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Acknowledgements - Flat Classroom Book We thanked a lot of people in our book. Here are some - we reprinted our acknowledgements online. We're very grateful and have many to thank. You might want to follow some of these links to some fascinating people. tags: education flatclass Technology in the classroom -- Shanghai Daily | 上海日报 -- English Window to China New I love this story about Shanghai International School and what they and other schools are doing in China. I particularly enjoyed the story of Toni Olivera-Barton and her journey (which yes, started with some Flat Classroom projects) but have now branched out into her running her own projects. One of the things Julie and I have said is that we will know we have succeeded when we see those we teach birth new projects. The global projects stage has lots...

Twitter for PE Teachers « Mr Robbo – The P.E Geek A great tutorial on how to set up a Twitter account from @mrrobbo . He targeted the information to PE teachers but really, any teacher who wants to start using twitter would benefit from this. If you are a PE teacher, you'll want to follow @ThePEGeekApps to find new apps to use in your health and physical education courses. tags: education teaching teachers health_teacher health Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

In the UK , Sky TV is launching an internet based television service. More television channels are going Internet based. They'd better - with youtube channels and other channels coming through the Net and our Roku boxes, I now watch BBC shows like the awesome Sherlock Holmes series and movies from other countries. Borders don't mean so much. I also watch Teckzilla and TwitTv on my iPad while I'm doing dishes intermixed with old Netflix greats like Charlie Chan and some Yul Brenner classics. What I find fascinating is that we'll be talking about education in this way in the near future. We'll be mixing different profs and different courses like I mix up dinner. "Sky describes the new over the top (OTT) service as being aimed at the 13 million UK households who don't currently subscribe to pay TV, with access available via "PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone, games console or connected TV." Initially, it will offer Sky Movies on demand joi...

Why Urban, Educated Parents Are Turning to DIY Education - The Daily Beast The homeschooling movement is growing. This hidden element of the edreform movement may have more impact than you think. Also, just because parents are doing it, are they learning? "There are an estimated 300,000 homeschooled children in America’s cities, many of them children of secular, highly educated professionals who always figured they’d send their kids to school—until they came to think, Hey, maybe we could do better." tags: education news homeschooling Research sheds new light on how the placenta shapes brain development | Mail Online "Last year, researchers at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of medicine, found the placenta's role in a brain d...

100th Day of School Do you celebrate the 100th day of school? My friend Jerry Blumengarten has curated a ton of great ideas for you. tags: education lessonplans teaching Charles Dickens Lesson Plans and resources Charles Dickens birthday is February 7th. Here are resources and lesson plans to help you. tags: lessonplans teaching lessons engchat literature charles dickens Teaching Resources, Classroom Resources & Lesson Plans - TES Resources While the UK celebrates safer internet day on February 7, we can go through and get some great resources for kids of all ages (including some SmartBoard templates....

1:1 in Practice at Sinarmas World Academy This teacher is using iTunes producer to write books for her students in Indonesian and has run into trouble, however, here is her advice with screenshots and graphics. Some very practical advice to those writing free ibooks for their students. tags: education apple edapp eduapp ibook ebook Letter Reflex - Overcoming Letter Reversals GIVEAWAY! - Educational Apps For Kids An app to help with letter reversals. This website has nice reviews, but I like the approach being taken by Classroom Window and hope you'll join me over there in writing reviews. tags: education eduapp eduapps dysgraphia ...

Harnessing Gaming for the Classroom - NYTimes.com Nice article in the New York Times about game based learning. (Hat tip Larry Ferlazzo's Twitter stream.) "Speaking at the Learning Without Frontiers conference in London last week, he said that computer games stimulate the brain’s reward system to produce dopamine, a chemical “which helps orient our attention and enhances the making of connections between neurons, which is the physical basis for learning.” Mr. Howard-Jones said that research has shown that the introduction of a chance or game element into any reward system increases dopamine production. “For generations, we educators have done everything we can to maintain a consistent relationship between reward and achievement, but the neuroscience is telling us something different,” he said in an interview." tags: education news gamebasedlearning ...

