Plus 7-11-2014: Makerspace

 

Simply described, Makerspaces are community centers with tools combining manufacturing equipment, community, and education in order to enable members to design, prototype, and create manufactured works that wouldn’t be possible with the resources available to individuals working alone.

 

Makerspaces can be organizations affiliated with or hosted within schools, universities or libraries sharing space and tools. Providing access to equipment, community, and education is common to all Makerspaces, but each is unique in how it is set up to meet the purposes of the community it serves.

 

 

A fairly new phenomenon, Makerspaces are beginning to produce significant concepts through the democratization of design, engineering, fabrication, and education. 

 

 Watch What is a Makerspace? by Andrew Goodin, Facilitator of the Makerspace at Grand Center Arts Academy in St. Louis, MO.

 

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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.

 

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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."

 

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Featured 6-17-2014: Radix Endeavor

 

The Radix Endeavor is a multiplayer online game for STEM learning in high school.

 

When a player enters the Radix Endeavor  she finds herself on an island with many unknown species of plants and animals, many mysterious places waiting to be discovered, and many problems to be solved. She must try to determine what is causing the problems, how the natural systems work, and which factors need to be changed to improve the lives of the people and save the island from destruction.

 

 

The game offers students the opportunity to participate in a collaborative, social experience in a systems-based game world while they explore how that world works and discover important scientific concepts.

 

The initial phase of the Radix Endeavor will cover topics in biology, algebra, geometry, probability, and statistics. Designed to align with the Common Core standards in mathematics and Next Generation Science Standards for high school students, there is also particular emphasis on developing key mathematics practices and 21st century skills.

 

 

Innovative task-based assessments will be embedded into the game, and that data will be used to track players’ strategies, progress, and potential misconceptions. The data will be analyzed in real time to offer feedback and support to the player to promote learning when concepts and skills are being first introduced. It will also be available on a 'Teacher Portal' to help teachers monitor student progress and differentiate their lessons to meet students’ needs.

 

 Watch The Radix Endeavor Trailer

 

The Radix Endeavor is being developed at the MIT Education Arcade in collaboration with Filament Games, and is funded by the Gates Foundation.

 

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Featured 6-10-2014: TERC

 

TERC is an independent, non-profit, research-based organization that has been introducing millions of students to math and science learning for nearly 50 years.

 

TERC has striven to engage and inspire all students through stimulating content intended to develop the knowledge and skills they need to ask questions, solve problems, and expand their opportunities.

 

Simply put, the mission of TERC is to improve mathematics and science education. TERC hopes to:

• Contribute to a deeper understanding of learning and teaching
• Enhance instruction through teacher professional development
• Develop applications of new technologies to education
• Create curricula and other products
• Support reform in both school and informal settings

 

Since it’s founding in 1965, the work of TERC has spread across all areas of STEM education to reach K-12 and postsecondary students as well as adult learners. TERC is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Featured 3-25-2014: SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge!

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! is a game-based learning and assessment tool designed to engage middle school students with a high-quality game experience in which they can develop real-world problem-solving skills.

 

 

Playing the role of mayor, students are challenged to address environmental impact while balancing the employment needs and the happiness of the city’s citizens.

 

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! was designed in partnership with assessment experts from Educational Testing Service and Pearson. As well as helping students learn about the factors affecting the environment in a modern city, the game also provides formative assessment information about students’ ability to problem solve, explain the relationships in complex systems, and read informational texts and diagrams.

 

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! consists of six different missions centered on the theme of environmental impact. In each mission, students are required to solve increasingly complex problems.

 

 

 Watch SimCityEDU: Engaging 21st Century Learners

SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge! addresses such 21st century skills as critical thinking and problem solving. It also aligns with several Common Core standards such as citing specific textual evidence to support conclusions, integrating information from texts and diagrams, reading and understanding text and making logical inferences from it.

 

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Featured: 11-21-2013 Tinkerbox

TinkerBox is a fun, free, iPad physics puzzle game full of interesting science facts and basic engineering concepts.

 

TinkerBox is a product of Autodesk, the 3D design software firm whose products include AutoCAD, Inventor, and SketchBook Pro.

 

The objective of TinkerBox is to make physics less ominous and more fun for teens. TinkerBox is designed with the intent of sparking teen interest in mechanical engineering. Players are challenged to solve puzzles, create, and share inventions with their friends.

