Useful links

• 25 Ways to Help Your Students Learn Responsibility | Michele Borba Dr. Michele Borba shares 25 activities that can be used as journal prompts, class meeting topics, paired sharing or individual assignments to teach. Useful to use with the younger students at our school.

• DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more! This visual encyclopedia is created by the publisher DK. It is new and in a Beta version at the moment, so somewhat limited but they have plans to grow. It could be useful for younger students, ESL students and special education students. The site is easy to use and has clear categories. It also offers other sections: What’s New?. Videos. Quizzes. Fun Facts. Galleries. Another section called My Space will also be added. Teachers may create an account and access a lesson planner. The DK Online World Desk Reference may also be of interest. You need to create an account to use it which takes seconds to do. This site clims to “explore topics in physical and human geography for every country in the world, and practices critical-thinking skills”

• 10 ways YouTube can engage your classes now | Ditch That Textbook YouTube offer many options for teachers. This post offers 10 ideas for using YouTube to improve engagement and creativity within classroom situations.

• 321 Free Tools for Teachers-Free Educational Technology A useful list with links and small annotations on most.

• Free Technology for Teachers: Thousands of Newspapers on a Google Map “A new service for locating and reading newspapers from locations all around the world. Newspaper Map claims to have put placemarks for more 10,000 newspapers on one Google Map. To find a newspaper you can browse the map then click on a placemark to open the link within to read a newspaper.”

• PBS LearningMedia Hits 100,000 Digital Resources for Teachers – Teaching Now – Education Week Teacher “PBS LearningMedia now offers more than 100,000 digital resources, including common core-aligned videos, interactive learning games, and tools for teachers. The site is a partnership between PBS and WGBH Educational Foundation and includes tools to help teachers make storyboards, build lessons, and create quizzes using PBS’s digital content. There’s also a student view, which teachers can set up so that students can access class materials from their own devices. Many resources are also labeled with standards information so that teachers can determine how a potential lesson might line up with the common core. Though some parts of the site are available only to paid users, the majority are free.”

• Literature (Crash course) – YouTube The Crash Course videos are created by great YouTube advocates, John and Hank Green. They are intended as an overview of different subjects, from literature and history to chemistry, biology, and psychology.

• Critical pedagogy – fishing from others’ posts, haha #moocmooc | Brave New World

• 4 Powerful Tools from Google to Teach Kids Coding ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning A list of reasons why students should be taught coding plus links to 4 tools from Google for Education that will assist classroom teachers.

• 12 Ways Teachers Can use Google Classroom ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “Google Classroom which is only six months old has managed to host over 30 million assignments turned in by teachers and students. This is a big sign that the tool is being widely endorsed within the education community particularly in the States. With this increasing popularity of Google Classroom, Google recently released some new updates to enhance its performance and make it more mobile friendly. The major update is the release of Google Classroom apps for both iPad and Android .”

• 50 Books Worth Reading This Year As Recommended by TED ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “TED has this wonderful collection of 50 books curated from the reading recommendations of some world’s leading thinkers. These books are arranged into different categories that include: creativity, medicine, math and stats, philosophy, language, history, happiness, design,Work, science and nature, politics and current events, mind and brain.”

• Bizarre-Looking Libraries from All Over the World – Flavorwire Interesting ideas

• 25 Question Stems Framed Around Bloom’s Taxonomy “While critical thinking is a foundation rather than a brick, how you build that foundation depends on the learning process itself: exposing students to new thinking and promoting interaction with that thinking in a gradual release of responsibility approach. Question stems can be a powerful part of that process no matter where the learner is. Assessment (pre-assessment, self-assessment, formative and summative assessment), prompting and cueing during discussion, etc. In that light, the following 25+ question stems framed around the early, non-revised Bloom’s Taxonomy are worth a gander.”

• Collaboration…who doesn’t have time? Article discusses collaboration in an education world. Today collaboration and the benefit of it should be clear for all to see. Good collaboration allows you to learn about whatever you want and however you want. It is powerful.

• Homework: Helping Students Manage their Time | Edutopia Two suggests for teachers to assist students in developing their time management skills.