"Sometimes we throw more out the back door with a spoon than we can bring in the front door with a wheelbarrow," said my Poppa Adams. (My great-grandfather.) I've been thinking about this saying and how it applies to my classroom, my pocketbook, my life. I guess it is another version of the "small holes sink big ships" kind of thinking. Classroom Are we spoon chucking away our classroom time? Add up all the distractions: fire drills, testing (if you're stuck with mandatory testing), assemblies, kids leaving for sports and how much time do you really have to teach? Perhaps if administrators look at the classroom time that is being "spoon chucked" out the back door it will help improve learning because kids will have more time to learn. Are we spoon chucking away the time we do have? It is rare that I will end 5 minutes early. Multiple 5 minutes by 5 days and that is 25 minutes a week. Multiple that by 30 weeks and you have 750 minutes or ...

Live Interview Tuesday, January 31st - David Loertscher on Physical and Virtual Learning Commons and Building Personal Learning Environments David Loertscher is an inspiring, brilliant researcher who has written some great books on the learning commons and the evolution of the library. He is an expert. You'll want to join this free interview at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern. Librarians and administrators should attend this session. I've learned so much from David. tags: education librarian librarians news Harnessing Gaming for the Classroom - NYTimes.com Nice article in the New York Times about game based learning. (Hat tip Larry Ferlazzo's Twitter stream.) "Speaking at the Learning Without Frontiers conference in London last week, he said that computer games stimulate the br...

Chapter 1 Introduction - Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds - Flat Classroom Book Here are the resources from the first chapter of the Flat Classroom book along with the first chapter.  tags: education flatclass news Book Features - Flat Classroom Book The book is out, so I can share what we did with our book features in the book. The graphic design is amazing (but I am quite partial.) The website will be finished up this week (we had to wait for the final book copy to tweak some things and wanted to release the pages as it launched.)  tags: education news flatclassroom FCBook Case study Craig Union Research - Google Docs Dr. Craig Union found that ...

Apple’s iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China - NYTimes.com There is a human cost when manufacturing is outsourced to places that do not respect human rights. This article is making the rounds in light of Apple's stellar financial performance but it can be related to other companies too. Overseas reall means "no one sees" and thus no one cares. We should care about human beings being treated in a humane way no matter where they live. tags: News apple human rights Welcome to the Library Dogs Web Site! There are schools in Georgia with reading dogs. Yes, reading dogs. These animals stay in the library and kids get to. There and read to the animals. My friend Stephen Rahn shared a pic on Facebook about two he saw yesterday and sas the kids love them. They sit on the fl...

Gadgetbox - Apple vs. the textbook: Can education go paperless? Apple's move into textbooks. Perhaps bumpy at first but with lots of potential. I have seen a lot of favorable thoughts with the Apple announcement. Here is a note from MSNBC I thought expressed a concern of many. Great article about the announcement that is balanced and not just fanboy worship that we get from many sites. ". Can Apple control quality and manage the educational boards? As soon as the iBooks Author tool was introduced, many Apple watchers who had previously witnessed the garbaging up of the iTunes App Store — with useless or redundant fart or flashlight apps — let out a collective sigh. How long until the shiny new corner of the iBookstore, where the textbooks will reside, is filled with hastily made, low-quality products, or worse yet, works of high quality that nevertheless contain misleading or unsubstantiated information." t...

5 Ways Teachers Can Raise Standardized Test Scores | Education Is My Life This teacher reflects on the practices he feels have raised test scores in his classroom. Test scores are a fact and until it is changed at the top, teachers in the classroom have to work within that environment. tags: teaching testing Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

The Press Association: Brown wants global education fund Move to global education fund but funding is hard to come by. This article implies it is easier to raise money for diseases than to educate people. That is sad. "All 193 United Nations member states are signed up to a Global Millennium Goal for primary school education to be accessed by every child by 2015, agreed at the New York Millennium Summit in 2000. In the current funding set-up, countries with the biggest out-of-school populations, such as Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, are not eligible for grants from the World Bank's Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Despite being the leading worldwide education fund, the GPE recently failed to raise a pledges target of 2.5 billion US dollars (£1.6 billion) over three years and has been criticised for a lack of flexibility in allocating grants.". tags: education ...

