Cell Phones in the classroom

http://historytech.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/cell-phones-in-the-classroom

How Stuff Works

Well, I have taken about a two month hiatus, but I'm back and hoping to be a little more diligent on the posts. I will try to post a website, tool or tip each day. The first is one of my favorite sites: How Stuff Works.
I'm sure many of you are already aware of this site, but it has great resources for teachers. There are articles that may used in classrooms from how a acoustical guitar works, to banking, or how to make a pinata (one of my faves). Think outside the box when thinking about how stuff works. There is a great article on the fast food industry that would be super for wellness classes. A lot of the pages feature videos. There are many ads on these pages, which is unfortunate, but great content does not come free.

Carlos Vamos

Wow! Can't believe it has been this long since my last post. Things are crazy. But nothing calms you down quite like this Carlos Vamos clip.

Readymech

I haven't printed these free flatpack toys that students can print and build. It seems like it could be a fun 3D art project.

ToonDoo

I like the idea of this website. You can create comics to express whatever you like. Seems like a neat tool to get kids to express themselves. So often we don't use cartoons because we don't think we can draw. This site kinda' tells kids that's okay, you can create comics anyway.

Disposable Income Calculator

Seems like this disposable income calculator could be used in personal finance or home economics classes. Students would need some help filling in their costs (rent, groceries, etc), but it might give them a picture of how much that latte at Starbucks costs.

An Oldie But Goodie

Ricci Adams' musictheory.net is an amazing site. I have been using it with music students for many year. Think of this as a bit of nostalgia.

Persistence and Video Games

An interesting piece on The Genius in All of Us about persistence. It conjured up memories of the book by Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You. From TGIAOU:

Robert Cloninger, at Washington University in St. Louis, who not only zeroed in on the persistence circuitry in the brain (Gusnard, Cloninger et al, 1993), but also trained mice and rats to develop persistence. “The key is intermittent reinforcement,” explains Cloninger. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.” In other words, yes, according to Cloninger, the animal mind can actually be trained to reward itself for slow and steady progress rather than the more thrilling instant gratification.

Boy, that sounds a lot like Steven Johnson's findings in Everything. In the book Johnson says video games, if designed well, teach us persistence by giving us well timed rewards. We have got to find a way to bring this kind of reward system to students.