Brain Parade for Children with Special Needs

Brain Parade’s See. Touch. Learn ™ garnered the “Mostly Likely to Succeed” award at Ed Tech Summit 2013. According to Karen Billings, vice president of SIAA (Software and Information Industry Association) Education Division, “Brain Parade shows tremendous promise for shaping the future of technology in education, especially for those with special needs.”  This innovative app gives those working with children the ability to create “personalized” lessons, which will help them with communication skills. Students use iPads to learn from high-quality images and lessons created by a behavioral analyst. You can download a free copy from iTunes, but if you’d like the full version with advanced features and over 4400 images and 2200 exercises, you’ll want the Pro version, which is priced at $34.99.

Historical Scene Investigation

Help students, ages 10-18, learn to use primary sources through investigation with H.S.I. (Historical Scene Investigation). Created by the College of William and Mary, the University of Kentucky School of Education, and the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Program, this free learning tool encourages students to seek solid evidence through primary sources and to go beyond textbook information in their search for knowledge. The four steps in the H.S.I. model of learning are: Becoming a Detective, Investigating the Evidence, Searching for Clues, and Cracking a Case. Examples of investigations students may take on include: Jamestown Starving Time, The Boston “Massacre”, Constitution Controversy, Dropping the Bomb, Children in the Civil War, March on Frankfort, and the Case of Sam Smiley. In the Jamestown Starving Case, for example, evidence features accounts by Captain John Smith, drawings of Indian villages, interviews with an archeologist and a pathologist, lists of settlers and supplies, and excerpts from  ‘The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia Since Their First Beginning (1612)”.

Playful Learning’s Bite-Sized eCourses

The Playful Learning site offers a free eBook that is designed to help teachers and parents provide activities that will enhance children’s love of learning. The eBook, Raising Lifelong Learners, may be read online or downloaded.  The site features a great list of science apps and an abundance of activities you might be able to use in your classroom. The activities are grouped into categories such as Arts & Crafts, Math, Science, Seasonal, Social Studies, Well Being, and Writing. This is a very nice site to recommend to parents of young students.

Story by Disney

Disney’s free app, “Story," lets you use photos and video on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to create stories. It’s not a game or related to a Disney product; its purpose is to allow you to organize the media you have on your digital devices. Your stories, once complete, can be shared on social media and will look like a book complete with “fluid page turning and animation.” Leah Yamshon of MacWorld in her piece, “Disney Interactive Launches Story, a Non-Disney-Centric Photo App”, says that Story is “very intuitive to use with nice in-app editing features and a stunning final product.” This looks like a great app for schools using iPads in the curriculum.

Connect Globally through ePals

Students love to connect with other students for global learning projects, but sometimes it’s difficult to find the perfect collaboration partner. You might want to look into ePals, since it could be called the standard when it comes to global communication. It’s easy to get started with global projects with ePals. All you have to do is to fill in the form, and you are ready to use this free global learning community. You’ll get help finding classroom matches according to the language you wish to use (English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, or Chinese) and the age level of your students (1-7, 8-10, 11-13, 13-16, and 17+). You can create your own collaborative project or join projects started by other teachers and students. ePals’ Schoolsafe eMail, Web 2.0 tools, and resources are available to help you and your students connect and interact with other classes around the world.  ePals sponsors and partners include National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and Cobblestone & Cricket magazine. To learn more about ePals, watch the video available on the ePals opening page.

Are Some Parents Misguided Advocates?

Dr. Allen Mendler’s “Rethinking Difficult Parents”, in edutopia, describes parents that teachers encounter and wish they hadn’t. We’ve all heard parents protect their children by saying: “My daughter would never lie.”, “My son doesn’t have a temper.”, “Why wasn’t everyone disciplined?”, and “My child has a personality conflict with that teacher.” Dr. Mendler tells us that these parents are being advocates for their children and that what they really want is to feel that teachers care about their children. In the article, the author give ideas for how to talk with parents who are very upset, how to learn more about their children from them, how to keep the focus on the parents’ child even when the parents may try to bring others into the conversation, how to show appreciation for parents’ suggestions, and how to include positive input along with the problems being discussed. Most of all, when faced with a difficult or angry parent, give the parents time to explain what is bothering them without being defensive or interrupting their dialog. Listening can ease many difficult situations and, when things calm down, give teachers the opportunity to thank the parents for the suggestions and establish what is possible for the future.

Make a Wall-sized Map or ....?

With National Geographic’s MapMaker Kits you and your students can download, print, and assemble wall-sized maps of the world, United States, Asia, Europe, American, Africa, Australia & Oceania, and the Polar Regions. What are called “Mega” maps can be assembled by your students on the floor or tabletop. There are also one-page outline maps for individual use.  MapMaker Kit Activities such as Mapping Watersheds, Mapping Blue Whale Migration, and Explorers of the Americas are available to give you suggestions for use of the MapMaker Kits. The free kits come with directions for assembly, but the maps can be assembled by students in minutes.

Free, Shareable Resources from Open Course Library

Eighty-one courses are now available from Open Course Library. The Library, funded by the Washington State Legislature and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, features courses for four-year and community colleges. Many of these courses, such as those in mathematics, science, social studies, and foreign language, include shareable materials, which could be used or adjusted for high school student learning. These are not online courses, such as those available through Coursera, but instead materials and ideas you can use to enhance your own courses. An Open Course Library (OCL) How-to Guide is available to help you with downloading pdf versions of the courses.

List of Grants & Contests

WE are TEACHERS maintains a list of grants, contests, competitions, and sweepstakes to help you get the resources or funding you need for your dream classroom projects. Two random drawings are currently on the list, but other types of grants/competitions will be added as they come available. If you try the educational software HP Classroom Manager, you will be entered in a drawing for prizes such as $1000 cash, $500 HP Gift Cards, and HP Tablets.  The Worth Ave. Group awards three i-Pads each month (until October 31, 2013) to educators selected in random drawings.

Making Pop-Up Books & More

Jill Faison, a professor at Fresno Pacific University and author of the Art for Elementary Teachers blog, offers us a lesson in how to help elementary students make a pop-up book.  Faison says that these books are perfect for end-of-the-year projects. That’s because students have a great time creating the books and can include events of their lives and perhaps of the school year in them. Instructions are given for using 6 sheets of 9”X12” construction paper to make the book, how to make pop-up tabs, how to cut and fold, and how to assemble each child’s book. The Art for Elementary Teachers blog contains lots of other ideas (how to organize art supplies, observing color and drawing flowers, making Earth Day hats, finding books with great image files) that will be helpful to elementary art teachers and elementary classroom teachers.