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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The Rearview Mirror 6-28-2014

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.

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Monday

The NISE Network is an online digital library of public nano educational products and tools for educators and scientists to use to increase their ability to engage their people in nanoscale technology.

Tuesday

In order to help you integrate core nonfiction topics into your curriculum, Kids Discover has developed hundreds of free downloads, articles, lesson plans, and other resources.

Wednesday

MathTerms is a free illustrated glossary of nearly 1000 mathematics terms for middle- and high-school students and teachers in both English and Spanish.

Thursday

Sharplet is a new web app that promises users will remember more in less time using the spaced repetition learning method to optimally schedule flashcard review sessions.

Featured 6-26-2014: Sharplet

Sharplet

 

Sharplet is a new web app that promises users will remember more in less time using the spaced repetition learning method to optimally schedule flashcard review sessions.

 

 

Spaced repetition is a learning technique that utilizes increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material in order to take advantage of the psychological spacing effect. The amount of time between learning sessions is a determining factor in long-term memory formation, not the amount of time spent learning.

 

During your study sessions, grade flashcards on how well you recall them. Cards are scheduled for review based on these grades. Cards you know well will move further ahead in the review schedule so you will see them less often. The progressively increasing review period between each card moves knowledge quickly from your short to long-term memory.

 

 

The founders of Sharplet believe that some flashcard applications may be good but are lacking essential features and none seem to be fully integrating spaced repetition. They endeavored to make Sharplet easy to use and to provide the appropriate features that will allow users to have fun while learning.

 

 Currently Sharplet does not have dedicated mobile apps but the website will adapt to the screen of size of your device so you can study a course on any device. Dedicated IOS and Android apps are planned for the near future.

 

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

Featured 6-25-2014: MathTerms

MathTerms is a free illustrated glossary of nearly 1000 mathematics terms for middle- and high-school students and teachers in both English and Spanish.

 

With its colorful, annotated illustrations, MathTerms has been accessed online by millions of students over the past five years. It is now available as an iPad and Android app with permission of The Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin and Agile Mind, Inc.

 

Key features of MathTerms:

• Free with no advertising
• Covers Middle School Math, Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Precalculus, Calculus, and Statistics
• Colorful, annotated illustrations
• Complete, sentence-based definitions
• Alphabetical indexes
• Flash card function
• No internet connection required for use

 

Complete definitions are available in both English and Spanish. Display toggles between English and Spanish terms, and the search function is available in both languages.

 

 Watch a video demo of the MathTerms app

 

 The MathTerms iPad app requires iOS 3.2 or higher. The Android version requires Android 1.6 or higher.

 

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

Featured 6-24-2014: Kids Discover

 

In order to help you integrate core nonfiction topics into your curriculum, Kids Discover has developed hundreds of free downloads, articles, lesson plans, and other resources. 

 

The mission of Kids Discover is "to expose kids to all the wonders in the world—science, space, nature, history and culture—in one easy-to-understand, beautiful publication” with the goal of encouraging kids' natural curiosity while fostering an enthusiasm for reading and learning.

 

A Teacher’s Guide and a Power Vocabulary packet accompany every Kids Discover title. These free downloads come with with activities, exercises, and assessments to help you integrate their nonfiction titles into your curriculum.

 

 

More Kids Discover resources:

• Reproducible, one-page infographics and lesson sheets bring complex concepts to life with diagrams and short captions.
• Long-form Spotlights articles each cover one topic in-depth, and include a photo gallery and short assessment to help improve reading comprehension and vocabulary.
• Short (about 300 words) Quick Reads nonfiction pieces are intended to get kids interested in exploring new ways to read and digest information.

A subject-matter expert from a prestigious university or museum authenticates each issue of Kids Discover. All issues are ad-free.

 

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