Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms

From their website, "The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) created the Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms to help everyone understand the terms and concepts used in genetic research. In addition to definitions, specialists in the field of genetics share their descriptions of terms, and many terms include images, animation and links to related terms."

To see their website, click here.

Curriki - Project Based Learning

On February 21 2014, I had a post on Project Based Learning (PBL).  See the post by clicking here.  Today I have another post on PBL 

There are 6 PBL projects in Geometry given here.  Each project includes rubrics to assess student teamwork, presentation and performance, and a suggested overall rubric for the project.  CurrikiGeometry was specifically designed to enable educators to differentiate instruction for each student.

The 6 projects are:

Selling Geometry

Designing a Winner

What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?

TED Talk: House of The Future

The Art of Triangles

How Random is My Life.

 

I have posted about Jeopardy several times.  To see the posts click here.  The site is free and all you have to do is register.  Click here to see a demo of Flip Quiz or click here to go to their main page.

5 minute lesson plan

The 5 minute lesson plan original came from the above site, click here.   Here is a brief video about it.                                 

This template can be found at this link by clicking here.  Others can be found there. I like this one below by Collen Young.  It can be downloaded by clicking here.  

The template above was modeled after Emily Hughes' template that follows.  It can be found by clicking here.

 

The last one below is from Just Math. To download it, click here.

Baseball Opening Day

With Opening Day of baseball coming up next week, here are a few things you might use in your science or physical education class.

The Exploratorium has the Science of Baseball.  Click here to see this site.

ESPN has Anatomy of a Pitch.  Here you can see how different pitchers throw their pitches.  Click here to see this page. 

Like a Rolling Stone

On November 20 2013, to celebrate Bob Dylan's 47 CD set called "The Complete Album Collection, Volume 1"  has released a promotional video on his website.

It is a video of a TV which has 16 different channels that you can flip through which all lip sync to the song track.  You can see ESPN, BBC, Pawn Stars, Property Brothers among others singing along.  To see the video click here.  To see Bob's web site click here.  

The video was produced by Interlude, interactive video company. You can go to their site and create personal videos like this for free.  To see their website click here.

"What If?" History Project

Diana Laufenberg has a unit plan for History teachers based on What If something did not happen at a crucial point in history.  The students are asked to follow the ramifications of this point of divergence through.
You can see here website that includes project description, assessment, project organizer, rubric and more.  To see here site click here.

Carla Federman also has a project similar to Diana's.  You can see it by clicking  here.   Click here to see an example of one of her students work.

Crash Course - Hamlet

John Green has another video out.  This one is on Hamlet.  Fast pace as always.

Babbel

This website is designed  to help you learn languages.  So you might want to have your French students try this site.  I made a little video to show you what you can do when you access the site.  Actually my daughter wanted me to show her how to do a screen cast so I did.  Anyways the website can found by clicking here.  Okay, I went and looked at the advanced level and I could do it by myself so it might only be good for 1P French but take a look yourself.

MIT App Inventor

Would you like to make your own App?  Well The M.I.T., that is Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a free App Inventor.  You do not  have to be computer literate to do this.  This is something students can play with on their own, or maybe a computer club or class could work with.  Even if your non-computer class has an idea you can do this in your class.  For example Richard Byrne blogged about an app created by students at Hamstead Academy called Chow Checker.  This app was able to check for allergens in a particular food.  This could of been developed in a Foods and Nutrition class.  To see the app click here.

To see the MIT App site click here.

Invisible Bike Helmets

An invisible bike helmet?  Two Swedes have developed a very interesting piece of head protection.  It took them 7 years but it has an extremely sound base of physics, engineering and we will see how the marketing goes.


The video might be interesting in a science class.

The helmets are being sold in Europe and can be found by clicking here.

Word Cloud

Hopefully you have got yourself back into the swing of things after the March Break.  To help you here is something you might use in your class.  The above are examples of word clouds.  I posted previously about wordle, see November 22, 2012 by clicking here.  Tagxedo is another word cloud site that allows you to pick outlines to place your words in or to frame with (see above). To see their site click here. Some examples used in  a foods class are shown below.

Here is an example that I made using a list of award winning books we have in our school library.

Some other ways that are used in class are (thanks educatorstechnology.com):

Use word cloud tools to brain storm a topic or create a discussion either inside the class or online
Use them to teach vocabulary
Use them in reading activities to promote comprehension
Students can use them to feature important ideas from a  discussion or a video content
The entire class can use word clouds to react to a certain topic
Have students create word clouds that generate understanding of a concept, standards or vocabulary word.
Illustrate classroom thoughts or views using a word cloud to survey students.
Create a class word cloud that highlights class expectation
Post students first names to create a class or group word cloud
Bio for Students as an Introduction to Wordle/Tagxedo-"All About Me"
Create a marketable product to present and sell to the general market.
Create Job Descriptions/Responsibilities for Career Pathways
Vocabulary Words from their core subjects
Introduction to Resume and Job Interviewing Skills

Ashton Kutcher Teen Choice Award Acceptance Speech

Ashton Kutcher's acceptance speech has a message to teens.  Maybe share this with your class.

