eSchool News » Featured Site of the Week

NBC Learn nets a winner with ‘Science of NHL Hockey’

Jeff Festa — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:30:23 +0000

NBC News’ educational arm, NBC Learn, and the NBC Sports Group have teamed up with the National Hockey League (NHL) and National Science Foundation (NSF) to release “Science of NHL Hockey”—a 10-part video series exploring the science behind the sport. Developed especially for students and teachers to use in the classroom, these videos are aligned with lesson plans and state education standards and are available free of charge. NBC News’ Lester Holt narrates the series, which demonstrates how the principles of science enable players to perform actions such as quickly stopping on ice, passing the puck to a teammate, shooting a slap shot, and making a great save. In each video, an NSF-supported scientist explains a selected scientific principle, while NHL athletes describe how the principle applies to their respective positions. “Science of NHL Hockey” follows the “Science of NFL Football” and “Science of the Olympic Winter Games” collections, which are part of an ongoing “Science of Sports” collaboration with the NSF that was awarded a 2010 Sports Emmy.

http://www.nbclearn.com

Scholastic.com helps teachers explore Black History Month in the classroom

Jeff Festa — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:31:53 +0000

As teachers make plans for Black History Month in their classrooms in February, Scholastic has built a set of free resources to help teach students about the African American experience. These resources include lesson plans, videos, student activities, and other content to teach a wide range of topics—from the stories of the Underground Railroad and Ruby Bridges to the books that inspire today’s African American leaders.

One package of lessons and activities offers insight into Rosa Parks’ life. Students can read about the famous day when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, the successful boycott of the Montgomery, Ala., city bus system, and the eventual Supreme Court ruling against segregation. With a “Martin Luther King Jr. Timeline,” students can sequence the important events in the Civil Rights Movement and the life of Dr. King. And in a collection of videos and articles from the Scholastic News Kids Press Corps, student reporters conduct interviews with today’s African American leaders from government, business, sports, and entertainment.

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/unit/black-history-month-everything-you-need

Dell Social Innovation Challenge supports student entrepreneurs

Jeff Festa — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:10:48 +0000

Dell is now accepting applications for the 2012 Dell Social Innovation Challenge, a program that gives students from around the world the chance to bring their entrepreneurial ideas to life to solve some of the world’s most challenging issues.

For the sixth consecutive year, Dell is partnering with the University of Texas at Austin’s RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service to help fuel the entrepreneurial spirit of the best and brightest minds through this program. During the past six years, more than 3,000 inspiring social innovation projects stemming from 90 countries have been submitted through the Dell Social Innovation Challenge, which provides mentoring, tools, and more than $350,000 in cash prizes to teams of student entrepreneurs from across the globe.

The program’s newly developed site allows students to upload their project ideas directly and encourages judges, mentors, and other interested parties to vote for their favorite ideas. Students have until Feb. 14 to submit their project proposals.

http://www.dellchallenge.org/

PBS KIDS Lab website offers new resources to help children build math skills

Jeff Festa — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:42:37 +0000

The Public Broadcasting System has expanded its PBS KIDS Lab website, which offers more than 50 cross-platform games designed to help children ages 2-8 develop their math skills, by adding new features to support caregivers and teachers.

These additions include bilingual translations of parental instructions, math tips for families and teachers to use in their daily activities, and a new blog series with content related to children and media. PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are partners on the project, which is part of the federally funded Ready To Learn Initiative.

“Parents and caregivers play a critical role in supporting their children’s learning,” said Lesli Rotenberg, senior vice president for children’s media at PBS. “…Our goal is to offer families resources to help make anytime a learning time—whether it’s through an online game, or activity ideas that parents and kids can do together while they are out running errands. The PBS KIDS Lab offers parents tools … to spark their kids’ imaginations and excitement about learning, and to help them build skills for success in school.”

Available free of charge, PBS KIDS Lab offers interactive math content centered on PBS KIDS television shows and characters. It aggregates games by age and skill area, so parents and teachers can search for the games that will be the best fit for their kids. The site also helps parents and teachers learn how the games support learning by providing information about the games’ curriculum-based content.

The PBS KIDS Lab furthers PBS KIDS’ efforts to innovate across platforms to educate and entertain children wherever they live, learn, and play—online, on mobile devices, on TV, and in the classroom.

http://pbskids.org/lab

New site gives students a 3D glimpse of Mount Rushmore

Jeff Festa — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:39:14 +0000

Virtual visitors to Mount Rushmore can now explore even more remote areas of the memorial than some who see it in person. Three-dimensional laser technology scans that captured every nook of the four presidential faces and other features of the monument last year mean that starting Tuesday, visitors will be able to take in-depth tours online of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in western South Dakota. The portal, comprised of models of the monument, allows people remote access to the site to plan a visit or explore unusual areas. Online users are able to manipulate or dissect the three-dimensional models in various ways to learn more about the 60-foot granite carvings of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The project is a five-year collaboration between the National Park Service and CyArk, a nonprofit project of the Kacyra Family Foundation based in Orinda, Calif. The Scottish government also provided resources and technology to perform the 3-D laser documentation.

http://archive.cyark.org/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-intro

New complaint center for online privacy issues launches

Jeff Festa — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:51:06 +0000

In an attempt to create a central online directory for privacy complaints against social networks and websites, the University of California-Berkeley has teamed up with a California-based privacy advocacy group to launch a service that allows people to share privacy problems with government agencies, lawyers, or journalists.

