Computers a drag on learning

Contrarian finding: Computers are a drag on learningBy G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor For all the schools and parents who have together invested billions to give children a learning edge through the latest computer technology, a mammoth new study by German researchers brings some sobering news: Too much exposure to computers might spell trouble for the developing mind. Article continues

Google Earth for Macs released

Google Earth in a Mac world (PC too)
We feel like proud parents around here. Our eldest, Google Earth for the PC, is officially leaving beta status today, and we couldn't be more pleased. For those of you who downloaded early, upgrade to the latest and discover Google Earth all over again.And we have a brand new member of the family -- Google Earth for Macintosh.

Classroom Toolkit

ClassroomToolkit
"ClassroomToolkit is an Open Source movement for teachers. We offer strategic planning and management tools and tell-it-like-it is advice. We offer creative materials, reproducible modules, and tutorials that save teachers time and reduce stress. We provide a newsletter and eZine."

Enrich teaching with technology

Download presentations from the Microsoft conference (link)
Enrich teaching with technology and two presentations by Innovative teaching award winners

Chess in school

Chess, the Game of Royalty, Is Now the Game of Grade Schoolers, Too“… In Philadelphia, which has the seventh-largest school system in the country, 18 of the city's 280 public schools have added chess to their curriculums in a pilot program. About 4,000 students are getting chess instruction this year, according to Marjorie Wuestner, executive director of the school district's office of health, safety, physical education and sports administration.The goal, she said, is to have all second and third graders receiving chess instruction by next year.Paul G. Vallas, chief executive of the school system, said anecdotal evidence showed that chess is a great educational tool. "Chess seems to improve problem-solving skills," he said. "It improves discipline. It improves memory. It certainly seems to improve mathematical skills." Teaching chess, he added, is meant to enrich the curriculum, not replace another subject….”  Read the whole article

Pew report on the internet at school

The Internet at School
The internet is an important element in the overall educational experience of many teenagers. Schools are a common location where online teens access the web, although very few online teenagers rely exclusively on their school for that web access. Further, there is widespread agreement among teens and their parents that the internet can be a useful tool for school. However, 37% of teens say they believe that “too many” of their peers are using the internet to cheat. And there is some disagreement among teens and their parents about whether children must be web-literate by the time they begin school. Additionally, large numbers of teens and adults have used the web to search for information about colleges and universities.  

Read the whole Pew report

Awesome stories

AwesomeStories.com uniquely uses the Internet to link its story content to hundreds of thousands of the world's best on-line primary sources. Enjoy an interactive learning experience as you see relevant maps, pictures, artifacts, manuscripts and documents, IN CONTEXT, within each story. Take advantage of human-based searches for a safe, fast and fun way to learn the real story behind historic events, famous people, heroic exploits, legends, disasters, movies, plus topics of current and general interest.

Learning vs Education

Learning vs Education

“…what learning is (as opposed to education) and what the future might bring in

terms of "Personal Learning Environments" (PLE). And the underlying question here is what role do schools and teachers play in all of this.”  

Website warns parents about new technology

Parents warned over new technology
The need to educate children and teens about the new risks associated with devices such as webcams and mobile phones has sparked a revamp of a Government advisory website.  

Article continues

Teaching vs Learning

Our learning environments need to change to take advantage of the people and information and ideas that we can now connect to. We cannot continue to be enablers to our students' dependence on a school selected, force fed curriculum that was in some ways necessary 50 years ago but is quickly becoming irrelevant today. Our students need to learn how to learn, because there is so much more to learn from, and they need to be given the license to start making some of those decisions on their own

Read the details

Bush pushed to promote science and technology education

Bush pushed on science, innovation
Former ED Sec. Alexander urges president to promote science, technology education Responding to what he believes is a critical need for the future of American industry, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., former U.S. education secretary, has urged President Bush to make science and technology research and education key themes during the remainder of his presidency.  
Article continues

Curbing education dropouts

Education quandary: curbing dropouts The past year has seen unprecedented attention paid to the shortcomings of America’s high schools, prompting national leaders to pledge to transform high school and toughen graduation standards. But that means little to the nearly one-third of high school students who fail to meet current standards and don’t graduate on time.  Read the whole article

Merit based pay for teachers?

