Useful Information In and Out of the Classroom 6/10/16

Here are some interesting sites that I’ve found this week, thanks to my PLN. As a teacher, I feel we have to keep up to date concerning research in our field and current issues in the education system. I hope some of these inspire you, inform you, and even have you asking questions. Thank you for coming by and visiting!

Note: Each resource is labeled with a level and subject area to make it easier to use.

Levels:  E: Elementary; M: Middle; H: High; G: General, all levels; SN: Special Needs; T: Teachers

Subject Areas: LA: Language Arts, English, Reading, Writing; M: Math; S: Science; Health; SS: Social Studies, Current Events; FA: Fine Arts; Music, Art, Drama; FL: Foreign Language; PE: Physical Ed; C: Career; A: All

Global Forest Change Explore – Google Tool; “Global Forest Change Explorer provides easy access to forest change data across the planet. Use the tool to analyze trends within countries and ecoregions and dive deeper into the underlying causes of forest change at specific hotspots. Global Forest Change Explorer is designed for use in classrooms. Use our prebuilt curriculum to guide students through the forest data and test their knowledge.”  (L:H; SA:S)

Bookboon – “Bookboon's free online textbooks for students are focused and to the point. They are all written by highly respected professors from top universities in the world and cover topics such as economics, statistics, IT, engineering and natural science.” (L:H; SA:A)

WordClouds – creating your own wordclousds (L:G; SA:A)

SearchReSearch – “Finding what's common across a collection of data is often the key insight to figuring out what's going on.  Scientists look for common data across experiments, detectives search for common evidence in a string of crimes.  Everyone else looks for common elements between different models of things we're buying (from cars to tennis rackets to refrigerators) in order to identify what's the same AND what's different between different brands or models.  So for this weeks' Challenge, I present two cases of Things that Have Something in Common.   Your job?  Figure out what the common feature is between them   The first case is pretty straight-forward.  (You should be able to figure that out in a couple of minutes.)  The second case might require a bit more search.  Both are interesting cases of things worth noticing in the world...  See if you can figure this out! “(L:G; SA:A)

Stumpy’s Alphabet Dinner – “INTRODUCE LETTERS, numbers, and shapes to your little ones with this simple, fun and engaging app. Young kids will have a great time learning their letters while helping Stumpy the hungry monster eat his dinner…his alphabet dinner! Perfect for toddlers!” (L:E; SA:LA)

Original photo by Pat Hensley