 

 

In Invent mode, manipulate tools to explore your creativity and imagination. Build unbelieveable machines and share them with your friends. Puzzle mode immerses you in physics-based puzzles and mechanical concepts, where creative problem solving is your only hope for success.

 

 See a video trailer for TinkerBox

 

TinkerBox is available for iPad in the iTunes App Store for free. Requires iOS 3.2 or later.

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Featured: 11-5-2013 Wolfram Problem Generator

Wolfram Problem Generator makes problems on the fly instead of pulling them out of a database, so you can have new practice problems and worksheets in each practice session.

Wolfram Problem Generator offers beginner, intermediate, and advanced difficulty levels for a number of topics including arithmetic, algebra, statistics, number theory, and more. 

Wolfram Problem Generator's online math practice problems offer hints and integrated step-by-step solutions.

Wolfram Problem Generator directly integrates the powerful step-by-step solutions from Wolfram|Alpha. You can use a single hint to get on track, or explore the entire problem.

You can also create printable worksheets and answer keys for study sessions and quizzes. 

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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."

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Featured: 3/14/2013 March Madness Math [Topical]

The March Madness website provides classroom lessons, resources, and tools that have been developed around the NCAA men's basketball tournament.



The March Madness website offers many ways to use the NCAA basketball tournament to inspire learning in your classroom.

Some of the March Madness activities:

• In Figure the Winner students practice calculating percentage, average, mean, median, and mode.
• Exploring Binary uses the NCAA brackets to explore binary trees in sports and math.
• A March Madness webquest.
• Who’s Number 1? is an activity in which students investigate the mathematics of ranking.
• Check out the cities and schools that are part of the tournament using Google Earth.

March Madness Reading engages students in drawing conclusions from large amounts of information, using evidence to support opinions, and reading tables, graphs and charts.

The March Madness website also provides links to a number of related resources as well as several downloadable PDF files.

Note: As far as I can see, this site has no official connection with the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

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COD - 9/26/2012 - Math/Science Nucleus [Science]

Math/Science Nucleus is an educational and research organization composed of scientists, educators, and others serving as an online science resource center for school districts, teachers, and administrators.

The major goal of Math/Science Nucleus is to develop students' problem solving abilities through science. To this end, they provide a free online reference science curriculum. The curriculum includes not only lesson plans, but online animated storybooks and slideshows that help educators integrate science content.

A second major goal of Math/Science Nucleus is to provide workshops to enhance the skills of educators by  increasIng their  teaching and science content skills.

Access to the K-12 Integrating Science, Math, and Technology Reference Curriculum is free and educators may use the copyrighted material in their classroom. Click on the I.Science MaTeFree Access symbol and enter over 27  years of research on how children learn science content. You will have access to both the elementary and secondary curriculum, over 6000 pages of research-based reference material.

Math/Science Nucleus has provided training in science, math, and integrating computer technology to more than 15,000 teachers. Their website averages 7000 users per day, serving students, school districts. teachers, and administrators.

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COD - 6/18/2012 - Working Math [Math]

Working Math is a collection of 90 activities designed to help students in career and technology schools retain basic, practical, everyday math skills with activities that have been placed in a meaningful context.

Most of the activities in Working Math have been designed so that a student can complete the task quickly with minimal teacher intervention. Each activity is contained on a single page. The Working Math activities are meant to review and reinforce fundamental mathematics that the student should have learned previously.

Working Math is available as a downloadable PDF ebook. To use a Working Math activity, you can print as many copies of that page as are needed and distribute to your students.

Once the Working Math ebook has been purchased and downloaded, you are allowed make as many copies of the activities as you want for classroom use. 

There is also an annotated companion to the Working Math ebook that includes solutions to all the activities as well as teaching notes.

The complete Working Math ebook is $79 USD, the annotated companion is $99 USD, or bundle them together for $149. However, you can download a free sample of ten selected Working Math activities.

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COD - 2/22/2012 - Big6 [Information Literacy]

 

The Big6 is arguably the most widely known and used approach to teaching information and technology skills world-wide.

The Big6 helps students develop the skills and understanding needed to find, process, and use information effectively by focusing on process as well as content.

Information search and use skills along with with technology tools are integrated in a systematic process to find, use, apply, and evaluate information for specific needs and tasks.

The six stages of the Big6 process:

• Task Definition
• Information Seeking Strategies
• Location and Access
• Use of Information
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

The Big6 information problem-solving model is used in thousands of K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and corporate and adult training programs.

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