Houston Ties Teachers' Pay to Test Scores
HOUSTON, Jan. 12 - Over the objections of the teachers' union, the Board of Education here on Thursday unanimously approved the nation's largest merit pay program, which calls for rewarding teachers based on how well their students perform on standardized tests.Article continues

Virtual software for schools

'Virtual' software: The future for schools?
Software virtualization could greatly simplify IT management A new paradigm in software delivery, called "software virtualization," is poised to transform school IT management, some experts say--making software independent of an operating system and simplifying network administration. 
 Read the article

Teens optimistic about innovation

Study: Teens optimistic about innovation

Curbing eduction dropouts

Education quandary: curbing dropouts The past year has seen unprecedented attention paid to the shortcomings of America’s high schools, prompting national leaders to pledge to transform high school and toughen graduation standards. But that means little to the nearly one-third of high school students who fail to meet current standards and don’t graduate on time.  Read the whole article

New Intel Macs

Jobs: New Intel Macs are 'screamers'
SAN FRANCISCO--Addressing a packed crowd of the Mac faithful, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday served up the first Intel-based Macs, introducing a new high-end laptop and a revamped iMac.  
Read more

Making schools work

PBS finds a recipe for "Making Schools Work"
A companion web site to the PBS television series "Making Schools Work,"this online resource invites educators to follow host Hedrick Smith and his production team into classrooms from coast to coast to see how different communities, large and small, are coping with the challenge of preparing students for success in the face of higher federal standards and a new global economy. Among the site's many features are best practices detailing effective reform efforts underway in individual schools; a look at district-wide initiatives in New York City, San Diego, and Charlotte, N.C.; and a library of community-focused resources meant to help teachers and parents gauge how much work still needs to be done in their schools. "The common denominator"of all these programs, producers note as they welcome visitors to the site, "is results--lifting scores and closing achievement gaps, not just for a few hundred children but for nearly 2 million, from our inner cities to rural America."

Interactive learning does not improve literacy

Interactive learning fails reading test
INTERACTIVE computers used in British schools to teach children to read are harming their learning, research shows.  

Read the whole report

New science resouces on the web

Applied Math and Science Education Repository (AMSES) – A portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in community and technical colleges, which is open to everyone. AMSES highlights new science resources on the Web

TV time increases

We're Spending More Time Watching TV
Even with increased competition from video games, the Internet, DVD's and portable devices, the average television viewing time has risen four minutes a day so far this season over the same period last season.

Article continues

Hector Protector

Hector Protector is a "safety button" to protect children frominappropriate Internet content.  The Hector safety button is the first stage of the Internet Safety Group's education initiative - Hector'sWorld - designed for children between the ages of 3 and 10.  For more information see www.netsafe.org.au

Human minds like computers?

Is the mind like a computer? Evidence that it is not“What is your mind doing when you think about something? For decades, the prevailing wisdom was that when you imagine, say, the scent of a flower or your lover’s perfume, your mind is doing something different from when you actually smell those things. The metaphor was a computer: The hardware for sensing things was distinct from the software for thinking about things.More recent evidence suggests that the way we understand concepts relies on the sensorimotor system. When you think of the sound of a dripping faucet, the same parts of your brain are activated as when you are actually hearing a faucet dripping. (Computer geeks should see how the computer metaphor breaks down: it’s as if searching a database of images required the server to access its video card.)”

Article continues

Web 2 and learning

Tech Tools For Learning“Over the last few years, our relationship with the Web has been changing dramatically. Simple new technologies like weblogs and podcasts are allowing us to not only create content like text, audio, and video more easily, they are also allowing us to publish and share that content on the Web with very little effort. Instead of a “read only” Web, we’re entering the age of the Read/Write Web, where contributing knowledge is as easy as consuming it. Being able to publish worldwide this easily does raise legal and ethical issues for educators to be aware of, but it also facilitates a whole range of new learning potentials for students and teachers in the classroom. Here is a quick look at some of the technologies that are changing the way educators think about and deliver instruction.”

English teaching should incorporate techology

English 'must reflect technology'

English in schools must adapt to reflect the use of text messaging and communication via new technologies, a report says.
Research by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority says new skills are needed to keep pace with change.
It says schools should take advantage of the range of texts now available to teach the language, including online.
The recommendations come in a report which examined the future of the major curriculum subjects.  Article continues

Myths about video games

Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked
A large gap exists between the public's perception of video games and what the research actually shows. The following is an attempt to separate fact from fiction.  Read the whole article

TESOL pages

Games & Activities for the ESL/EFL Classroom
A Project of The Internet TESL Journal

This is a place were English teachers can share games and activities that they have found useful in the classroom.

Excellence in Mathematics teaching

The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM)
was first advocated in the Smith Report (2003), and much has been discussed about its potential impact to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics through improved CPD (continuing professional development), especially by Advisory Committee for Mathematics Education (ACME).
We are pleased to announce that the National Centre is now a reality, and will be formally launched in June 2006.  Visit the website

Educational goals

Here in Australia, outcomes-based assessment has taken a hold and is infiltrating quite successfully.  We have yet to combine it with the competitiveness and rewards-based compensation system that seems to be in place already in America.  Though I suspect those are on their way.  I wish they weren’t, and this blog and its added comments simply reinforce that fear.   Outcomes do not take into account inherent capabilities or societal influences, nor do they seem to me to rely on a holistic educational scheme.

