing arts techniques in their classrooms.

 

 Watch a Global Writes overview

 

Global Writes provides both formative and summative evaluations to monitor student progress in their programs and supplies data to support increases in student achievement and teacher knowledge.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 6-30-2014: The Pericles Group

 

The Pericles Group provides game-based learning solutions for students, teachers, and administrators in a wide range of situations and a variety of disciplines.

 

The Pericles Group offers ‘practomimetic' courses that blend stories and game play providing students the opportunity to explore learning as a narrative and as a game.

 

 

The attitudes and behaviors of students learning in the practomimetic courses change along with their level of knowledge. They can become active learners, metaphorically engaged in making the world a better place.

 

The Pericles Group partners with teachers to develop and deliver materials for game-based courses and curricula that capitalize on the opportunities of teaching as a digitally-enhanced practice. Although the practomimes don’t look like traditional video games, the play is similar and they teach more. Practomimetic courses can teach students to "play the curriculum," reaching the learning objectives and mastering the skills and content the practomime is designed to support.

 

Students might play as scientists, recruited by a shadowy multinational corporation, investigating phenomena out of science fiction and fantasy. Latin students could play as operatives on a mission to find a lost inscription that can only be deciphered if they are able to read Latin. 

 

Currently developed products of The Pericles Group include:

• Operation LAPIS is a two-year introductory curriculum in Roman civilization and the Latin language
• Operation BIOME is a full-year game-based (practomimetic) course in biology.
• Operation CAESAR is an advanced Latin course aligned with the new Latin AP standards.
• CARD-tamen is a stand-alone card game where players construct a persuasive argument about the subject matter in relation to a controversial topic.

 

 

The Pericles Group offers a series of professional development seminars that demonstrate the potential of practomimetic courses. These seminars can be customized to the needs of each school district.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 6-19-2014: LEGO Education

 

LEGO Education was created to bring classroom tested and ready solutions that will engage and motivate young students.

 

Combining the fun, exciting aspects of LEGO bricks with subject-specific tools and curricula, LEGO Education can help teachers meet their objectives.

 

Based in Denmark, LEGO Education has been working with educators for more than three decades to provide classroom solutions and resources that can be used to bring subjects to life and make learning fun. 

 

 

LEGO Education educational sets, activity packs, teacher resources, and programming tools can make learning inspiring and meet your curriculum needs. Materials are designed to stimulate interest in science, technology, engineering, computer science, math, and the humanities. 

 

 Visit the LEGO Education YouTube channel

 

The ultimate goal of LEGO Education is to "encourage students to think creatively, reason systematically and release their potential to shape their own future."

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-28-2014: One Hen

One Hen provides educators with flexible curriculum resources designed to help students develop financial responsibility, personal initiative, global awareness, and giving back.

The motivation for One Hen comes from the children’s book, One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference. A young Ghanaian boy named Kojo who uses a small loan to buy one hen, which in turn lays eggs and hatches more hens, until he eventually becomes the largest chicken farmer in the country.

 

One Hen challenges kids in grades K-8 through a series of interactive lesson plans, an engaging storybook, and a website of games and activities. Teams of students face the challenges of running their own real-world small businesses. With the profits they earn, they repay their loans and make a donation to a non-profit organization of their choice, helping to meet a local or global need.

 

 

In the process, the young entrepreneurs learn necessary skills in business math, personal financial literacy, and social entrepreneurship.

 

One Hen is a non-profit organization whose mission is to "empower all kids to become social entrepreneurs who make a difference for themselves and the world.”

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 5-7-2014: Shooloo Learning

 

 

Upper-elementary and middle school students can help one another practice word problems and apply math to real life using the collaborative learning platform, Shooloo, which means “Number Joy” in Chinese.

 

At Shooloo  students can write their own math word problems, publish them onto the web, get feedback from other students, demonstrate their solutions, and continuously clarify their math reasoning.

 

Tagged with the associated Common Core State Standard, word problems are accompanied by I Can statements. Students can easily compile their own I Can journals, enabling teachers to assess which students are struggling with which Common Core standard. Analytics provide automated progress tracking, real-time reporting, and standards-based grading.

 

 

Founded just last year, Shooloo already claims the world’s largest collection of student-authored math word problems that can be used for on-line learning, worksheets, discussions, and assessment.

 

 Watch Shooloo -- Collaborative Learning for Common Core Math

The Shooloo concept aligns with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practices. Students publish their own math word problems, construct viable arguments, critique the reasoning of others, and model real life with mathematics.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 4-2-2014: Doing Science: The Process of Scientific Inquiry

Doing Science: The Process of Scientific Inquiry is a creative, inquiry-based instruction program designed to promote active learning and stimulate student interest in medical topics. 

 

Doing Science: The Process of Scientific Inquiry brings cutting-edge medical science and basic research discoveries from the National Institutes of Health into middle school classrooms. The objective is to help students:

• Experience the process of scientific inquiry and develop an enhanced understanding of the nature and methods of science.
• Appreciate the role of science in society and the relationship between basic science and human health.