The San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) is one of a handful of nonprofit advocacy groups across the country that monitor online privacy issues, and the group says that’s part of the problem: There is no centralized, easy-to-use place where consumers can file an online complaint about a privacy breach. PRC’s new complaint center, at www.privacyrights.org/complaint, is intended to fill that gap.

“There are so many places to complain that people don’t know which way to turn,” said Amber Yoo, project manager for the new complaint service. As a result, when privacy groups “have policy discussions, we don’t have a cohesive sense of what consumers think.”

The effort to create the complaint center began after a 2009 study by UC Berkeley’s School of Information and its law school. The “KnowPrivacy” study found that while consumers were not aware of the personal data collection practices used by websites and social networks to track their movements online, they nevertheless wanted more control over their personal information. Consumers also are confused, the study found, about where they can go to make a complaint.

The new complaint tool is a collaborative project with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley, and it was funded by grants from the Rose Foundation and the California Consumer Protection Foundation.

The service allows consumers to choose whether to make an anonymous complaint, or whether to share their identity and problem with journalists, lawyers, or government enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission or other state and federal consumer protection agencies.

http://www.privacyrights.org/complaint

New online learning platform Gooru aims to make learning ‘social’

Jeff Festa — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:38:40 +0000

Gooru is a free platform for students and teachers to access standards-based online resources in organized “playlists” for learning. Created by a Google employee, it’s run by a nonprofit group called Ednovo. Students can access “ClassBooks”—collections of textbooks, videos, and assessments—on any topic, and they can interact with their peers and teachers while studying. Teachers can search for standards-aligned web resources organized into “ClassPlans,” which they can customize and share with the larger community. In short, educators can use the site to search and teach, while students can use it to search and study; the website’s tagline is “learning is social.”

http://www.goorulearning.org

How to conduct effective ed-tech research

Jeff Festa — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:31:43 +0000

Using research to distinguish a truly effective ed-tech product from a less-than-effective product can prove difficult when the research is conducted by a vendor. Now, new guidelines for both vendors and educators aim to solve this challenge. The report, titled “Conducting and Reporting Product Evaluation Research: Guidelines and Considerations for Educational Technology Publishers and Developers,” is authored by Denis Newman, CEO of Empirical Education Inc., and produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). It’s based on Empirical Education’s many years of conducting this kind of research, both for publishers and for the U.S. Department of Education. The guidelines are timely for educators and ed-tech providers because of the growing demand from schools for “evidence of effectiveness of products, especially as the resources for spending on program materials decreases and administrators have to make harder decisions about what will best solve the problems facing their districts,” Newman said. The guidelines are available free of charge to SIIA members. Educators can request a free copy by eMailing the contact listed on the organization’s website.

http://siia.net/estore/20Review.asp?ProductCode=EPER-11

YouTube launches a section just for schools

Jeff Festa — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:27:46 +0000

Although there are lots of educational videos on YouTube, there are also many videos that aren’t appropriate for students—which is why many schools block access to YouTube from their networks. To solve this problem, YouTube has created a special section for schools, filled with age-appropriate educational content.

YouTube for Schools gives users access to the hundreds of thousands of educational videos on YouTube EDU. This includes short lessons from top teachers around the world, full courses from the world’s best universities, professional development from fellow educators, and inspiring videos from thought leaders.

Educators also can customize the content that is available from the site. Though all schools receive access to all of the content on YouTube EDU, teachers and administrators can log in to YouTube.com and create playlists of videos that will be available at their school.

School teachers and administrators can log in and watch any video, but students cannot log in and can only watch YouTube EDU videos and videos their school has added. All comments and related videos are disabled, and search is limited to YouTube EDU videos.

YouTube also has created a page for teachers, YouTube.com/Teachers, to help them learn to use the site as a powerful educational tool.

http://www.youtube.com/schools

Free MIT simulation has students compete as video game moguls

Jeff Festa — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:30:25 +0000

Anyone with a web connection now can engage in the marketplace maneuvering, pressure-packed decision making, and inevitable price wars that break out among business students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

For four years, students in John Sterman’s business management courses have gone toe-to-toe in simulated business arenas, with the latest being a concocted world of video game companies looking for an edge in marketing and selling their gaming consoles and software.

The university announced Nov. 30 that the popular simulation, known as “Platform Wars,” would be freely available on the MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources website, following the lead of MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, a seminal experiment in higher education’s sharing of open course material.

In “Platform Wars,” students set the price of hardware, negotiate royalty rates with game makers, and decide if they should subsidize the first few games for their gaming system.

Sterman, a professor in MIT’s Sloan School of Management, said the chance to employ out-of-the-box strategies in simulated business environments has proven more valuable to his students than strategizing in the real world.

A simulation “is a safe container,” he said. “Students choose strategies that may not work just to learn about it, and your actual bank account isn’t drained if you lose millions in the simulation. … Like a flight simulation, you risk nothing.”

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/system-dynamics/platform-wars/Pages/default.aspx