MaKey MaKey | Buy Direct (Official Site) SD Times Blog: Fifteen toys, games and tools that teach programming There have been a lot of toys and games popping up that secretly teach kids programming basics and how to code, but why is it so important to teach programming skills to our kids? Well first off, there is a huge demand for computer science and programming skills. According to Code.org, there will be 1.4 million more computer science jobs than there will be people to fill them by 2020. Secondly, learning how to program teaches kids skills that they can use in everyday life, not just programming. With fun tools like the ones listed below, teaching your kid how to program can be fun, and some of the tools are for all ages! Alice Alice is a 3D programming environment that introduces object-oriented programming and teaches fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating video games and animated movies. Blockly Blockly is a visual programming editor, similar to Scratch. #! About Christina Mulligan Christina is the Online & Social Media Editor of SD Times.
Squishy Circuits Kit: Toys & Games Puzzlets - Digital Dream Labs Scott Steinberg: 20 Must-use Education Technology Tools Educators may feel sometimes like they’re on an island with little help in sight. But as technology teaching resources go, it may encourage you to learn that there are a number of online solutions available to help promote education from teaching reading basics to organizing classroom activities and encouraging civic involvement. Here are 20 of the most promising new apps, websites and online education technology tools or services every teacher should be using to help improve classroom learning: Collaborize Classroom — A free online collaborative platform designed to complement classroom instruction with additional activities, assignments and discussions that can be accessed online. Cool Math — A collection of games that are designed to be safe to use in the classroom, covering a variety of math subjects as well as reading, science and geography. DoSomething.org — With a new call-to-action every week, DoSomething.org encourages teens to band together and work for positive social change.
Sphero For Education - Details What you play with inspires who you become. With Sphero, the fun extends to the classroom too. With over ten different programming environments, kids as young as eight years old can learn how to program Sphero. Using Sphero as an interactive and engaging tool brings core class work off the paper into real life application. Basic math and engineering classes just got upgraded for the mobile generation. Outside the Classroom Anyone can program Sphero. In the Classroom Sphero is the perfect fit for students and teachers in the classroom. And of course, there’s the programming. Looking for lesson materials? We would love to get your students set up with Sphero and answer any questions you may have. Examples of How Sphero Can Work: Elementary School: Middle School: Algebraic Word Problems – use Sphero to bring word problems to life. High School: College: Special Offer for Educators We will contact you to verify your association with an educational institution.
Introduction to orbBasic | Sphero Introduction Back in April 2011 when I was laying out the memory map of Sphero, co-founder Adam Wilson asked me to set aside some sort of "overlay area" in which temporary routines could be dynamically dropped in for execution. I considered various options and weighed their risk against implementation in a sealed robot. Eventually I pulled out my old copy of Microsoft Basic Decoded book to take a look at how Bill Gates had written his BASIC language on the 8-bit TRS-80. After a weekend of review and a lot of coffee, I settled on using Adam Dunkel's source code for µBasic and bolted it into Sphero. I fixed a number of inherent bugs, extended the language greatly by adding new intrinsic variables, operators and verbs while optimizing the tokenizer, verb dispatcher and adding a line number cache. orbBasic, like the macro executive, is another powerful resource that Sphero provides for autonomous behavior and integration with smart phone applications.
Orbotix launches Sphero education initiative The creator of smartphone-controlled robotic toy Sphero has launched an initiative aimed at teaching kids programming, robotics and maths. Orbotix — the company behind the robotic Sphero and Ollie toys that can be controlled via iOS and Android apps — has announced the launch of SPRK, an education initiative aimed at using Sphero to teach kids essential knowledge such as programming, maths and science while having fun. SPRK — pronounced "spark" and standing for "Schools, Parents, Robots, Kids" — consists of an eight-week program with free, downloadable lessons to be used with free apps for iOS and Android — MacroLab, with which you can create programs and macros for Sphero using presets, and orbBasic, which lets you write your own programs. The lessons start with very basic MacroLab lessons, moving up into the more complicated programming, with lessons that teach speed, distance and time; geometry; and percentages.
Having a ball with code: Can Sphero inspire the next generation of developers? This is a software world: things we used to do with hardware are now handled by low-cost processors. But that means we need more and more developers to write and maintain that code, but where are those developers coming from, when we're also told that the current educational system isn't teaching the essential skills needed to write code? Luckily for the modern world there's something of a renaissance in the educational technology world and in the teaching of the basic building blocks of the computing. You can start with visual programming environments like Kodu, and move on to more complex low-cost computing platforms like Raspberry Pi. But they're only part of the story. More and more our world is becoming one where we're interacting with smart devices: not only that, it's one where devices are talking to each other. That’s where a new generation of programmable objects is coming in. I’ve been playing with Orbotix's Sphero for the last week or so.
Primary - Field of Mars The Tin Forest A strong message in the Tin Forest is that with dreams and hard work anything is possible and changes for the better can be made. By changing habits and making choices, the amount of garbage we put out to be sent to landfill can be reduced. Waste and recycling student research links Ollie Recycles – this site explains how to Reduce, Re-use and Recycle waste Where does my recycling go? Waste and recycling teacher links Why Recycle – hosted on TaLE, this interactive learning object explores the benefits of recycling Your Rubbish Pile: Reduce Your Pile – this interactive learning object is hosted on TaLE Storm Boy Storm Boy is set in the Coorong, a complex lagoon ecosystem in South Australia where the Murray River empties into the Southern Ocean. Murray-Darling Basin and water consumption student research links Murray-Darling Basin – good source of information with maps and images Use of Murray River water - how Murray River water is allocated and used The Story of Rosy Dock Stellaluna
13 Great Resources for Finding Free Public Domain Books April 27, 2014 We all love to cuddle up with a good book and read a chapter or two before we fall asleep. That was before the massive uptake of ebooks and the widespread of ebook readers and tablets. Now that life becomes excessively digitized, digital reading is virtually the norm. The importance of digital reading, not only for us but for our students as well , is well documented in the education research literature. As Malloy and Gambrell (2006) pointed out, the future is already here: " Many elementary students are already adept at searching and surfing, using reading and spelling in ways not explicitly taught. Reading online is not only something that many students do in their leisure time but is also a skill they will need to develop as they learn to research and create in their middle school years and beyond. " (p. 482). One important form of digital reading is reading ebooks. 1- Google Books There is no other platform that would top this list other than the powerful Google Books.
Presence, Not Praise: How To Cultivate a Healthy Relationship with Achievement by Maria Popova Why instilling admiration for hard work rather than raw talent is the key to fostering a well-adjusted mind. Despite ample evidence and countless testaments to the opposite, there persists a toxic cultural mythology that creative and intellectual excellence comes from a passive gift bestowed upon the fortunate few by the gods of genius, rather than being the product of the active application and consistent cultivation of skill. So what might the root of that stubborn fallacy be? Childhood and upbringing, it turns out, might have a lot to do. Nowadays, we lavish praise on our children. Grosz cites psychologists Carol Dweck and Claudia Mueller’s famous 1998 study, which divided 128 children ages 10 and 11 into two groups. Ultimately, the thrill created by being told ‘You’re so clever’ gave way to an increase in anxiety and a drop in self-esteem, motivation and performance. I don’t praise a small child for doing what they ought to be able to do,’ she told me. Share on Tumblr