The American Psychological Association (APA) has been busy lately doing research into how gaming boosts cognitive skills. “A host of studies suggest that video game build cognitive skills. Even a relatively simple tiling puzzle like Tetris has been shown to boost brainpower”, they write. They also comment on experiments that show that laparoscopic surgeons who [...]
The derivative matching game‘, by The MAA Mathematical Sciences Digital Library”, offers one of those maths activities that you think, ‘this is so simple, but effective, why hasn’t this been done before?’ It consists of showing graphs of a few functions, and the graphs of their derivatives, and you have to match them up. Simple, [...]
The Wisconsin online Resource Center, “a digital library of web-based learning resources,…is available to colleges, universities and consortia from throughout the United States and around the world with permission.” has some pretty impressive stuff. Also, Curriki , which aims to allow teachers to collect lesson plans, contribute teaching resources and connect with other educators is [...]
In this day and age where it is a constant struggle to keep up with the latest web 2.0 technologies, Mashable offers us “35 Tools For Teachers, Tutors and Students“. It offers all kinds of tools that can help you do most of your planning including learning management systems, social networking communities for students, as [...]
For the love of poetry.
@Edu, after sharing with us, that the most common student response to her question, “What kinds of writing do you like to do?” is “Poetry!”, she points us to a perfect site for aspiring junior youth writers: The Young Writers Society, which is “Specifically created for young writers ages 13 [...]
Learn about Virtual Worlds
It seems as if all the junior youth are into virtual worlds these days. Raph Koster, the video gaming guru, points us to the “2008 Metaverse Tour Video” which is a video tour of almost all the major virtual worlds, whilst LightSpeed offers and excellent summary of points via its “Cartoon Networks [...]
Maryellen Weimer, through her experiences with knitting, she writes about “Deep learning”
“….Surface learning is equated with memorization and rote learning as opposed to deep learning generally laid alongside understanding. Actually, I’ve been thinking that deep learning is something more.
….Deep learning means making something your own, owning it, and fitting it into the framework of your [...]
Although, very short on information, it seems that at least the idea of what “Heekya” is planning, sounds very interesting. From their blog:
‘Heekya is a social storytelling platform. We aim to change the way you tell, share and discover stories on the internet.”
Mashable gives a slightly more detailed explanation of the service:
Currently in private beta, [...]
Chris Lehmann in “Why We Need Vision” writes some compelling stuff that is at once inspirational and practical. It was original written to address the question “How can Philadelphia improve its public education system?”
First killer point:
We can talk about all of the issues facing public education, but we have to fundamentally ask ourselves first what [...]
A particular paragraph of Deborah Meier’s recent article on “The Purpose of Small Schools” really grabbed my attention:
Small schools are an attempt to re-create, intentionally, the best of the family dinner table, the town meeting, the public square, the legislative process, the team, and the academy of thinkers—with as much of the diversity of the [...]