The Doing Science curriculum supplement has been designed to complement existing life science curricula and to be consistent with the National Science Education Standards. The supplement was developed and tested by a team composed of teachers, scientists, medical experts, representatives from the NIH, and curriculum-design experts. Real scientific data and actual case studies are incorporated into classroom activities.

 

 

Teachers can effectively facilitate learning and spark student interest by using scientific concepts in real-life scenarios. The inquiry-based activities promote active and collaborative learning and help students develop problem-solving strategies and critical-thinking skills.

 

 

The Doing Science: The Process of Scientific Inquiry curriculum supplements, available at no cost to teachers across the US, each come with a complete set of classroom materials including printed materials, background and resource information, and an interactive website.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured 3-26-2014: The Inquiry Project

The Inquiry Project aims to build an understanding of science in students ages 8-10 that lays a foundation for later understanding of matter in terms of molecules and atoms.

 

The Inquiry Project is centered on material, weight, volume, density, and related ideas that are important and challenging for students. Elements of this work are the integration of mathematics and the focus on investigative inquiry.

 

Research, curriculum, assessment, and professional development are blended in one coherent system, each component being essential to developing an understanding of how to best prepare learners.

 

 

The basis of The Inquiry Project lies in three content-specific dimensions of inquiry: measurement of matter, change and conservation, and scale. It has been designed to feature the following fundamentals of scientific inquiry:

• Questions
• Evidence
• Explanations
• Knowledge
• Communication

 Watch an intro to Talk Science Pathways

 

The Inquiry Project is a partnership between teachers, TERC, and Tufts University funded by the National Science Foundation.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 2-13-2014 Buck Institute for Education

The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) is a nonprofit organization that helps teachers learn how to use Project Based Learning in all grade levels and subject areas.

 

The Buck Institute for Education creates, gathers, and shares Project Based Learning (PBL) instructional practices and products and provides services to teachers, schools, and districts.

 

BIE offers teachers professional development on how to design, assess, and manage projects that engage and motivate students. BIE helps schools bring consistency and structure to PBL practices school-wide. BIE offers districts services and expertise in creating and sustaining district-wide PBL initiatives.

 

 

BIE offers a full range of PBL-related resources organized into three broad categories: Things to read, to watch, or to interact with.

• Things to Read include blogs, books, articles, and research about PBL, and also written documents you can use, such as rubrics, project planning forms, student handouts, and other materials for planning, assessing, and managing projects.
• Things to Watch include videos that showcase particular projects and PBL schools or to explain PBL, as well as an archive of recorded webinars on various PBL topics.
• Things to Interact With include live webinars, Google Hangouts, and Twitter Chats, plus online classes to take, conferences to attend, and websites to visit.

 

 Watch an interview with representatives from BIE

The Buck Institute for Education also recommends resources for teachers, principals, and district leaders who would like to take an independent approach to learning about PBL. The featured resources include a note on how you can use that item.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 12-3-2013 Other Worlds/Other Earths

Other Worlds/Other Earths provides you and your students the opportunity to participate in the search for other worlds and other life using a telescope that you control online.

 

You will be able to take your own images of distant solar systems, interpret the data you gather, and become one of the few humans to detect a planet orbiting a star beyond our Sun. 

 

The goal of the Other Worlds/Other Earths project is to give your school and students first-hand experience with the nature of scientific inquiry. They will:

• Learn how to gather, assess and interpret their own data.
• Use interactive models to help make predictions and interpret findings.
• Communicate their results to a community of student observers and professional scientists.

 

Many of the basic concepts of earth science, astronomy, and physics that your students are already learning and will use throughout science can be applied in this project. This will allow you to assess your students' understanding of core concepts as they work through the project.

 

Other Worlds/Other Earths takes about two to three weeks to complete. In the first part students will be involved in the detection of another world, using the MicroObservatory online telescopes.  From their observations, they can deduce the size of the planet, its distance from Earth, and even whether the planet's orbit is tilted.

 

 

Students can learn how to use scientific models to tell much more about what these other worlds are like in the second part of the project. They'll use interactive models to learn how to decode light coming from exoplanets and what the light can tell us about a planet's surface.

 

Finally, students will have to draw on their imagination as well as the evidence they have considered to create their own 3-D model of their newly discovered planet. 

 

Other Worlds/Other Earths is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0 

Featured: 11-20-2013 Race2Achieve

Race 2 Achieve is a free supplemental curriculum for 11th and 12th grade math classes aligned to Common Core standards. The focus is on how the Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR team uses key concepts from Algebra II and trigonometry, and applies them in a real-world context. 

 

The project-based curriculum includes a complete and adaptable kit with: 

• A comprehensive teacher’s guide
• Student notebooks
• Videos featuring Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Hendrick Motorsports Engineers
• Car kits for each team of 5 students 
• Pre- and post- curriculum assessments

 

Race 2 Achieve is designed to be used over approximately five-ten class periods. Small teams of students work together to each build a race-ready car culminating with a class “race day” competition to determine which team has built the most efficient car from the car kits provided with the curriculum materials. Teachers are provided with all of the components necessary for teams to assemble their cars. 