“a healthy reminder that man is not primarily made to chase after his own creations. It’s not all about getting ahead, staying competitive, etc., etc. I’m not saying those are not worthwhile goals; just that they’re not the only ones, and perhaps not even the most important”

Students exchanging cultures

"Creative Connections" helps students reach out across the world

More than 1,500 classes from around the globe reportedly have participated in this online virtual exchange program that connects students and teachers around the world in efforts to promote a free-flowing cultural exchange of art, history, and modern-day communication.

Starting a book group

Talk it Up!
Starting a bookgroup for kids? This is a great place to start.

Talk it Up! provides information about how to start and run a bookgroup and over 150 discussion guides to use with specific books.
Need more ideas?We've prepared many booklists for kids to help you make your reading selections.

Students teaching teachers

The concept of a teacher standing in front of a class and imparting knowledge had been modified severely, but never entirely lost.  The idea that maybe students can teach peers, particularly in technology subjects, has been around, but it is still challenging.  Students teaching teachers?  More challenging still, but the possibilities are huge, particularly in all sorts of side alleys of student maturity.
Students teach PowerPoint
By Jill R. Goodman, Independent Newspapers
“Ohh, cool” resounded in a school computer lab — but not from students — as four teachers at Highland Lakes School, 19000 N. 63rd Ave., learned from students how to create a PowerPoint presentation. Article continues

Tying driver's licence to educational outcomes?

From CNW
McGuinty government to give legislative backing to student success


Bill to include mandatory programs for students, new enforcement measures

    - New legislation is expected to be introduced
today that would ensure students keep learning to 18 or graduation through creative incentives that realize students' individual potential and unique enforcements to prevent them from dropping out, Education Minister Gerard Kennedy announced today.
    "It has been 50 years since Ontario updated the school-leaving age
requirement," said Kennedy. "It's time that our 21st century high schools provide the kind of programs that are relevant to students today and support parents' ambitions for their children."
    "There is more at stake than ever before for students to get a high
school education that is high quality, meaningful and prepares them for a variety of postsecondary destinations."

    The legislation, if passed, would:

    -  mandate the government's comprehensive student success programs be made available by all school boards
    -  increase the school leaving age to 18 or until graduation by keeping students learning either in classrooms or at other approved learning programs
    -  improve enforcement policies with more effective and practical
measures tied to students' driver's licences
    -  create hard links between high schools and postsecondary destinations to allow external learning to be recognized for high school credits

Communication between devices

CoCo helps diverse devices talk to each other
School pilot aims to improve emergency preparedness
“A Virginia school system has received a grant from the U.S. Justice Department to pilot-test a new communication technology that reportedly enables cross-platform communication across a variety of devices. Federal officials hope the pilot, if successful, will serve as a model for enhancing emergency preparedness on school campuses nationwide.”  Read more

After-school programs accountability

Ed-tech makes after-school programs more accountable
Student ID cards track attendance, tie it to school achievement data
“ Jefferson County, Ky., school officials are using ID cards to bring accountability to their before- and after-school programs. The ID cards link student participation in after-school programs to school achievement data to help administrators see if there's a correlation.”  Article continues

Life in space

Life's Building Blocks Are Common In Space
“After A team of NASA exobiology researchers revealed today organic chemicals that play a crucial role in the chemistry of life are common in space.
"Our work shows a class of compounds that is critical to biochemistry is prevalent throughout the universe," said Douglas Hudgins, an astronomer at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. He is principal author of a study detailing the team's findings that appears in the Oct. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.”  Article continues

The Digital Divide and School success

Study: 'Digital divide' affects school success Kids with home computers more likely to graduate Access to a home computer increases the likelihood that children will graduate from high school, but blacks and Latinos are much less likely to have a computer at home than are whites, according to a new study. The study also found that the so-called "digital divide" is even more pronounced among children than adults.

What's the Return on education?

What's the Return on Education? "Schools' costs are easy to gauge. Their economic value is not."
Read the whole article

The Interfaith calendar

The interfaith calendar

10 years from 2005-2015 organised by year and by belief system.  Includes explanations of the celebrations

New Childhood Advocacy Website

•National peak advocacy organisation, Early
Childhood Australia, has its new website which
promises to be the most extensive online resource
for the early childhood field.
•National President, Judy Radich, believes that the
website will be a valuable tool in supporting the early
childhood field to provide the best experiences for
young children and their families.
•Early Childhood Australia has developed the new
website to extend its capacity to advocate for young
children.
Check it out at www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au.

Bloggers' FAQ - Student Blogging

The Bloggers' FAQ on Student Blogging addresses legal issues arising from student blogging. It focuses on blogging by high school (and middle school) students, but also contains information for college students.