Accounting Coach

Would you like a dictionary of accounting terms.  Maybe you would like crossword puzzles, word scrambles, quizzes and exams. If so take a look by clicking here and search around.

Retronaut

This site is an archive of historical photos.  There are many sites that do this, but this one is a bit quirky.  First you can search by era's, so if your teaching the Roaring Twenties this might be something to look at.  You can search by name.  You will not get standard pictures.  I typed in Nixon as it was the first name that came to my mind (he was a disgraced President of the US that resigned).  Here is what I recieved.  Elvis and Robocop are not your normal pictures you would expect from a President of the US.  To visit Retronaut click here.

 

Wordmaster

This is a pretty nice vocabulary game for your students.  To see it click here.

Greek and Latin Roots

Here is another anchor chart that I made a zoom.it. It came from here.

Personalized Questions

Most of you know that altering questions to fit your students interest will engage them more than just a bland question.  The following article discusses this in the context of a math class but I am sure it is just as true in any other class.  Too see the article click here.

If you don't read the above article, the research came from this article which can be found by clicking here.

From Walkington, Sherman and Howell's paper, here is an example:

Geogebra

Here is one for you math teachers.

Ok here is today's post.

Speaking of Algebra, I was on Wikispaces Blog and noticed this online tool that allows students and teachers to help visualize mathematical ideas.  You can read the post from Wikispace Blog by clicking  here or just go to the Geogebra website by clicking here.

PD Driven by Assesment

ASCD Smartbrief had a recent poll of teachers about PD.

Wow, roughly 46% of those polled had little or none of their PD driven by assessment. As teachers our instruction of students is driven primarily by assessment of our students.  If we don't we have some serious explaining to do.  However it does not look like some boards have the same consideration for their employees when the shoe is on the other foot.  I know our board does once a year when we have PD by department but how about the other PD days.  Just a thought.  What do you think?

Stipple

I posted about ThingLink on Friday Nov 21 2012.  You can see the post by clicking here.  Stipple is an alternative to ThingLink.  It is away to make interactive pictures.  You can have your pictures have links or videos that are pinned to your pictures.

Gapminder - Demographics and it's Social Impact

You may not of Han's Rosling but he has some interesting video's and a fabulous website that you may want to use in your class that lets you see the correlation between many socio-economic variables.  Here are a couple of his videos.  The first video is from the BBC.

The second video is from the Guardian.  

The third is a TED talk.

The website I mentioned can be found by clicking here.  Gapminder has some excellent ways of looking at world data.  Check out their Teacher Tab or just click here.  Teachers, if you have time take a look at this over the break and see where you can use it in your classroom.  Students, maybe this could be a way of looking at some data for your next project.

Gender Gap Index

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has named Iceland as the country with the smallest gap between the sexes, for the fifth consecutive year in a row. Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Philippines make up the top five of the gender gap index while Canada ranks 20 out of 136 countries. The index assesses four key areas – health (life expectancy, etc), access to education, economic participation (salaries, job type and seniority) and political engagement.

If you would like to see the complete report as a pdf click here.  To see the full article click here.   If you would like to see the data as a spreadsheet (and be able to look at previous years data), click here.

The map below is interactive.  Just mouse over the country to see it's rank.  You can zoom in by using the mouse or the +- icon.  You can grab and move the map also.

Antihero

I have noticed some teachers last year used Bitstrips and Storyboard to create comic strips in their French and English class.  You could do this in other classes too, think History.  Rebecca Ray has a nice article and comic strips and lesson plans for teachers teaching literary terms.  She has a nice one on Hero vs Antihero.  Take a look by clicking here.

50 Writing Errors that make you look like an amateur.

Some pretty funny stuff for you English teachers at Charles White's website.  Sorry about the pic next to#13 but it reminds me of picture we have in our staff room.

Cardboard Canoe Contest

Two high schools in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District in Pennsylvania recently challenged students in geometry classes to design canoes using cardboard, duct tape and wrapping paper. Students then tested their canoes in a swimming pool. About 90 students participated in the project. Math teacher Jenifer Kemmerer said the assignment helped students apply what they've learned in class to a hands-on project outside the classroom.  To see the article click here.  Seeing that our school has a pool that is not being used much maybe a math or science class might be able to fit this into their course and use our pool before it gets mothballed and used to store old desks like another school in our board.  I am sure your students would learn some and have fun doing it.

Why With Nye - Juno Mission to Jupiter

  

Yeah you know this guy.  Quarky and different but always good.  In this series of 9 videos that would be good for a science or Space Science class, he discusses various aspects of the Juno Mission to Jupiter.  To see the video playlist click here.