10 Things I Found This Week ...

1. STEM Apps: The following educational apps were chosen as they relate to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Some are free some are not. These links are for iOS, some of these are also available on Android.
2. Mobile Learning Meets Common Core: Thinkfinity and its Content Partners have developed more than a dozen great mobile apps that put standards-aligned activities in the palm of your hand through mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones. Discover how your students can improve their content skills in a mobile environment that engages their interest and helps them meet specific curriculum goals.
3. Smithsonian EdLab: The Smithsonian EdLab connects learning in schools and museums to the community through digital technology. EdLab’s project-based approach inspires learners to investigate relevant issues grounded in curriculum, conduct research, develop products, and broadcast results, all while building critical 21st century skills.
4. Adventures of the Agronauts: We welcome you to Adventures of the Agronauts, a free, online science curriculum with a space biology theme for elementary grade level students. This curriculum was created to meet the NC Standard Course of Study for 3rd Grade Science: My name is Rosy. My good friends and I will be training with you to become Agronauts. Our goal is to determine how to grow plants on the Moon. We will need to work together to learn about the relationship between the Sun, Moon and Earth, about plants, soil, and heat and light. (growing from seeds on the International Space Station)
5. Kids Health: Your Bones: If you’re looking for information you can trust about kids and teens that’s free of “doctor speak,” you’ve come to the right place. KidsHealth is the most-visited site on the Web for information about health, behavior, and development from before birth through the teen years. KidsHealth is more than just the facts about health. As part of The Nemours Foundation’s Center for Children’s Health Media, KidsHealth also provides families with perspective, advice, and comfort about a wide range of physical, emotional, and behavioral issues that affect children and teens.
6. ASCD Educational Leadership: Tackling Informational Text: Still, there are challenges associated with tackling informational texts, not the least the one that Bryson describes: Some informative texts are hard-going, poorly written, or just plain dull. A second challenge is motivating students to read. As Mary Ehrenworth, threatening students with state tests or future tasks is not an effective teaching methodology. “Our job is to instill in students a deep sense of engagement with the intricacies of text … to rouse them to see more in the text they read—and to do this in a way that makes them want to read more.”
7. This Awsome Ad, Set to the Beastie Boys, Is How to Get Girls to Become Engineers: This is a stupendously awesome commercial from a toy company called GoldieBlox, which has developed a set of interactive books and games to “disrupt the pink aisle and inspire the future generation of female engineers.” The CEO, Debbie Sterling, studied engineering at Stanford, where she was dismayed by the lack of women in her program. (For a long look at the Gordian knot that is women’s underrepresentation in STEM fields, check out this New York Times article from October.) As the GoldieBlox website attests, only 11 percent of the world’s engineers are female. Sterling wants to light girls’ inventive spark early, supplementing the usual diet of glittery princess products with construction toys “from a female perspective.”
8. Moving From Lesson Seeds to Lesson Plans: We are proud to be able to offer you excellent lesson seeds here at EducationCloset that focus on authentic Arts Integration and STEAM concepts.  We have over 40 to choose from and the list keeps growing!  But one of the common questions I receive each week is about why we call these lesson seeds.
9. Personalization for All: From the Diary of Venture Academy: Venture Academy is a personalized, blended learning middle school whose goal is to create a new model of education that empowers the most struggling students and closes the opportunity gap. Winner of a Next Generation Learning Challenges award, Venture’s central mission since its 2011 founding is to make learning student-directed.
10. Corkboard Connections: Teaching Informational Text with Magazines: With the Common Core emphasis on teaching informational text, you might be wondering where to find appropriate texts for reading instruction. Most classrooms are overflowing with great children’s literature and novels, but many schools lack a good selection of interesting nonfiction texts.