World Math Day 2009

Unite with students and schools from around the world to set a new world record! The Challenge – to correctly answer more than 182,445,169 questions in 48 hours.

The students play against each other in mental arithmetic games. Students may find it captivating to play and compete in real time. Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play as many games as they wish. The questions are appropriately individualized to the appropriate age/grade levels. Homeschools are also welcome to participate.

World Math Day 2009

Free Inspiration Webcast

(NOTE: I received this announcement via email from Inspiration.)

Webcast: Using Visual Learning Techniques to Improve Academic Performance with Inspiration®
Date: Thursday, January 29th, 2009
Time: 12:00-12:45 p.m. Pacific Time, 3:00-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time
Register for this event today!

Inspiration® helps students develop ideas, analyze concepts and improve organizational skills. Join us on January 29th to explore templates and examples that will help your students improve academic performance in Science, Language Arts and Social Studies. Cathy Cuff, our Education Development Manager for Science, will host a complimentary 45-minute webcast demonstrating how you can use Inspiration 8 to:

  • Expand on ideas to create well-supported thinking and conclusions
  • Build knowledge by increasing comprehension of new concepts
  • Increase organizational skills by connecting ideas into a logical hierarchy

Join us for this professional development webcast!

If you are unable to join us, don’t worry – the webcast will be archived and available to you shortly after the event concludes.

View our archived webcasts!

The Crisis in Darfur: A Mini-Lesson

(Repost from 08/21/2007)

I challenge you to complete this mini-lesson and consider the questions below.

Lesson

Watch the video below about the crisis in Darfur. (A free download of this video is avaiable here.)

Play Darfur Is Dying, a quick mini-game that simulates aspects of daily living in this region.

Darfur Is Dying

Discussion

  1. What is your reaction to this information and simulated experience?
  2. What, if anything, did you learn from this lesson?
  3. How might this activity be integrated with teaching and learning

WOW Your Students

Here’s a video that I think can be integrated with just about any curriculum. This is pretty amazing!

Educational Connections

As with most things on this blog I would like for us to talk about the educational uses of this video. I’ll share a few curricular connections that I’ve considered and then I ask that you add your ideas, too.

  • Science – Ecosystems, ants, and food chain (circle of life), just to name a few
  • Math – Calculations, estimations, units of measurement, and more
  • Social Studies – Archeology, societies, social structures and systems, etc.
  • Language Arts – Response journals, presentations, debates, and develop informational pamphlets
  • Physical Education – Compare the strength of ants with that of humans (More math and science connections)
  • Art – Works of art of paint, pottery, and papier-mache come to mind.

Please share your ideas, too. 🙂

Studying for the SAT Just Got Cooler

BrainyFlix is trying to help kids prepare for the SAT by offering fun and free videos about SAT vocabulary, made by anyone. That includes you and your students! BrainyFlix is offering $600 in prize money to the video that receives the most number of votes. $200 of the payout will go to the maker(s) of the video and $400 to the class or school club of his/her choice.

View the entire Contest Rules.

To help this go viral, they are also awarding 1 free iTunes download for every 5 videos you submit or referrals you provide.

Contest begins January 1, 2009. Sign up to receive an email reminder once the contest starts.

BrainyFlix

Writing Letters to Santa: From the Headlines

Annual North Pole Effort to Answer Kids’ Letters to Santa Claus Wraps up
“There’s no price tag on joy,” he said as he and several volunteers folded return letters — a handful of more than 20,000 responses to children who wrote to Santa this year. “It’s just a piece of paper with words on it, but the people who come out and give of themselves during the busiest time of the year, all to provide a child, and sometimes an adult, with a smile is pure charity and kindness,” Gaborik said.

Helping the Magic of Christmas Live on
For something that merely started as a way to buy my sons’ their Christmas presents, this has certaily turned into something more. It shows me that there still is a certain innocence in our world and that we need to let children be children…

Please also consider being a part of The Challenge.

The Powerful Link between Creativity and Play

Creativity and Play

Designer Tim Brown shares the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play during the 2008 Serious Play conference. Brown includes many playful examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn’t).