 

 

Race 2 Achieve was free to the first thousand 11th and 12th grade math classrooms interested. Unfortunately that number has been reached. However, complete the signup form here and you will be placed on a waiting list.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 6-19-2013 The Engineering Pathway

The Engineering Pathway pledges access to high-quality STEM teaching and learning resources for use by K-12 and university educators and students.

The Engineering Pathway's K-12 curriculum uses engineering as a context for the utilization of hands-on science and math in real-world designs and applications that hope to inspire creativity.

Search K-12 engineering lessons and activities and other resources by a variety of criteria such as content area, grade level, and standards. The Engineering Pathway resources also include professional development opportunities and research findings.

Resources for higher education may be located using multiple criteria including discipline, audience, resource type, title, author/creator, special topics, or by selected collection. These resources include support for ABET accreditation, research and scholarship, curricula development, and extracurricular activities for students.

The aspiration of The Engineering Pathway is to "provide resources that help teachers, parents, faculty, and practicing engineers to inspire more of today's students to follow an engineering path as their way to understand and improve the world."

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 6-12-2013 TeachEngineering

TeachEngineering is a digital library of standards-based* engineering curricula for the use of K-12 teachers to make applied science and mathematics interesting and engaging.

The TeachEngineering collection provides educators with free access to a growing resource of multi-week units, lessons, activities, and living labs. The collection continues to grow and evolve with new additions from universities, and input from teachers who use the curricula in their classrooms.

Click on Search Curriculum or Browse Curriculum to find what you want for your classroom from the more than 900 lessons and activities currently available.

In most cases, TeachEngineering activities use ordinary materials that you can find in your classroom, school, home, grocery store or hardware store.

Use of curriculum found in the TeachEngineering collection is free to teachers using it in their classrooms. There is no fee or membership requirement (There is an optional MyTE workspace you may use to keep track of favorite lessons and activities, or to submit reviews). No special kits or materials are needed.

TeachEngineering is a collaborative project between faculty, students, and teachers associated with five universities and the American Society for Engineering Education, with NSF National Science Digital Library funding.

*Every lesson and every activity is aligned to the science and math educational standards of the state in which it was first developed and classroom tested. From that information, TeachEngineering provides rough alignment to other state and national educational standards.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 5-20-2013 EdCanvas [Tools]

Drag-and-drop resources to create a dynamic EdCanvas that will help you effectively teach your lesson while increasing student engagement.

EdCanvases are useful for organizing, presenting, and sharing online resources with your students and colleagues.

If you are implementing a flipped classroom, EdCanvas makes it possible to easily gather and annotate online resources, including rich multimedia, into lessons using just one link. EdCanvas is also a handy tool for Web quests, project-based learning, and class presentations.

Mix assessment with your content. Quickly create a quiz on any empty canvas tile by clicking “Add Quiz". They are instantly and automatically graded, providing you with a detailed and easy-to-use report.

With an invitation from you, students can create canvases, too. Create a class for your students, then invite them by entering their email addresses. Your students will receive an invitation to sign up for Edcanvas. You will be able to see all the canvases they create.

 Watch the video: Edcanvas Basics

EdCanvas for Schools offers reports and data to improve learning, real-time collaboration for students and teachers, a parent portal, shared resources pool for teachers, Common Core-aligned content and canvases, unlimited file storage and uploads, and more.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - EngagingEducators - 6/7/2011

EngagingEducators believes student engagement is paramount to education in the 21st century. Their goal is to help teachers, schools, and school districts engage students in meaningful learning.

EngagingEducators is working to develop activities that are student driven, project based, and enriched by the use of technology, and then share them with teachers. Their ultimate aim is to help teachers and schools better prepare students to excel in the 21st century.

EngagingEducators offers professional development, coaching, online learning and social network consulting, and homeschool workshops. Everything includes follow-up support for questions or concerns that arise after their presentations, by email, Skype, or follow-up visits.

EngagingEducators is the product of two Michigan teachers, Neil Wetherbee and Ben Curran.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - DocsTeach - 2/18/2011

Find and create interactive learning activities with primary source documents that contribute to the development of historical thinking skills at DocsTeach.

You can use DocsTeach activities for classroom demonstrations, as full-class activities, as small-group tasks, or as individual in-class or homework assignments.

Use your DocsTeach account to manage and share both activities you find and those you create.

• Mark activities that you like and want to share with your students, then later find them in your account.
• Share activities with your students by simply providing a unique web address for that individual activity.
• Students can complete the activities independently and even email the results.
• Create a classroom within your account where your students can access and complete a series of activities.
• Create and name multiple classrooms to share different activities with different classes.

You can create DocsTeach activities that vary according to their placement on Bloom’s Taxonomy and correlate with Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.

DocsTeach activities are classified according to the National History Standards as outlined by the National Center for History in the Schools

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0