The Poetry archive

The Poetry archive – for educators and teachers

Bring poetry to life in your school!
These pages are specially designed to help you and your students to get the most out of the Poetry Archive. There are lesson plans and activities for all key stages and for the inclusive classroom. Poetry can enrich other areas of the curriculum too; there are ideas here for History teachers, and we will be adding material for other subject areas in the coming months.
This is a growing, developing resource, so come back and visit regularly to see what's new. Our plans include a forum for teachers to discuss their experiences, as well as a space where you will be able to create your own teaching materials and share them with colleagues.

Databases in curriculum

Digging into Databases--Using Databases to Inspire Novel Approaches to Creating Curriculum

During the past year, I spent dozens of hours looking at more than 50 subscription databases as part of research for a school's new library. These online publications are a dream for middle and high school English and history teachers in the variety of primary and secondary sources they offer. Databases can inspire novel approaches to creating curriculum. As teachers become familiar with them, their thinking about lesson planning and student research often moves in innovative directions. Below are five projects where librarians can take the lead in helping history and English teachers see the potential of this new world of sources.

Australian Geography Teachers' conference

Australian Geography Teachers’ Association Conference

(incorporating the 2006 Australasian Conference
for ESRI Education Users)

Geography       making the connections    – creating futures

English/Literacy national conference

“Voices, Vibes, Visions:   Hearing the Voices, Feeling the Vibes, Capturing the Visions”

The Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) and the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) are pleased to host the next joint national conference to be held at Darwin High School, Northern Territory Australia from Saturday 8th July to Tuesday 11th July, 2006. Voices, Vibes, Visions is the 2006 ALEA/AATE National Conference theme.

Extra outside school hours care places

Almost 17,000 extra Outside School Hours Care places
Almost 17,000 extra Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) places will be delivered across 900 before school, after school and vacation care services as part of the Howard Government's ongoing commitment to further help families access quality child care. Article continues

World population at a glance

PopulationMondiale.com will give you the world's current population at a glance. Or you can click on the map and receive the data for a particular area.

Online conversion

Online conversionUnits conversion / metric conversion onlineWelcome to Convert Plus! Here you can convert just about anything to anything else. You can easily perform online conversions (e.g. metric conversions) for many measurement systems both commonly used like metric and U.S. Avoirdupois and quite exotic like Ancient Greek and Roman. And the popularity of the Convert Plus has grown such that there now over 30,000 people every week using it.

Top English teaching

Top English teaching.com

“Your source for English teaching resources: games, activities, worksheets, songs, lesson plans, readings, listening and much more.”

New Math Models where computers fail

New Math Models To Pick Up Where Computers Fail
For all the advances in computer power of recent years, many real-world processes are still so complex that they defy the capability of even the most advanced supercomputers to describe them - and to address such problems, mathematicians are being called for help.
As part of that effort, Oregon State University recently received a $647,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. It's one project in a national, $20-million initiative to have advanced mathematics pick up where sheer computing power is inadequate.  Article continues

Getting students to exercise

School fitness center targets tech-savvy students
Minnesota State University officials have hit upon a creative way to get students to exercise: They've outfitted the exercise equipment on their Mankato campus with computers and internet access. Now, students can check their eMail, surf the web, watch TV, or even do their homework while they work out.

Article continues

Gravity tractor

Gravity Tractor as Asteroid Mover
A huge spacecraft could use its gravity to keep an asteroid from hitting Earth. Read more

Mirror of the world

Mirror of the world
From the Read alert blog …
This Friday, the State Library of Victoria opens Mirror of the World, a new permanent exhibition tracing the history of the written word.
“Most Victorians have no inkling of the treasures their library contains because few, apart from the whitegloved scholars who consult the rarebooks collection during their research, have seen any of them”, Ray Cassin of The Age wrote in descibing the Mirror of the World.
A series of writing workshops and tours are available for school students during 2006. Writers Carole Wilkinson, Kirsty Murray, Trudy White and Gabrielle Wang will help students explore this extraordinary collection, and write imaginative pieces in response. Contact us for details of dates. There are sessions in all four terms of the school year.

New test identifies hearing problems

New test identifies classroom hearing problems in children
It is estimated that 2 to 3 per cent of all school-aged children suffer from a hearing deficit called an Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). In spite of having passed standard hearing tests, those affected by an APD have difficulty understanding speech, particularly in noisy environments. Now a test to diagnose the disorder has been developed by recently-graduated Macquarie University PhD Sharon Cameron.
Dr Cameron, whose undergraduate degree was in speech and hearing sciences, is now working as a research scientist for the National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL). But her research into APD first began in 2002 as part of her undergraduate honours project.

UN unveils windup laptop

UN unveils wind-up laptop

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,17274463%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.htm

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and a leading US IT expert Nicholas Negroponte unveiled the bright green and yellow working prototype of a US$100 ($140) laptop aimed at millions of schoolchildren in poor countries.The robust wind-up laptop with low power consumption is meant to be the backbone of an educational project to distribute the Internet-connected computers at no cost to their future owners.

