pdZone

Billy Bear’s Winter Activities
Winter Fun and Activities, Kids Fun Ideas and Activities

I have been playing around a little bit with b2evolution at school. I think about some of the possibilities of this software:

• portfolios for TAG – The students post private reflections, as well as thoughts to be shared with the rest of the class. Comments can be enabled or disabled on these shared posts.
• school newspaper – Students write individually and share their articles with the rest of the editorial staff. They can edit/revise/comment on each other’s writing. When a piece has been edited/reviewed, it can be promoted to the front page.
• reflective writing – Students write response to class or individual readings.
• shared writing – b2evo allows for groups of students to work on projects/written works. Each member of a group can edit/revise/comment on work by other members of the group.

Some really cool educational games and simulations at iKnowthat.com – Online Multimedia Educational Science Games for Kids in Preschool, Kindergarten, and Elementary Grades.

The Educational Jargon Generator allows you to generate some great teacherspeak phrases, like “repurpose literature-based styles” or “unleash intuitive curriculum integration” (I kind of like that one).

I didn’t realize this, but CBC offers RSS feeds of the latest headlines. You can select headlines, by topic or region.
Another time-saving way to catch up on what’s going on.

A great piece here giving some background to some of the math we take for granted as well as simple explanations of some more advanced topics, including fractals. 2 + 2 might even make you wonder if the entire Universe is just a simulation running on a computer.
Whoa!

The Mathematical Fiction Homepage has reviews of many different written works that have math as a theme, including kids’ books. This looks like a great way to bring literacy into the math classroom.
Another great link from Ray Schroeder.

Looks like the beginning of a little story about plagiarism in For Better or For Worse. Keep reading to see what happens. This might be something that I could use in computer class.

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
One of my favourites, this is an oft-quoted (by me) Chinese proverb. I use it to emphasize the importance of asking questions. This proverb and many other quotations can be found at The Quotations Page.

OK, I know that this is not education-related, but it tickled me: The Joy of Tech! – Welcome to the Canadian iTunes Store, eh!