Circus Physics | Classroom | Circus | PBS Circus physics videos from PBS. (Hat tip to Richard Byrne for this great set of videos.) There are 8 short videos that use circus performers to teach physics concepts. tags: education lesson lessonplans teaching physics stem science_teacher Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

PowerSchool Parent - Pearson School Systems We will enable this next year at our school but PowerSchool parent is an app with many downloads. This is the link to the itunes store. tags: edapp eduapp (Good) Free App of the Day! LEGO App 4+ - Educational Apps For Kids My son loves everything Lego including this cute (free) app. tags: eduapp. edapp lego Pocket Schedule - Classes, Exams & Assignments - BlueTags This app is a top paid app in the iTunes store. It is a new one to bit the charts. tags: eduapp edapp ios planning ...

IQ Drops When You’re In a Group | Psych Central News IQ is linked to social context. Does this mean mainstreaming is wrong? Right? Depending on who you are? ". Provocative new research discovers small-group dynamics can lower the expression of IQ in some susceptible people. In the study, researchers determined IQ is significantly linked to social context." IQ depends upon social context? If this research is proven to be true it could change how we measure and understand IQ. "“This study tells us the idea that IQ is something we can reliably measure in isolation without considering how it interacts with social context is essentially flawed,” said coauthor Steven Quartz, Ph.D. “Furthermore, this suggests that the idea of a division between social and cognitive processing in the brain is really pretty artificial. The two deeply interact with each other.” . tags: education ...

Vim - Applidium This app is interesting not onky because it is a very simple free text editor bit it is open source "charityware." I cannt recall hearning the term charityware but they have a suggested charity they would like you to donate to if you like the app. That is a great idea. tags: education news Research Blog Google is open sourcing Google Sky Map for Android. ".Today, we are delighted to announce that we are going to share Sky Map in a different way: we are donating Sky Map to the community. We are collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University in an exciting partnership that will see further development of Sky Map as a series of student projects. Sky Map’s development will now be driven by the students, with Google engineers remaining closely involved as advisors. Additionally, we have...

4 Sites for Free Vintage Photographs — Life Scoop Four great sites to find vintage photographs. For presentations, activities, and authentic learning. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. tags: teaching photographs lesson plans Drive to Life | Scholastic A contest that you'll want to consider entering with your students. " Dear Lori, Distracted driving—from texting behind the wheel to turning around to chat with friends in the backseat—can lead to deadly consequences, particularly for teens. Now your students can save lives and change attitudes by entering our Drive2Life Contest. Challenge your students in grades 6–12 to create an exciting, innovative storyboard or script for a memorable Public Service Announcement that educates others about distracted driving. The gr...

How to Add Goodreads to Your Facebook Timeline - GalleyCat I love Goodreads and now have a reason to go back more often. Here is how you can integrate it into your Facebook with the new Open graph service. This may become the book review mechanism of the future, linking with our friends. tags: Education edapp eduapp Free Technology for Teachers: LiveBinders Comes to the iPad Livebinders has an ipad app now. Livebinders rock! tags: eduapp edapp Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Student success starts at home, but it can be tough navigating the waters of learning. In the first post in this series , I shared the facts about how success starts at home, in the last post we covered the first three items in my list of 10 tips for starting student success at home. This is a series I wrote for the Lifetime Channel that I'm also posting here on my blog. 10 Tips for Starting Student Success at Home (4-6) 4 - Success in the classroom is not just mastery of the subject matter but mastery of a child’s relationship with his/her teacher. We all have to get along with people they don't like for the rest of their life and classroom is life. Children will have bad bosses one day and they may have a bad teacher today. I am preparing them for how to deal with a bad boss when I teach them how to deal with a bad teacher. Sometimes my child can learn more from a bad teacher than a good one if they learn to be strong, do the right thing, and work hard. I cannot always i...

Facebook Announces Tight Integration of 60 Apps to Timeline, More on the Way The full list of the 60 apps in Open Graph. Time to start testing (and unblocking Facebook.) tags: education Faceboik news Grockit The social study hall linking you with your friends as you study. ".Big test looming? Grockit is a social study tool that’s customizable and connects you with friends on Facebook. Study guides are available for middle school, high school, college and graduate students — from the SAT to GRE. The program has some hefty research behind it, too. Experts in curriculum design who’ve worked for Apple and Houghton Mifflin helped create some of the lesson plans on the app. Study solo or connect with study partners on Grockit. Let your Facebook friends know you’re studying on Grockit and boast about ...