Online Education community

Learning Times.org
Join the fastest growing online community of education and training professionals!
LearningTimes.org is an open community for education and training professionals. Members have free access to a wide range of opportunities to interact and network with peers from across the globe. Member activities include live webcasts and interviews with industry leaders, online debates and discussions, live coverage of industry conferences, and international working groups.
The LearningTimes.org community also features free group collaboration tools, such as virtual meeting rooms, a site-wide instant messenger, and virtual office suites, making it a vital place on the web for thousands of education professionals to meet and interact at any time.

Evaluating websites

Evaluating Websites

The Internet contains an immense range of information that is posted by individuals and organisations from around the world. There is no single body or organisation that ensures the quality of this information. Students and teachers need to acquire critical evaluation skills which will enable them to identify and extract quality information that meets their needs.

The ICT Literacy

The ICT Literacy Assessment is a comprehensive test of Information and Communication Technology proficiency that uses scenario-based tasks to measure both cognitive and technical skills. The assessment provides support for institutional ICT literacy initiatives, guides curricula innovations, informs articulation and progress standings, and assesses individual student proficiency.

Online phys ed catches on in schools

Online phys ed catches on in schools
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports A seemingly incongruous concept that began in Minneapolis public schools is starting to catch on in other school systems, too: taking gym class online.
Minneapolis school officials said they're hearing from school districts around the country that are interested in the program. In Minneapolis, student waiting lists are filling up fast.
"It's like we started the ball rolling, and it started rolling so fast, and now we're trying to catch up," said Jan Braaten, content specialist in physical education for Minneapolis schools. Braaten is making a presentation on the program in January to a national conference of phys-ed teachers.  Article continues

Video gaming in education

Educators take serious look at video gaming Learning to leverage the enormous popularity of video games to help students excel was the core purpose of two events held recently in Washington, D.C.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Summit on Video Gaming and McKinley High School's "Be the Game" video-gaming summit were meant to demonstrate the pedagogical value of gaming technology, often viewed with skepticism by generations of educators who did not grow up in the digital age. The FAS event focused on the theory behind using video games in the school curriculum, and the McKinley High School summit looked at how to use gaming curricula to engage students and improve their performance.  Article continues

Bridge the Gap and Keep children safe

Bridge the Gap and Keep Children Safe 
In this high tech society you may get the feeling you are being left behind by your children?
They seem to be speaking a different language, doing things online that you have never heard about and living in their own online world. 
Is this normal?  Are they in any danger? Am I really doing all I can for my children's safety? Will I ever be able to keep up with what they know?
These are common questions asked by parents.  You're not alone.

The value of a bookless classroom?

Teacher gleans federal kudos for bookless classroom

TAYLORSVILLE — Jerry Mangus' textbook-less teaching has dazzled the U.S. Department of Education.

Laura Seitz, Deseret Morning News
Jerry Mangus, a 5th and 6th-grade math teacher at Plymouth Elementary School in Taylorsville, received the No Child Left Behind Act Maerican Star of Teaching Award on November 2, 2005.
      Mangus, who teaches fifth- and sixth-grade math at Plymouth Elementary, uses only computers to teach fractions and other numerical concepts to kids. He's built computer labs in his school, each of his students has his or her own machine, and their test scores have leaped.  Article continues

Microsoft Seminar presentations available

Thank you for attending the complimentary Microsoft Education Seminar 2005. We hope you were able to discover new ways to use technology in the classroom to inspire and engage your students, and more importantly learn and share innovative ideas from your peers to improve learning outcomes for students.Download PresentationsAll presentations and resources are now available for download on the Microsoft Education website. Click here to DOWNLOAD.

Smart sheep

Sheep smarter than we think
Armidale sheep put to the test in a complex maze
Sheep are smarter than we think. They can learn and remember according to CSIRO researchers from Armidale in NSW. The team is working to identify and breed smarter sheep as part of their work to improve animal welfare and production.   Article continues
Watch the maze test - Video of sheep going through the maze (10 Mb)

Einstein versus Newton

Einstein versus Newton
Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are regarded as two of the greatest, if not the greatest, scientists who ever lived. The Royal Society is seeking to find out who scientists and the public think made the bigger contribution to both science and to humankind through a national poll of the general public and a poll of the Fellowship of the Royal Society, representing the UK and Commonwealth's leading scientists.
The results of the polls will be announced on 23 November 2005 at a Royal Society public debate: Einstein vs Newton.  Read the background to this issue

Discovery Health Connection

Discovery Education Announces Discovery Health Connection Updates

Discovery Education has announced a complete update and redesign of Discovery Health Connection—its digital health and prevention education resource that incorporates K-12 classroom curriculum programs covering nine critical topics of youth health and prevention education. Discovery Health Connection now includes 16 curriculum programs, three Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) Model Programs, correlations to every state's educational standards, and more than 100 new literacy lessons, according to the announcement.

