The Rearview Mirror 1/12/2013

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

Monday

PE Scholar is a new community website for sharing quality physical education teaching resources, lesson plans, discussions, and much more.

Tuesday

Nowgen carries out dedicated education work focused on engaging directly with the formal education system – in particular, biology taught in schools.

Wednesday

Developed by MIT graduates,MathScore provides math practice and assessment online, and is proven to raise math test scores through adaptive math practice.

Thursday

StudentsFirstwas initiated in 2010 in response to an increasing demand for a better American education system.

Featured: 1/10/2013 Students First [Community]

StudentsFirst was initiated in 2010 in response to an increasing demand for a better American education system.



Led by Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, StudentsFirst hopes to mobilize parents, teachers, students, administrators, and citizens, and to direct their energy toward meaningful results on both the local and national level.

The stated mission of StudentsFirst is “to build a national movement to defend the interests of children in public education and pursue transformative reform, so that America has the best education system in the world.”

Principle tenets of StudentsFirst:

• Great teachers can make a tremendous difference for students of every background; all children deserve outstanding teachers.
• Every child deserves to attend a great school; all families should have quality school options available.
• Public dollars should be used on effective instructional programs where they make the biggest difference.
• Parent, family, and community involvement is vital to increased student achievement.

In summary, the goals of StudentsFirst are to elevate teaching, empower parents, and use resources efficiently to ensure sustainable spending that puts students first.

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Featured: 1/9/2013 MathScore [Math]

Developed by MIT graduates, MathScore provides math practice and assessment online, and is proven to raise math test scores through adaptive math practice.



MathScore is a research-based, practice-focused educational program for Kindergarten through Algebra I that provides fun without distractions. Emphasis is placed on foundational skills, helping students learn the skills that are the most important to succeeding in mathematics. MathScore provides over 200 different math topics, many of which require students to go beyond basic skills and apply them in the context of word problems and visual topics.

With assessments, progress tracking tools, and customized courses, teachers have the flexibility to differentiate instruction for every student on an individual basis.



MathScore provides a standard view of each course. However, by using the custom course and assessment features, teachers can define precisely which math skills they want their students to learn. It’s possible to create an assessment based on the customized course, supplemented with a suite of analysis tools.

MathScore is web-based, requires no installation, and can be used at home by students. Most web browsers are supported, and it works smoothly on an iPad and a variety of other mobile devices.

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Featured: 1/8/2013 NowGen [Biology]

Nowgen carries out dedicated education work focused on engaging directly with the formal education system – in particular, biology taught in schools.



In the education community, Nowgen strives to ensure that the biology taught in schools incorporates the latest research findings.

Nowgen works with students through hands-on workshops and other opportunities to explore genetics through practical activities and provides teachers with professional development and engaging resources to help students with contemporary biomedicine, especially genetics and genomics.



Nowgen has a wide range of resources suitable for a variety of audiences, such as videos about the influence of genes on common diseases; lesson plans about the role of nature and nurture, and policy documents, such as how and why genomics should be taught in the classroom.



Teacher resources have been designed to either support part of a lesson or be used to create an entire lesson plan. When browsing the resources, the ‘tags’ at the top of the page help narrow down your results.

Nowgen is a center of excellence in the UK in public engagement, education, and professional training in biomedicine.

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Featured: 1/7/2013 PEScholar [Physical Education]

PE Scholar is a new community website for sharing quality physical education teaching resources, lesson plans, discussions, and much more.



PE Scholar is designed to make it possible for the physical education community to share high quality teaching resources, engage in discussion, and access useful information.

PE Scholar provides a selection of high quality, innovative PE articles and resources that can be shared by educators involved with teaching physical education and coaching sports.

PE Scholar resources cover a range of topics including specific sports such as swimming, netball, hockey, athletics, basketball, fitness. You can find classroom materials like lesson plans, resource cards, worksheets, unit plans, ideas, and journal articles.



PE Scholar offers articles, resources, and discussion forums, where anything can be viewed, downloaded, shared, and discussed.

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