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Scoop.it!
Plagiarism is a serious offense. These 10 online services help you check students' text, or avoid getting into academic hot water yourself. Via Judy O'Connell 
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"When American education is in crisis, policy makers and thought leaders roll out the STEM argument, that the science, technology, engineering and math curriculum needs to be emphasized as the cornerstone of American competitiveness in a world where Chinese students do lightening drills on the periodic table of the elements at age 4 (lol).
There is certainly no question that STEM education and STEM skills are a vital part of this country’s edge, but many educators would argue that STEM is missing a key set of creativity-related components that are equally critical to fostering a competitive and innovative workforce, and those skills are summarized under the letter “A” for Arts. Two years ago, the Conference Board and Americans for the Arts, in association with the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), conducted a survey of executives and school superintendents. The study, called Ready to Innovate, demonstrated that more and more companies are looking for skill sets in their new employees that are much more arts/creativity-related than science/math-related. Companies want workers who can brainstorm, problem-solve, collaborate creatively and contribute/communicate new ideas. And, interestingly, the study shows that managers are finding a dearth of creative workers trained in these “A” skills. So why is this not part of the overall national debate? STEM should be amended to STEAM, an idea that has been kicking around with many people in the creative industries for a few years now, and became a key discussion point of the Americans for the Arts 2007 National Policy Roundtable where the Ready to Innovate study was first unveiled."
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"Join me Tuesday, August 28th, for another live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Tony Wagner, this time on his latest book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. Tony recently accepted a position as the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Prior to this, he was the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade. Creating Innovators is a "provocative look at why innovation is today’s most essential real-world skill and what young people need from parents, teachers, and employers to become the innovators of America’s future" (from the publisher catalog).
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★ BACK-TO-SCHOOL SPECIAL: Math Dictionary for Kids is FREE for three days only! Offer ends August 22nd. ★
Via John Evans
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"PhET provides fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena for free.
To help students visually comprehend concepts, PhET simulations animate what is invisible to the eye through the use of graphics and intuitive controls such as click-and-drag manipulation, sliders and radio buttons. In order to further encourage quantitative exploration, the simulations also offer measurement instruments including rulers, stop-watches, voltmeters and thermometers. As the user manipulates these interactive tools, responses are immediately animated thus effectively illustrating cause-and-effect relationships as well as multiple linked representations."
Why UDL? PhET simulations offers multiple means of representation and action and multiple means of engagement. There is also a translation tool to translate any of these simulations in a multitude of languages.
Via Kathleen McClaskey
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From
www
"Innovation is the currency of progress. In our world of seismic changes, innovation has become a holy grail that promises to shepherd us through these uncertain and challenging times. And there isn't a more visible symbol of innovation than the iPad. It's captured the hearts and minds of disparate subcultures and organizations.
In education it's been widely hailed as a revolutionary device, promising to transform education as we know it. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as bulk purchasing iPads and deploying them into the wilds of education. Innovation can't be installed. It has to be grown -- and generally from the margins."
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Online Universities recently came out with a list of the top 50 iPad applications geared specifically for students interested in science, technology, engineering, and math. Via kcalderw, WebTeachers
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From
mashable
"Meet the four finalists of the Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, which challenges students to use technology to solve the world’s toughest problems."
"Microsoft’s Imagine Cup brings students together from across the world each year, in effort to use technology to solve the world’s toughest problems.
Mashable met with four teams, hailing from Germany, Australia, the U.S. and Qatar, to learn how they are using technology to make an impact on the future.
Students are using Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360, Windows 8, Windows Azure and Windows Phone in their Imagine Cup projects. Many members of the competition draw inspiration from the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, to create solutions to problems in the fields of education, healthcare and environmental sustainability, among others.
The Worldwide Finals will take place in Sydney, Australia, between June 6 and 10, where the winners of local, regional and online competitions will share their visions for how technology can shape the future. The 106 teams will hail from 75 countries."
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"I love my three young children immensely. So it's hard for me to be fully rational about them. Of course they are the smartest, the best looking, and the most athletic. I'm not alone — all parents are irrational."
"Irrationality can be a strong asset. Sure, a vast majority of new businesses fail, so a fairly rational person could easily justify maintaining the status quo. But our world is — unquestionably — a better place because people take risks that don't quite make logical sense. Of course, irrationality presents challenges too. It can blind innovators to real problems and to important signals telling them to do something different. Yes, perseverance may be an underappreciated skill, but when paired with passion, it often leads to fanaticism. So how can you toe the line between irrationality and fanaticism without pursuing a doomed idea?"
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TED Fellow Abigail Washburn wanted to be a lawyer improving US-China relations -- until she picked up a banjo. She tells a moving story of the remarkable connections she's formed touring across the United States and China while playing that banjo and singing in Chinese.
Abigail Washburn pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds, creating results that feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anybody's ever heard before. Full bio » 'I see the power of music to connect cultures. I see it when I stand on a stage at a bluegrass festival … and I bust out into a song in Chinese, and everybody's eyes just pop wide open.' (Abigail Washburn)"
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The reshaping of the modern workplace also involves new approaches to innovation. Here, executives at Google, General Electric and DreamWorks Animation summarize their companies’ paths to creativity.
