Larry Ferlazzo: Kapwing Just Made Their “Pro” Plan Free For Educators And Students. “Kapwing, a cool multimedia tool that includes video-editing features and easy ways to produce memes, just announced that their ‘Pro’ plan would now be free to educators and students.”
Penn State: Lessons on nutrition easy to digest in virtual reality spaces. “Virtual reality (VR) may provide nutrition teachers and dietitians with an entirely new way to serve real lessons on healthy eating, according to a team of Penn State researchers. In a study, students learned about nutrition both through an interactive VR lesson, as well as during a more traditional lecture that was hosted in a VR environment. The research also showed that nutrition educators might not even need all the bells and whistles of VR interactivity for those lessons to be effective.”
New-to-me, from NOAA: Back to school: Find NOAA resources with our new online database . “With a new school year just around the corner, teachers and educators are gearing up to create lesson plans and find engaging activities for their students. We have a tool to make it easier than ever to include NOAA resources in your classroom: NOAA Sea to Sky, a new education resource database that houses over 1,200 educational resources created by NOAA and our partners.”
University of Central Florida: UCF Faculty Combines Harry Potter with Pharmacology Course to Improve Student Outcomes . “Incorporating interactive games in the course has proven to enhance academic success; the number of students who earned an ‘A’ in the class improved by almost 200% in the past three years, and there has been a 73% decline in the number of non-pass students (students who earn a ‘D’ or an ‘F’ in the class).”
UCLA: Asian American Studies Center to create free resource for high school teachers. “The UCLA Asian American Studies Center has received $10 million in state funding that will propel the development of a free multimedia learning experience that will equip teachers across the country with materials that can fill a curricular gap about the experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”
Florida International University: Improving science literacy means changing science education. “A large body of research shows that traditional science education, for both science majors and non-majors, doesn’t do a good job of teaching science students how to apply their scientific knowledge and explain things that they may not have learned about directly. With that in mind, we developed a series of cross-disciplinary activities guided by a framework called ‘three-dimensional learning.’”
Smithsonian: SSEC Convenes Experts, Researchers and Educators Around the World for the Smithsonian K–12 Science Education Action Planning Institute. “The Smithsonian Science Education Center will host its third annual K–12 Science Education Action Planning Institute to bring together educators around the world to explore how innovation, inclusion and sustainability are shaping STEM education in 2022 and beyond. This year’s free virtual institute will be held July 25–27 and brings together subject-matter experts, formal and non-formal educators, school administrators and educational researchers to explore timely issues within K–12 STEM education.”
Make Tech Easier: 11 of the Best LMS Alternatives to Google Classroom. “While Google Classroom works well enough, it’s not always the best learning management system (LMS) for everyone. Luckily, there are a variety of LMS alternatives to Google Classroom. From completely free systems that integrate with other free and premium tools to premium systems with more features, you’ll likely find the perfect alternative right here.”
KGW8: Oregon Department of Education launches website addressing mental health. “School may be out but students’ mental health needs are still front and center for a lot of educators and parents after such a tough couple years. Now there’s a new resource to help identify ways to help young people who are struggling. The Oregon Department of Education launched a new website called Oregon Classroom WISE this week to help people better address mental health issues in kids, teens and school staff.”
Smithsonian: Smithsonian Will Convene Thousands of Educators From Across the Nation This Summer To Discuss the Importance of Teaching Inclusive, Holistic and Well-Rounded Content. “Educators across the country are facing unforeseen challenges and rising levels of uncertainty in the classroom. As part of its 175-year commitment to education, the Smithsonian will host a free two-day National Education Summit to celebrate teachers and share instructional strategies and resources to ensure that every leaner has the opportunity to thrive.” The summit will have both in-person and virtual components. Registration is required.
The Scientist: Professors at Bombed Kharkiv University Struggle to Continue Their Work. “In professor Nikolay Mchedlov-Petrossyan’s office at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in eastern Ukraine, several windows are covered with wood, letting only a little sunlight in…. Kharkiv has been gravely damaged by Russian shelling, but while many professors were forced to flee the university, some have stayed behind. Mchedlov-Petrossyan, the head of the department of physical chemistry, is one of them. He recently returned to his office, where he teaches online and works on his research as best he can.”
ScienceDaily: Just being exposed to new things makes people ‘ready to learn’. “A new study is one of the first to provide experimental evidence that people learn from incidental exposure to things that they know nothing about and aren’t even trying to understand.”
Library of Congress: Datasets as Primary Sources, Part II. “This post was written by Peter DeCraene, a 2021-22 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the Library of Congress. This is part 2 of an ongoing occasional series about using datasets as primary sources.”
If you haven’t had a good swim around Larry Ferlazzo’s site you’re missing out. The man himself: Three Accessible Ways To Search For & Find My “Best” Lists. “As regular readers know, I have about 2,200 categorized and regularly updated ‘Best’ lists. You can find all of them in broad categories here. The link to that page can also be found at the top right of my blog: My Best Of Series I also have them all on another page where they are listed in the chronological order in which I originally posted them.”
Amnesty International UK: Russia: Schools and universities latest victims of Putin’s war propaganda machine. “Dozens of schoolteachers and university lecturers have faced harsh reprisals for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. Some have been put behind bars to serve so-called administrative arrest or have had to pay extortionate fines simply for expressing their opinions either publicly or in the classroom. Others have been dismissed or otherwise reprimanded.”