Testing technology skills

Learning.com Partners with Districts to Help Test Technology Skills

Learning.com has announced partnerships with key school districts across the country as they pilot TechLiteracy Assessment, its online authentic assessment of the technology proficiency of elementary and middle school students. The pilot programs are designed to help districts demonstrate that both state and national education technology standards are being met. Along with the national mandate stating that every student should be technologically literate by the eighth grade, many states have also aggressively adopted and implemented their own technology standards.

Free videos

Free Resources: ScienCentral, Inc. Video Stories
“ScienCentral, Inc. recently contacted us about their videos on the latest research and developments in science and technology. They are currently providing their video stories free to educators who wish to use them as teaching tools or in presentations, and they are working further with educational publishers to provide their science content.
You can get a sense of ScienCentral's content by visiting the site <http://www.sciencentral.com/>, browsing or using various search features to find stories that interest you/your students, and viewing them online. (A sampling from today's home page: Remote Control Flies, Defeating Dyslexia, Spider Silk Strength, Alzheimer's Eye Test, and Living to 100.) There are nearly 1,000 stories archived on the site.
A ScienCentral spokeswoman wrote us: "If a teacher sees our site and wants to use our videos for educational/classroom purposes, they usually contact us by phone or e-mail and we provide the video clips free of charge. We can provide them in QuickTime, Real Media, Windows Media or on VHS/DVCam/Beta. The teacher just signs our license form allowing permission to use."”

Multimedia music curriculum

NEA jazzes things up with new multimedia music curriculum "Jazz in the Schools" is a new web-based, multimedia curriculum from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) that explores jazz as an indigenous American art form and as a means to understand American history. The five-unit, web-based curriculum and DVD toolkit are available free of charge to high school teachers of social studies, U.S. history, and music.  Article continues

Video game violence

Punishing video game violence: Does it reduce aggressive behavior?
Carmageddon 2 (source: Gamespot) is a gory racing game where players control drivers with names like “Max Damage” as they tear through city streets mowing down pedestrians and forcing competitors into bloody collisions. The game settings can be adjusted so that running down innocent bystanders actually increases a player’s point total. Surely, if there’s any video game that might raise a parent’s ire, Carmageddon 2 is one of them.
Studies have shown that violent video games are more likely than non-violent games to induce aggressive behavior, even after very short playing sessions. But more recent research (by Dmitri Williams and Marko Skoric) has suggested that violent game play does not always lead to aggression.  Article continues

Chatrooms

Chatrooms: help needed

Parents are showing an alarming level of ignorance and indifference towards their children's participation in Internet chat rooms, with boys in particular being left to their own devices.  Article continues

Literacy world wide

Literacy: a right still denied to nearly one-fifth of the world’s adult population
09-11-2005 1:50 pm Governments and donor countries are curtailing progress towards Education for All (EFA) – and broader poverty reduction – by according only marginal attention to the 771 million adults living without basic literacy skills, says the fourth edition of the EFA Global Monitoring Report, “Literacy for life”.* “Literacy is a right and a foundation for further learning that must be tackled through quality schooling for all children, vastly expanded literacy programmes for youth and adults, and policies to enrich the literate environment,” says Nicholas Burnett, the Report’s director.  Article continues

Virtual cafeteria for good eating habits

'Virtual cafeteria' teaches good eating habits To improve student health and enhance parent understanding, the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District (ISD) in Carrollton, Texas, has put $95,000 into developing a program to give parents, students, and other community stakeholders a new way to learn about the foods offered in its schools: a virtual cafeteria.  Article continues

Free online calendar

Free online calendaring service aims to get parents involved To help bridge the home-school connection and get parents more involved in their children's classes, global children's publishing and media company Scholastic Inc. and Trumba, a provider of digital communication services, have joined together to give America's teachers a new online tool. The companies are providing free access to Trumba's new calendar tool, OneCalendar, for every classroom teacher in the country.  Article continues

Girls doing it tough as boys take up trades
It is harder than ever for teenage girls to find a full-time job once they leave school, but teenage boys are having more success, a report shows.
More boys are taking up trade apprenticeships, or have found full-time work in expanding male-dominated industries such as construction and warehousing.
But girls are going backwards, says the report, How Young People are Faring 2005.Article coninues

Can one write love poetry in txt?