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We need to start envisioning our teachers as knowledge generators and creative professionals whom we trust to innovate and implement unorthodox ideas that might transform teaching and learning. The time has come to reward innovation among our best and most creative teachers. They should be given the time and resources to reflect on their practice, experiment with new ideas, and implement strategies to more effectively engage learners. Via Peter John Baskerville, Gust MEES
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This a visually stunning video montage with clips compiled from the Discovery Channel's series "Planet Earth."
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"When information is ubiquitous and free, and when basic education is available to billions of people worldwide, only one set of skills can ensure this generation's economic future - the capacity for innovation.
What are the skills of innovators? Why is innovation so critical to America’s future—and to the future of the planet? What must parents, teachers, mentors, and employers do to develop the capacities of many more young people to be the innovators that they want to be—and that we need them to become? What do the best schools and colleges do to teach the skills of innovation? What are some of the most forward-looking employers doing to create a culture of innovation? Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World addresses these questions through in-depth profiles of young innovators and the adults who have made a difference in their lives, as well as vivid descriptions of innovation-driven classrooms and places of work."
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"Whenever I meet anyone who wants to talk about education, I immediately ask them to tell me the quadratic equation. Almost no one ever can. (Even the former chairman of the College Board doesn’t know it). Yet, we all seem to believe that everyone must learn algebra.
Why this religious zeal over algebra? It helps students learn how to think, people claim. Really? Are mathematicians the best thinkers you know? I know plenty of them who can’t handle their own lives very well. Reasoning mathematically is a nice skill but one that is not relevant to most of life. We reason about many things: parenting, marriage, careers, finances, business, politics. Do we learn how to reason about these things by learning algebra? The idea is absurd."
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"Leaders who want to foster innovation should ask themselves these questions:
1. In my quest for the next big innovation, have I overlooked smaller incremental innovations that could still have a big impact on customer experiences or on employee productivity? 2. Do I reinvest my spare capacity into expanding my own knowledge, exploring future trends and learning from others? Or does my focus on performance and results preclude any consideration of unproven innovations? 3. Am I doing one thing every day that scares me? How much time do I spend pushing my own boundaries and working at the limits of my competence, where the next great innovations are most likely to be discovered?"
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"The series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation.
The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. You can see a summary of each innovation at the menu on the right. Please contribute with comments on the report and the innovations."
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"At the end, the video states Creativity is not inspired by the pressure of time but by the freedom, the playfulness, and the fun. Does that describe most secondary classrooms you know? I know many that fit that description, but not anywhere near enough. Too many pressures regarding content coverage and/or accountability…"
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From
www
"Scott O'Neill's big idea to rid the world of dengue is both clever and complex: He wants to infect mosquitoes with bacteria so they can't carry the virus that causes the disease."
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"YOU CAN DO IT...
Via BrainPickings.org
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1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you're done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more. Via BrainPickings.org
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From
chronicle
"When we tell students to study for the exam or, more to the point, to study so that they can do well on the exam, we powerfully reinforce that way of thinking. While faculty consistently complain about instrumentalism, our behavior and the entire system encourages and facilitates it.
On the one hand, we tell students to value learning for learning's sake; on the other, we tell students they'd better know this or that, or they'd better take notes, or they'd better read the book, because it will be on the next exam; if they don't do these things, they will pay a price in academic failure. This communicates to students that the process of intellectual inquiry, academic exploration, and acquiring knowledge is a purely instrumental activity—designed to ensure success on the next assessment. Given all this, it is hardly surprising that students constantly ask us if this or that will be on the exam, or whether they really need to know this reading for the next test, or—the single most pressing question at every first class meeting of the term—"is the final cumulative"? This dysfunctional system reaches its zenith with the cumulative "final" exam. We even go so far as to commemorate this sacred academic ritual by setting aside a specially designated "exam week" at the end of each term. This collective exercise in sadism encourages students to cram everything that they think they need to "know" (temporarily for the exam) into their brains, deprive themselves of sleep and leisure activities, complete (or more likely finally start) term papers, and memorize mounds of information. While this traditional exercise might prepare students for the inevitable bouts of unpleasantness they will face as working adults, its value as a learning process is dubious." via Marshall Memo
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"Real World Math is a site with lessons and ideas for using Google Earth in the math classroom. There are lesson ideas, examples, and downloads for math that are based on active learning and project based learning, including analysis and creativity.
The Lessons page has lessons grouped into five categories: Concept Lessons, Project-Based Learning, Exploratory, Measurement and Space. There is a Community page for teachers to collaborate and share lesson ideas. There is also a Resource page with links to other sites, blogs, or materials that users of Real World Math should find helpful. This will include links to tutorials on Google Earth and SketchUp. This is a fun and interesting way to teach, and learn, math."
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Wolfram Alpha is one of the best kept secrets in education! It is a new search engine that can solve any type of mathematical equation. This is a essential tool for all learners to help them solve and check their work. Results of these problems are shown in different ways so that every learner can understand.
Why UDL?
Students could use Wolfram site to gain a better understanding of various math concepts and supports the notion of multiple means of representation. Via Kathleen McClaskey
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