• Is Homework Helpful?: The 5 Questions Every Teacher Should Ask | Edutopia “The author suggest that teachers should step back and question the value of assignments they are setting. How often should they be assigned? Where is the line between too much and too little? In this post there are five considerations to help you determine what to assign and why”

• 10 Ways To Use Mobile Devices in the Classroom | Edudemic  “It is pretty much a given these days that students have mobile phones, tablets, and e-readers. Leveraging what your students already have and already know how to use is a smart idea – even if you aren’t implementing a full-on BYOD classroom environment. There are many ways to have students use their mobile devices in the classroom in a format geared towards learning rather than for leisure. The infographic in this post takes a look at ten fairly general ways to use devices in the classroom. The general nature of some of the recommendations makes it a great starting point if this is a newer concept for you or for a particular group that you’re working. “

• I.N.K.: 10 Nonfiction Activity Ideas for Kids 10 activities to use with any nonfiction book or other informational text. The goal was to get kids more engaged in reading. They are simple but effective and could be adapted in a variety of ways.

• WhatTheFont! « MyFonts  Ever seen some font in a loge for example? If you have then the site WhatTheFont may be of use. WhatTheFont will accept screenshots and identify mystery designs for you.

• Bloom’s revised Taxonomy with verbs! | An Ethical Island Another great infographic from Mia MacMeekin.

• Level It Books™ – Find reading levels fast and digitally manage your library of books! An app that may be useful or parents or educators when they first come across a title. Level It Books is an app that tells you the DRA, gre, lexlile, and guided reading level just by scanning it!

• Get started – Early Australian census records – Research Guides at State Library of Victoria “This SLV guide explains how to find and use information collected in censuses from 1788 to 1901. It also includes information about the history of censuses in Australia. A census counts and describes the population of a particular area. Census data is useful for researching places & people’s lives over time, or at a point in time. Sometimes information about individuals is available too. The earliest systematic collection of information about Australia’s residents occurred in 1788. The colonies and states regularly collected data in musters or censuses, up until the first Australian (national) census in 1911.”

• 5 Fantastic, Fast Formative Assessment Tools | Edutopia Post from @coolcatteacher (Vicky Davis) ” Formative Assessment done as students are learnin makes better teachers.” Some great ideas discussed here.

• The 12 best Android apps of 2014 Annotated list from Mashable

• Teaching Ethics in the Age of Technology | User Generated Education “Ethical decision-making should be included as a 21st century skill (overused term but don’t know of an alternative).  Some would profess that ethical decision-making has always been a needed skill.  But we are living in the most complex era of human history.  Information access and abundance, and emerging technologies are advancing, and being developed and disseminated at rates that the human mind often cannot comprehend.  Now more than ever ethics should be integrated into young people’s educations.”

• 7 reasons why your school should teach robotics and game design | eSchool News | eSchool News “One teacher describes the big impact robotics, coding, and STEM has had on her students”

• Books resilient as readers remain true to type The article discusses figures that seem to show that e-book sales have plateaued and the demand for hardcopy books remains steady. “There have been plenty of ideas on how to reinvigorate bookstores, but Waterstones and Barnes & Noble appear to have benefited from less radical moves. Waterstones has spent millions of pounds refurbishing its 290 stores, adding cafs and trying to emulate local bookstores by giving store managers more control. In the US, Barnes & Noble has put its faith in selling ancillary products alongside books, including vinyl records and craft beer kits. Some in the books industry suggest bricks-and-mortar stores may have benefit from resentment of Amazon among some consumers. However, globally, there is no guarantee that physical books will be sold through physical bookstores. “Online sales of physical books are likely to remain strong,” Deloitte says, in its forthcoming 2015 predictions.”

• Inspiring Quotes From Children’s Books: INFOGRAPHIC | GalleyCat ” Which children’s do you find moving? The team at Quotery.com has created an infographic called “20 Inspiring Children’s Book Quotes.” The words come from a variety of titles including Roald Dahl’s Matilda, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone. The the full infographic is embedded”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.