This is worth a look. A study at Cambridge has found that young people's writing skills have not, as some continue to say, fallen, in fact they seem to have improved. Read the whole post

Digital Natives Digital immigrants

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
It is amazing to me how in all the hoopla and debate these days about the decline of education in the US we ignore the most fundamental of its causes. Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
Today’s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, Read the whole article

Microsoft IT showcase

UMass first Microsoft IT Showcase School The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has been designated Microsoft Corp.'s first-ever "Information Technology (IT) Showcase School," under a new Microsoft program that aims to highlight IT excellence in higher education.  Article continues

Blummy and information literacy

Blummy and Information Literacy


(From the weblog-Ed blog)
If you want a nifty little tool for teaching basic information literacy in these days of the Read/Write Web, go to Blummy, create a bookmarklet with the links outlined below, and put it on every computer in your school. Why? Because not only can you replicate much of Alan's multi-post bookmarklet (which I'm still keeping, btw,) but you can also add links that will (using my homepage as an example):
  automatically look up who owns any website you're on (pick the "Whois" bookmarklet.)
  show who is linked to a particlular site (pick the "who's linking" bookmarklet with the Google logo.)
  and shows (literally) the page that every link on the site, well, links to, creating a page of active mini-browser windows. (Pick the "linked sites" bookmarklet) This takes a while, but it's worth the wait, and you can even set the size of the screenshot that comes up. Amazing.
As Alan November likes to point out, those are three basic pieces of information that every teacher and student needs to begin to evaluate the authority and accuracy of a particular site. Knowing who owns the site tells you something. If every outgoing link is a link back to the originating site, that tells you something. If every incoming link is a link from some spam blog, that tells you something too.
There's more to talk about here, and I'm sure this isn't any huge programming marvel, but the big news is that I haven't seen an easier way yet to get this crucial information. Very cool.

Teen content creators

Teen Content Creators and Consumers:

More than half of online teens have created content for the internet; and most teen downloaders think that getting free music files is easy to do

American teenagers today are utilizing the interactive capabilities of the internet as they create and share their own media creations. Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations. Read the full Pew/Internet report

Dynamic PowerTrainer

Dynamic PowerTrainer
"Dynamic PowerTrainer® is a proven eLearning authoring software tool to create, run and manage eLearning content. It's a user-friendly, state-of-the art solution, offering an impressive price/performance ratio."
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Statins for learning disorders?

UCLA Scientists Use Statins To Overcome Learning Disabilities In Mice
In a surprise twist that recalls the film classic "Flowers for Algernon," but adds a happy ending, UCLA scientists used statins, a popular class of cholesterol drugs, to reverse the attention deficits linked to the leading genetic cause of learning disabilities. The Nov. 8 issue of Current Biology reports the findings, which were studied in mice bred to develop the disease, called neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1).  Article continues

Goodnight Moon

Goodnight Moon – smokeless version
In the great green room, there is a telephone, and a red balloon, but no ashtray. "Goodnight Moon," the children's classic by Margaret Wise Brown, has gone smoke free.
In a newly revised edition of the book, which has lulled children to sleep for nearly 60 years, the publisher, HarperCollins, has digitally altered the photograph of Clement Hurd, the illustrator, to remove a cigarette from his hand.  Article continues

Teacher standards

Reframing the debate
Letter from SMH today. Now this is 'reframing the debate'Double standards again?Dr Brendan Nelson continues to disparage the literacy of university graduates ("Teachers told: prove you can read and write", November 8). He also frequently criticises numeracy standards among Australian students. At the same time the Government insists that all workers, regardless of education, can readily understand the personal and financial implications of a complex workplace agreement offered by their employer. Am I missing something here?Steve Bright, North Avoca

Filters hinder research

Study: Overzealous filters hinder research
The internet-content filters most commonly used by schools block needed, legitimate content more often than not, according to a study by a university librarian. Her report was presented at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) conference in Pittsburgh last week.  Article continues

The value of reading to children

Does reading to children help them learn to read?
“Eric Durbrow pointed me to this article in the Globe and Mail. Its lead sentence offers a surprising claim:
Parents take note: Reading to your preschoolers before bedtime doesn’t mean they are likely to learn much about letters, or even how to read words.”
And my comment has to be that they will learn so much more.  Visit my page on literacy and find the multitude of sites that prove the value of reading to children.  

ITs Now ICTs 2006

IT’s Now ICT’s 2006

Date: 18th April (Pupil-free day for State Schools)  
Time: 8.30 am – 3.15 pm.
Venue: Morayfield State High School, Visentin Rd Morayfield.
 
IT’s Now ICTs! 2006 will happen at Morayfield SHS on Tuesday 18th April 2006. The day will feature a range of ICT activities and workshops for primary and secondary teachers, supported by presentations and trade exhibits promoting the latest in educational hardware and software.
 
