Featured: 2-5-2014 DragonBox

DragonBox was created to counter student negativity toward algebra by making it simple to understand and learn algebra´s "big ideas," with or without help, at one’s own pace. 

 

The conception of DragonBox was based on...

… the belief and the vision that human beings are hardwired to learn extremely complicated concepts. By placing the student at the center of the learning process one can engage the brain of the students in an optimal manner, achieving results in agreement with the marvelous capacity of the human brain.

DragonBox starts by teaching algebra before arithmetic. Initially, pictures rather than numbers or variables are used to demonstrate the algebra ''game'' before developing its traditional formalism. The game is focused on mathematical rules throughout.

 

 

Playing DragonBox can help kids develop creative thinking. Players discover algebraic rules and have to use the rules to solve puzzles. This can lead to a lot of trial and error, encouraging higher level thinking.

 

Some of the key principles used in designing DragonBox:

• Students learn more when they are engaged.
• An important contributor to learning is immediate feedback.
• Students should be presented with challenges that match their level of mastery.
• Students should be assessed in a formative, non-intrusive way.
• Discovery or experiential learning is more effective than instructional-based teaching.
• Students learn differently and at different paces.
• The language we use to teach mathematics is a barrier to understanding.

 View The DragonBox Concept

 

DragonBox Algebra 5+  is meant to give younger kids a head start in mathematics and algebra. DragonBox Algebra 12+ covers more advanced topics in mathematics and algebra. Both are available for Android and iOS.

 

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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: 8-21-2013 BusyTeacher

BusyTeacher is a place where English teachers share their printable worksheets, lesson plans, and other lesson activities with colleagues for free.

BusyTeacher serves up more than 10,000 downloadable, printable worksheets created by real teachers for teachers. The worksheets are categorized by topics such as grammar, listening, speaking, vocabulary, and more.

You will also find such useful items as free puzzle creators, classroom posters, coloring pages, and flashcards.

 Watch a video introducing BusyTeacher

BusyTeacher has nearly half a million registered users. You can join for free or log in using a Facebook account.

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COD - 10/16/2012 - LearnersTV [Video]

LearnersTV provides thousands of free downloadable lectures in biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, engineering, medicine, management and accounting, and many more fields.

LearnersTV provides:

• Free video and audio lectures of entire courses conducted by faculty from reputable universities around the world.
• Free lecture notes will help the students in examination preparation and studies.
• Science animations giving students fun and innovative ways of learning.
• Free live, timed online tests with instant feedback and explanations to refine your test taking skills.

Most of the materials offered by LearnersTV are licensed by the respective institutions under a Creative Commons License.

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COD - 10/11/2012 - Study Champs [Activities]

Study Champs is a free educational website designed to provide an online resource to students in primary and middle school and their parents and teachers.

Study Champs resources cover math, English, science and social studies. The content includes educational resources such as printable worksheets and games, tutorials, interactive online games, quizzes, stories, flip books, and more . 

Kids can also enjoy fun activities like reading stories, coloring sheets, brain teasing games, and learn amazing facts, too.

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COD - 3/5/2012 - Fifty Sneakers [Tools]

Fifty Sneakers is the sequel to the web-based tool, Quizinator, which appeared in a previous post nearly two years ago. Quizinator was an online resource library that could be used to organize and manage collections of questions and answers.

Fifty Sneakers includes all of Quizinator's features, but adds enhanced and expanded content management, networking, and sharing capabilities.

Principle features of Fifty Sneakers:

• Build documents or online tests from content libraries.
• Review automatically graded test results.
• Track student scores and performance.
• Form communities to share resources.

You create a document in Fifty Sneakers by selecting items from your Content Library and placing them anywhere you choose and in whatever format you need. If you change a content item in your library, that change is automatically pushed everywhere that content is being used. Information used in multiple locations will always be up to date everywhere.

As well as all the formatting options you have with documents, you also have numerous options for formatting tests and quizzes. For example, display question values, identify answers with letters or numbers, or set the document to randomize questions within each section.

The free Fifty Sneakers plan gives you up to 250 items in your content library and 10 PDF documents. Paid plans start at $5.99 (US) monthly. You can earn a premium level plan for free by sharing your work with the Fifty Sneakers Global Community. There are no setup or cancellation fees, and there are no contracts to sign.

You can make your document available for public download by sharing a link that Fifty Sneakers generates for you. Fifty Sneakers is available in English and Spanish.

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Catch of The Day - Puzzlemaker - 11/3/2011

 

Puzzlemaker from Discovery Education is a puzzle generation tool for teachers and students. Users can create and print a variety of custom puzzles.

Make ten different kinds of puzzles with Puzzlemaker such as word search and crossword puzzles (using your own word lists), math puzzles, mazes, cryptograms, and more. Puzzles are generated as PDF documents to download and print.

The Puzzlemaker website is free to use. Also available for $49.95(US) is a Puzzlemaker CD-ROM with lots of extra features, including searchable Merriam-Webster dictionaries and over 350 clip-art images.

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Catch of the Day - Educaplay - 7/21/2011

Educaplay is a platform to create and share your own interactive multimedia teaching and learning activities.

