Easy Way to Find Educational Apps

EdShelf on the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest offers help with finding great applications for you and your students. For example, this week's recommendations from EdShelf include AlgebraGenie (gaming with algebra problems), Eyes on the Solar System (NASA tool), Stencyl (creates games), Tynker (teaches students computer science and programming), Sketchometry (practice in geometry), and MaKey MaKey (electronics kit). Some of the latest trending tools listed are: Mystery Math Town, Word Wonders Project, and Basker's Presidents. You can search for what you need by topic and/or receive email messages from EdShelf. Use the video intro to learn more about this site and its abundance of resources.

Cengage Learning—National Geographic Virtual Library

If you are one of many of us who love National Geographic, you might want to take a look at online resources and books available from National Geographic and GALE Cengage Learning. You’ll find National Geographic Magazine Archives from 1888-1994; National Geographic Magazine Archives from 1995-present; and National Geographic: People, Animals, and the World. Every page of the magazines is available along with full-text books, hundreds of videos, maps, atlases, and over 600 downloadable images. —It’s a perfect resource for engaging student assignments and course transition to online materials.

Ten Types of Plagiarism

Turnitin surveyed 879 instructors in high schools and colleges to learn what types of plagiarism teachers frequently found in student writing.  The result of the survey was the white paper, Plagiarism Spectrum, which summarizes the types of plagiarism and gives them clever titles. These titles may help your students to be more careful in their writing. You can find out more about this paper at the Turnitin site. In the meantime, see how many of these types of plagiarism that you can figure out: Clone, CTRL-C, Find-Replace, Remix, Recycle, Hybrid, Mash-Up, 404 Error, Aggregator, and Re-Tweet.

Healthy Students: Mindful Eating

How do we encourage our students to eat right? Recommend mindful eating. That’s what Lilian Cheung, a lecturer in nutrition for the Harvard School of Public Health, advises. Helping our students think before grabbing a sugary snack and while they are taking each bite, will help them focus upon what they are putting into their bodies. You may want to take a look at Cheung’s Harvard site, The Nutrition Source, and watch her video, which describes the seven practices of mindful eating. Using resources such as this and those that detail the problems of sugary drinks and overuse of salt might help students think twice before nibbling mindlessly on salty chips while enjoying a too-sweet drink or downing a meal from a fast food restaurant. Considering the problems of obesity of students in our schools today, it’s wise to take advantage of the instant and up-to-date health information available from reliable online sources.