Art & Technology

We Are Teachers offers excellent ideas for integration of art into the curriculum. You might try taking art “out of the box” by displaying a cubist painting on an interactive whiteboard and having students check out and draw over geometric shapes in the painting. After the lesson, students might create their own Cubist paintings using digital art programs or by creating shapes on paper. Make use of document cameras when studying how light and darkness interact. You can “manipulate light and color in your classroom by covering the bulb on your document camera with a piece of colored cloth.”  As you do this, “place various objects under the camera” in order to investigate changes in appearance that are dependent on different colors of light. Check out the article, “4 Ways to Take Art ‘Out of the Box’ Using Technology” to find more suggestions for the use of art in technology and in other subjects such as science, math, and social studies.

46 Tools for Creating Infographics

TeachThought, a site that has unique lists and information that you can use in your classroom gives you “46 Tools to Make Infographics in The Classroom”. Because visuals are important in learning, this list is a great one to browse as you look for tools and apps that will work for you. TeachThought tells us that there are an abundance of resources available, but that their personal favorite is the free Pictochart. Some of the others are iCharts, Dipity, Free Data, Google Chart Tools, Wordie, and Smile Widgets. The resources recommended offer different options, so you’ll need to look through the list for the ones that may be useful to you.

3D Printing: A New Mindset

T.H.E. Journal offers a complimentary download of a white paper on the advantages of 3D printing.  Information is included on bringing 3D printing into the classroom “to accelerate more effective design” and to reduce costs.  To access the paper, you’ll need to be logged in to the T.H.E. Journal; logging in is easy and free.

Fun With Language Arts

The Children's University of Manchester in the United Kingdom hosts a very nice language arts site for students and parents. On the site, you'll find an introduction to words, a world language map, jigsaw puzzles, and fun with nouns, adjectives, pairs, and much more. There's even a timeline of the English language. —And, if you don’t know what an EPONYM is, you should head to this very nice site, which also includes fun with history, science, and art and design.

Incredible Bionic Man Challenge

Encourage your students to create a bionic body part for The Incredible Bionic Man Challenge.  According to the rules, students must be 13 or over, in Grades 9-12, and residents of a Cablevision service area in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut or Pennsylvania.

Winners will receive a trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. and $5000 for college. The contest begins on October 1^st and ends November 7^th.  Additional information is available on the Smithsonian Channel site. You’ll find guidelines to get your students started, help for teachers, contest rules, and FAQ. You and your students can also watch a preview of the Smithsonian Channel’s Incredible Bionic Man, which will premiere on October 20^th at 9 p.m.

Coursera Has 80 New Courses

The best teachers are always learning, be it on their own or through credit courses. One of the most convenient ways to learn what you want when you want at the right price (free) is through Coursera. Maybe you or your students want to jump into songwriting, explore digital signal processing, take on quantum physics, learn about comic books, or discover if plants have senses. You’ll find courses on these topics and more in the new Coursera catalog.  Check it out because you won’t believe how much is there for you and your students—cryptography, nanotechnology, Common Core, Surviving Your Rookie Year of Teaching, genetics, critical thinking, bioelectricity, Latin American Culture, Malicious Software, English Composition . . .

Miss Humblebee’s Academy

Miss Humblebee’s Academy for Pre-Kindergartners, Preschoolers, and Kindergartners offers a safe online learning environment free from pop-ups, advertisements, and links. Designed for young children, the Academy features hundreds of lessons, mobile access, and progress reports. Using the program, students study topics in core subjects such as math, science, social studies, language, art, music, and literacy with Miss Humblebee and her four “amazing” friends”.

Family and educator memberships are available as a free one-week trial.  Songs and albums are priced at $.99, $8.49, and $8.99. Classroom licenses ($299) are available as are monthly memberships ($7.95 first child; $5.00 for each additional child) for families. You can preview Miss Humblebee’s delight songs without signing up.

Memories of Today and the Future

The app To Me, By Me ($1) lets students email their future selves. They can choose to receive an email in as little as a month or in several years. Using the app, students think about what memories they want to preserve. The memories can be text, images, and audio recordings.  The company that produced To Me, By Me also has apps for journals and daily diaries.

Is There a Creativity Crisis?

In 2010, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman challenged us with the article, “The Creativity Crisis” (Newsweek). They reminded us of Torrance’s creativity assessments and how he and his team followed students tested in 1958 for the next 50 years.  In 2010, Kyung Hee Kim, a researcher at the College of William and Mary, used the Torrance scores of over 300,000 children and adults to focus on how our children today compare in creativity to those of the past. He found that the scores of children tested from 1990 on were declining.  While a number of other countries are focusing on development of creativity in their children, researchers fear that America’s insistence on standardization is hurting our students and our nation’s future. According to the authors, “While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses.”  Bringing creativity and problem solving into all subject areas will help, as will considering such ideas as choice-based art and bringing STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art & design, and mathematics) into the projects and activities of our youngest students.

Sophia Learning—32,000 Tutorials

NetTrekker has added Sophia Learning to its list of resource content providers. With access to Sophia, students can access tutorials in subject areas such as mathematics, science, English, fine arts, social studies, and foreign languages. For those interested in college credit while in high school, there are nine self-paced Sophia courses. The Sophia offerings not only helps students get a head-start in their studies, but also gives teachers the flexibility to add courses and enrichment to their classrooms. All of the Sophia high school, college readiness (ACT Prep, Refresher, College Success) and college courses are free.