The following types of activities are available in Educaplay:

• Maps
• Riddles
• Crosswords and Word Search puzzles
• Jumbled words and sentences
• Matching and Fill-in-the-blank
• More

You can build your own customized activities or search the more than 13,000 activities shared by other users. Filter the available resources by kind, newest or most viewed, or any of seven languages. Educaplay currently has over 10,000 registered users.

No software needs to be downloaded and installed to use Educaplay. It is a browser-based web application (but does require a Flash plug-in).

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Catch of the Day - Brain Nook - 11/5/2010

Brain Nook is a virtual world where children ages 6-10 can develop their mathematics and English skills. Brain Nook is a safe, fun, free educational playground featuring fun games that children from around the world can play with each other.

BrainNook currently has more than a hundred educational games based on important concepts in math and English grammar. These games are based on the content standards prescribed by the California State Board of Education.

While exploring colorful virtual worlds, children play games and solve puzzles, competing and  interacting safely with other children. All newly created user accounts in Brain Nook must be activated by a parent.

Nunook Interactive, the developer of Brain Nook, is a leading creator and publisher of high-quality games for children and teenagers. They are headquartered in Mumbai, India.

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Catch of the Day - Smart-Kit - 9/17/2010

 

At the Smartkit Online Puzzle Playground, you’ll find many fun puzzles and games to entertain and stimulate your brain.

The Smartkit Online Puzzle Playground provides the chance to nourish and exercise many brain areas with a great collection of puzzles and brain teasers, brain games, trivia quizzes, and jigsaw puzzles.

Among the puzzle categories are …

• Jigsaw puzzles
• Spot the differnce
• Hidden objects
• Math and logic
• Word and picture puzzles
• Riddles
• and many more

All content on the Smartkit Online Puzzle Playground is kid-friendly.

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Catch of the Day - Brain Boosters - 26 Aug 09

I went trolling for logic games and caught Discovery Education's Brain Boosters


Brain Boosters is a source of numerous challenging brain puzzles for all grade levels. The archive of puzzles is large, well over 200, and categorized by type of puzzle: categorization, lateral thinking, logic, number and math play, reasoning, spatial awareness, and word and letter play.

I used many of the puzzles from the logic and reasoning categories as daily starters in my geometry classes. The puzzle was on the interactive whiteboard as kids came in and began to talk and think about it.



As you see in the above video, each puzzle is accompanied by a detailed explanation of the solution. You will also find a button above each Brain Boosters puzzle to easily share the puzzle via MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Catch of the Day - kids DO science - 17 Aug 09

kids DO science is our fresh catch of this day.

kids DO science is the result of a hands-on "research-to-classroom" science program for elementary students initiated in 2002 by The Environmental Outreach Program of the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Fouth and fifth grade students from South Carolina participated in five 2-hour hands-on science workshops where they worked in teams, formulated hypotheses, and collected, recorded, and analyzed data.

The hands-on workshops and materials developed for the program are available on the kids DO science web site where you are invited to try them with your students. The workshops cover a variety of topics and are appropriate for grades 3-6. All the activities were developed to get students involved in science and to stress the scientific method and science inquiry skills.

kids DO science offers sections for the methods of science, hands-on science activities, science fun and games, and other science resources.

In the Science Fun and Games area you'll find activities related to ...

• The Scientific Method
• Biodiversity
• Wetlands and Water Quality
• Chemistry
• Genetics
• Ecotoxicology and Pollution
• and more

kids DO Science is supported by the American Honda Foundation.

Catch of the Day - Puzzlemaker - 4 Aug 09

The catch of the day for Tuesday is Puzzlemaker from Discovery Education.


The Discovery Education Puzzlemaker is a free online puzzle generation tool for teachers, students and parents.

You can create and print ten kinds of customized puzzles ...

• Word Search
• Criss-Cross
• Double Puzzles
• Fallen Phrases
• Math Squares
• Mazes
• Letter Tiles
• Cryptograms
• Number Blocks
• Hidden Messages

Customized puzzles are created through an interactive step-by-step process allowing you to define various parameters of the puzzle. The puzzle and its solution can then be generated. Puzzlemaker uses the PNG image file format to output most puzzles. Word Search puzzles can be output in three different formats HTML, text, or lowercase text.


Unfortunately, Puzzlemaker provides no way to save your puzzle online for later retrieval. To save the puzzles that you have created, you should copy and paste both the puzzle and the solution to a word processing document and then save to your desktop. This will allow you to access your puzzles for future use.

Discovery Channel Interactive Corner

Image via Wikipedia

This Discovery Channel site offers a large collection of interactive games, quizzes, puzzles, and other activities.

Students can virtually time travel back to the the age of dinosaurs, build a volcano and watch it erupt, relive the final days of the battleship Bismarck, dive on the Titanic, and much more.

Among the numerous games, kids may play Darwin and create a species that will survive a million years of evolution, try surviving in the rugged Alaskan wilderness, or test their crime trivia knowledge from crime scene to criminal trial.

There are thirty items in the Quizzes section on topics such as the Titanic, pharaohs, tornadoes, sharks, and Mythbusters. There are more than twenty puzzles many of which are based on popular Discovery Channel shows such as Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch.

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