Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Nine Stubborn Brain Myths That Just Won't Die, Debunked by Science This is a good summary of many of the brain and learning studies, although it is not written by a researcher or cognitive expert. I find the last one interesting, "believe you can get smarter" and it becomes possible. ;-) tags: education news brain 50 Search Engines You Probably Don't Use Yet I always find searching interesting. This Edudemic post includes 50 different search engines. Some of these are being used, at least by my students, but every media specialist should peruse this list. tags: education news media librarian The Beachco...

Great Barrier Reef declining faster than ever, coral cover could be 5 percent in a decade (+video) - CSMonitor.com (via Great Barrier Reef declining faster than ever, coral cover could be 5 percent in a decade ( video) - CSMonitor.com) I find this very upsetting and hope that teachers and schoolchildren talk about this very real threat. This is the kind of thing we should be talking about in schools. The Great Barrier Reef is declining faster than ever and  coral cover could fall to 5% in the next decade according to a study released Tuesday. The accompanying video is something you can use. tags: science scichat education teaching Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

"My greatness shall not in the annals of history be but in the words and deeds my students learned through me." Vicki Davis @ coolcatteacher Just a thought I penned last night in the car that I thought I'd share and combine with this lovely photo on Bigstock. Hope it inspires you. ;-) Photo Credit: Big Stock

Early Windows 8 adoption lags behind Windows 7's rates - Technology on NBCNews.com I have played with the Windows 8 system and am definitely installing it on my touch screen at home. The integration with social media is fantastic. Perhaps what I like best is what live.edu can do -- of course the struggle is now I'm committed to Google Apps for Domains. I do think that people should take a serious look at the collaborative features in the system. They are powerful but are also very new and different and basically require relearning in some ways. "Only 0.33 percent — or 33 out of every 10,000 PCs — currently run a Preview version or RTM trial of Windows 8, Computerworld reports, citing statistics from metrics firm Net Applications. At the same point to the release of Windows 7, 1.64 percent of all Windows PCs were running the upcoming operating system. That's a full five times more than Windows 8 adoptees — and the gap between ear...

Ed Tech: 4 Tips from Cool Cat Teacher that Will Make You a Tech Savvy Teacher | HotChalk's Lesson Plans Page An article hotchalk did that talks about some of the habitgs I have in my classroom. One of the biggest is taking and making time to learn. "Davis used her daily break time – 15 minutes – two to three times a week to do this. First she’d discover what she wanted to learn about and make a list – from wiki to QR codes and beyond. Then she’d spend her next breaks working her way through the list. “Break it down,” she said. “If you want to eat a watermelon, you don’t eat it whole. You eat it a bite at a time.”" tags: education teaching tumblr inthenews Jonathan Ive - Tribute to Steve Jobs - YouTube This tribute to Steve Jobs is gaining traction in the anniversary of hi...

Apple's Passbook gets some love from Airbnb, Eventbrite, McDonald's | Apple - CNET News "McDonald's app is available only in France at the moment but lets customers place an order and pay for it from their iPhone." Paying via mobile device is going to increase. Now, school lunch cards and numbers are the norm, but I would expect that eventually paying for books and food will be via mobile device. IT is going to be more important than ever that we teach our children how to handle money because paying via mobile, I think, is a lot like paying with a debit card - you don't feel the pain that you do when real cash is involved. tags: news payment apple ios iphone passbook money Lindsay Lohan Was Bullied In High School For Movie Roles Troubled...

What are creative ways we can create symbiotic learning relationships between different types of learners? - Flat Classrooms This is a fascinating conversation about connecting, symbiotic relationships and more with some powerful, spot on answers. The teachers in our current Flat Classroom 12-1 cohort are amazing (and we have another cohort starting soon -- here's what we've been talking about this week. "This is happening now. Live Mocha and other sites have tandem learning - each learner teaches the other a different language. In my classroom, I have the older students teach younger students about computer hardware. But we could be doing so much more. Some professors like Dr. Leigh Zeitz (his students have served as expert advisors) and Dr. Eva Brown (her students helped run Eracism last year) are flattening their college classrooms with preservice teachers by having the teachers connect with high school and younger classrooms. Th...