In-service opportunities available on the day include:  
 
Use of Wacom Pen Tablets in the classroom
Digital multimedia applications using Macromedia
New technologies such as digital white board
Flash animation and web page making
Visual Communicator and Movie Maker 2
PowerPoint, Outlook, Microsoft Word
Tools to make school administration tasks easier
Web Mail and searching the web.
Learning Place web pages and tools
Curriculum Exchange and Macquarie Net
Robotics and Technology
Concept Mapping Software
PDA Computing in the curriculum and more…
Activities for all ability levels from beginner to advanced.
  
Invitation to Present a Session
 
If you or one of your staff members can present a session on the day, please send a brief synopsis of the topic so it can be added to the program. Session presenters will receive free registration for the day.
 
Please mark this event in your diaries for 2006. More information will be available closer to the date.

Students in a digital age: some implications of ICT for teaching and learning

"...not only have advances in technology changed the way today’s learners communicate and socialise, but have fundamentally impacted the way they approach learning. Already, the fields of technology and education have been all but inextricably linked ..." Read the whole report

Web universities ranking on the web

Lists the world’s top universities by their web presence – research published and how much it is cited. Top 1000 and top 100 for each country are just 2 of the rankings included.

Education Podcast Network

Education Podcast Network
ABOUT EPN
The Education Podcast Network is an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century

Reading

For years, studies have shown that the most significant therapy for young offenders is not Outward Bound camps, not psychological counselling, not tough love or family healing, but remedial reading. While no one would deny the importance of all those other approaches to troubled, destructive behaviour, many studies for over 30 years have consistently shown that help with literacy has a more profound and lasting impact on the rehabilitation of antisocial kids than anything else.  Read the whole article

OAses for open access

Oases, the Open Access Toolbar
OAses, a toolbar for Internet Explorer, is designed to make internet searching easier for students, academicians and scientists.  OAses searches many open access resources, free databases, and search engines.

The real Shakespeare

Focus: Is this an impostor I see before me?
Scholars claim they have finally identified the real Shakespeare. But the drama is not over yet. Richard Woods reports The most enigmatic and mysterious drama ever created by William Shakespeare is about to reach its denouement. Or so certain scholars hope.
This tragi-comedy — let’s call it Where Art Thou, Will? — has for years beguiled and bamboozled audiences with a simple theme: who really wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare? The answer, say these scholars, will be revealed in a book to be launched on October 19 at the Globe theatre in London, a replica of the playhouse where Shakespeare once trod the stage.  Article continues

Games in Higher Ed: When Halo 2, Civilization IV, and Xbox 360 Come to Campus
The evolving technologies committee is charged with identifying and monitoring evolving technologies and their impact on higher education institutions. This submission is on gaming in higher education.

UQ is a `hub` for new online teaching facilities
The University of Queensland is one of only seven universities worldwide taking part in an international online collaboration to improve the student learning experience.

UMass first Microsoft IT Showcase School

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has been designated Microsoft Corp.'s first-ever "Information Technology Showcase School," under a new Microsoft program that aims to highlight IT excellence in higher education. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer made the announcement at the university's W.E.B. Du Bois Library as UMass-Amherst officially opened its new technology center, the Learning Commons....
Article continues

Leigh Blackall critiques how digital literacy, for the use of social software, affects teaching practices in Australian education in Digital literacy: How it affects teaching practices and networked learning futures - a proposal for action research.

Teachers Domain

Teachers' Domain
“is a multimedia digital library for the classroom that provides learning experiences in ways no textbook can.”
RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators
Whether you're just starting out with Weblogs and related technologies or you've dug in pretty hard, this RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators (.pdf) will hopefully help you see the potential for RSS feeds in your classroom.

Playsport

Welcome to PlaySport - an awesome website with all kinds of great activities designed to teach kids games by playing games!
PlaySport allows you to search for activities based on the equipment you have, the skills you want to teach, the complexity of the game or the space you have available.
Teachers, coaches and camp counselors can all benefit from this resource.
PlaySport games encourage fun, free play while helping kids develop the skills needed to participate in all kinds of sports.

Yahoo bans teens from chat rooms

YAHOO will ban under-18s from chat rooms as part of an agreement with the US states of New York and Nebraska designed to prevent predators using the online meeting places.

Yahoo's decision, which includes an undertaking to shut down chat rooms used by predators, marked the first time an internet media company has employed system-wide controls over chat rooms, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and his Nebraska counterpart Jon Bruning said. Article continues

Want to know more about designing interactivity? Visit Interactivity for design suggestions, evaluations and promotional ideas and much more...

Facing the Future develops young people’s capacity and commitment to create thriving, sustainable, and peaceful local and global communities. We do this by equipping teachers and schools with the tools and strategies to help students:
• Understand global issues and sustainability in a way that shows the connections between population, environment, consumption, poverty and conflict
• Develop a global perspective
• Learn critical thinking skills Be inspired to take personal action

School orders students to remove blogs

A Roman Catholic high school has ordered its students to remove their online diaries from the internet, citing a threat from cyberpredators. Article continues