All About life

Gavriel Salomon gave us a talk @ NYU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavriel_Salomon

"Combingscience With Conviction:Steering Research On Peace Eduction in Stormy Waters"

After you play Happy farm every time, play with this.

You can choose the subjects!

:)

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

所有當老師或從事教育良心事業的

都可以好好讀一下這篇不長的文章

我個人非常同意並且強烈地被激勵中！

期待台灣的教育進步...需要很多很多很多很多很多人一起努力！

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

http://www.brainpop.com/

不喜歡首頁的設計

太讓人分散注意力 沒有重點

但是裡面的資源和動畫很豐富

可以花些時間去挖寶喔！

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

把右上角的印出來

看左上角see how it works的影片

就可以試試囉！

非常酷～～～～～

http://www.scrubtheweb.com/

Scrub The Web is a full-text Internet search engine and crawler. It only includes pages that have been submitted and then confirmed. Here, they don’t play popularity game because “popular doesn’t mean relevant.” Scrub The Web ranks all indexed pages individually. This means all Web pages have an equal chance of ranking high in the search results. Sounds like a fair game.

http://www.copyscape.com/

OLPC mission is “To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning." 

Computers are tools that connect the kids to the updated and worldwide information and other people. Just like one kid’s feedback on OLPC computer, I think kids need a computer that is “useful and simple, entertaining, dependable, really a “stick to the basics” kind of computer.” Through the Internet, kids open the door to the whole world. Besides, computers allow kids typing, writing, drawing, listening to sounds/music, taking pictures, searching for information, and talking to people without seeing each other in person.
The creators of the OLPC computer think kids need simple and reliable computers, which are low-cost, low-consumption, low power, robust and light for learning. OLPC computers are made for kids in the developing countries worldwide from to mid teenage years that are inexperienced with computers.

http://www.brainpop.com/

I like this site a lot! The animations are well designed. The subjects and the topics are varied. Followed Tim and Moby, I tried to see the free ones for different subjects. It is audio without subtitles and you can see important names and phrases when the narrator mentions them. When you watch the animation, you really focus on it. Images show up in order, and there was nothing distracting to me. If the others were free too, I might keep watching them. I checked the free movies of math for some reasons. The questions are based on the stories, which I think are great. The sound of the robot was a little annoying to me though…

http://www.listentoyourbuds.org/

http://www.tolerance.org/teach/magazine/features.jsp?p=0&is=43&ar=944&pa=4

When I was trying to find an article about how Americans think about African culture for our project, this article caught my eyes at the first sight. In the beginning of the article, children’s answers really surprised me. Water, food, tent, animals, dance, sing, safari, those images are the answers when the students were asked about the Africa on their minds. Not just in the U.S, I think children in Taiwan will give the similar answers about Africa.  To Americans here, Africa is a country that is still uncivilized. That reminds me a piece of news: According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, Palin who was running for the vice president didn't understand that Africa was a continent not a country. Isn’t it ironic?

The popular media, TV programs, films, children’s books, and school textbooks often highlight poverty and hunger in Africa rather than showing the reality that some Africans are wealthy, healthy, and powerful. The misimpressions hinder children’s learning opportunities. Thus it is the challenging but essential task that educators should let children have the right knowledge about different kinds of people in the world, especially Africans who most of people have misimpressions on.  The author gives three reasons why we should change the stereotypical representations of Africa:

1.  It has racial relations and might contribute to racism. The wrong images will lead many black children in the U.S want to get away from connections with African heritage.

http://www.carstensstudios.com/mathdoodles/mathdoodles.htm

This website aims to prove that math learning can be fun! I tried the games in my landlord’s PC. Reflections on this site are as following:

Connect sums— I like the design that there are two models: solve model and race model, which satisfy different users.  Some might want more exciting game, some might just want to know if they improved or not. As to the interface, users can play the game by choosing from numbers, dice, coins, and question mark (means computer does the decision). This game seems easy but requires thinking skills.

Number jump— It’s fun because you can smash flies with seeing blood if you add or minus right. However, I was confused how to get to the top level since the ball only falls down. And then I figured out I can let it fall from bottom level and it will show up again on other levels. It can be clearer about this part.

Panwapa: http://www.panwapa.com/

This site is for kids all over the world to know about each other and to see the world in different ways. On the homepage, “Word of the Day” is a good idea but I wonder how much vocabulary is totally there. And also, the “Place of the Day” doesn’t really make sense by only showing the name and the flag of a country but not with some brief introduction.

     The first activity I tried as USA59007 is an activity that you can tell where you are from and your favorites on activities, food, animals, sports, instruments, and crafts. The part that kids create their own figures and homes is good for kids to explore and create something their own, which might stimulate their imaginative thinking. Kids can collect cards from treasure hunting, that is, to match the target kid by following the clues. It requires skills like identifying relationship, filtering and assigning relevance to data and information, scanning for clues and organizing information. The cards are like the reward to kids, however, I don’t see why it is so special that kids want to collect them. Kids can send and receive messages to and from each other, but the content is fixed with some choices, they can’t type themselves. There is another thing very confusing. When you click many times on any kids, they speak without a proper pattern. You don’t know he or she is talking about his nationality, favorite animal, activity or food. Another annoying and distracting thing is the sound that with every click when kids searching in others’ profiles.

     The second activity is the hide-and-seek language game. I think it is a good idea but without complete design. There are some foreign languages that kids can choose from to practice. Without previous learning, only native speakers can find the creature. What is more, there is only one level and one scenario without various options and topics that kids can choose to learn. I count this language game as unsuccessful.

     The third activity is the movie theater. I appreciate the idea a lot. Cost-effectiveness is one of the potentials technology owns, kids can see how other kids live and learn in the different corners of the world through multimedia. When I entered the page, the first thing came to my mind was that only one poor creature in the movie theater is too lonely for kids’ joyous activities. There are plenty choices (kids from different countries) there in the movie libraries that kids can choose from. It is a good way to attract kids’ attention because it is like telling stories; more specifically, telling other kids’ true stories. After playing the video, I really like the content but I found one problem that is urgent. Kids cannot pause the video for whatever reasons, so if the nature happen to call them, they can’t answer! (O.K. That did happen…) Maybe I missed the pause button somewhere on the interface. Even if the pause button exists, it is very unclear that I can’t find it after three minutes searching. While I was thinking about which video to see, the creature kept saying: “Choose a movie, click on one picture!” more than five times. The frequency of that sound really annoyed me. Besides, I really don’t like the game of this activity. The game is to find three things happened repeatedly in the video. I don’t know what is the goal for the game and what can kids learn from it. If the purpose is to let them watch it again, posing interesting questions or brainstorming about the video will work better. For instance, instead of pointing out three times when somebody writes in the video, the questions can be: Did you notice what language the character speaks in Guatemala? or What kind of plant the family were growing? What is it for? Anyhow, I mean the questions should be well designed. Otherwise, the game is not really a game. Bill’s big questions allow kids to see other kids’ answers so that they can compare. A little talk about the video and meaningful questions raising in the Bill’s big questions benefit kids which lead them to reflect different kinds of lifestyles from the videos.

這是很有意思的教育性網站

有很多線上的活動

我試了vertual knee surgery。。。

永生難忘！

http://www.edheads.org/

這是我這週從星期五開始就窩在家裡的原因之一