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I was listening to StarTalk the other day, to an episode called Neuroscience and Physics Collide. The discussion was about free will and consciousness. Then they introduced Canadian rapper Baba Brinkman. I'll admit up front: I'm not a big fan of rap. But this guy isn't just a rap artist; he's a science communicator. He proceeded to freestyle a rap about the topics from the conversation, and it was pretty impressive.

I took a look at his website, and discovered titles like "The Rap Guide to Consciousness," "The Rap Guide to Climate Chaos," and "The Rap Guide to Medicine." If you go to his Bandcamp page, you can subscribe for $30 a year. You'll get new releases, and access to most of his back catalog. It's a pretty good deal, especially if you've got some students who are rap fans (as most of mine seem to be) that you want to introduce to some science!

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One of my favorite podcasts out there is StarTalk, with Neil deGrasse Tyson. The StarTalk podcast family actually consists of three different shows:

The main StarTalk has Neil, and is billed as "where science and pop culture collide." There's usually a topic of the day, there's often a featured guest interview, and another guest expert on the topic. There's always a comedian co-host, usually Chuck Nice, but others have been known to appear.

StarTalk All-Stars features other science communicators, and follows the same general format as StarTalk.

Playing with Science is a spin-off with hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O'Reilly (former footballer from England). The focus here is on the intersection of science and sports.

You can enjoy learning from any of them, and your students might enjoy them, too!

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This is a fun little game about the persuasion tactics used to swindle people. The player goes to con artist school, and then uses their skills to swindle people. They can upgrade their skills along the way, and add extra charms to boost their effectiveness. The Fraud Fighting Agency is on their trail, though!

Zeek tried this out, and knocked it out in a single (50-minute) class period. He had some fun with it, and maybe learned a few things along the way (he's already pretty adept in general financial literacy, though). At the end, he got caught (which I'm guessing is how all the games end), and was given the option of using his skills to help protect others from fraud.

The web-based game uses Flash, or there are apps for Android and iOS. We used the Android app on a PC using Bluestacks, an Android emulator.
#finance #game

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Learn first-hand about the types of persuasion tactics used to perpetrate financial fraud, so that you'll be better able to defend against them.

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This is another one that I kind of expect everyone is already familiar with, but if you're not, you're really missing out. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and every weekday, they post a talk in their Ideas Worth Spreading series. One of my all-time favorites is one by Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame, called "How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries." This talk has been enhanced TED-Ed animators. TED-Ed, which features short, usually animated, educational videos on specific topics, is another fabulous resource.

TED-Ed also offers Clubs for schools, which "supports students in discovering, exploring and presenting their big ideas in the form of short, TED-style talks." They provide curriculum that can be used in a flexible format, that focuses on students finding their passion and developing the skills to communicate about it, including video production skills. I tried to get a club going here at Yellow Wood, but there were a number of other clubs going already, and I wasn't successful in attracting students to the opportunity. I hope to try again next fall, though, because I think it'd be an amazing experience.
#resources #video

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content. By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

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Prodigy is a math game for students working on 1st - 8th grade math. It's modeled after monster-catching role-playing-games, so it has appeal for Pokemon fans. The teacher side of things lets you select the curriculum students are working on. You can make assignments based on skills or standards, and you'll get a fairly complete set of reports on what your students are doing.

There's things I really like about this game, and things could definitely use improvement. The topics you can assign are listed in some order, but there's no indication of what a reasonable skill progression should be. This might be solved by aligning assignments to standards, but I haven't had any luck with that actually working. The student I tried that with kept getting the same questions over and over. The good news, though, is if you let your students "free-run," the game will automatically follow a fairly logical progression of skills.

One of the down sides is that, because it's a free game, it does tend to push getting memberships and the special Epic toys. If you're working with a "gotta have it" student, they're going to be disappointed. Also, if your student doesn't have a membership, game progress will be slower. However, there's a workaround for that, at least in our one-on-one setting: Once you've had a teacher account for a while, Prodigy will send you an invitation to join their Champion's Club. They send out fairly simple challenges that are designed around them getting feedback and you marketing their game. If you can earn 500 points a month (which is pretty easy to do), you can turn that in for a free one-month membership. This membership can easily be shifted among your students, depending on who is in class.

On the whole, it's been a pretty successful tool for me, and I definitely recommend it for younger students!
#math #game

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Amazing pets, epic battles and math practice. Prodigy, the no-cost math game where kids can earn prizes, go on quests and play with friends all while learning math.

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Carson recently finished his Physics course on Udacity, so I went looking for another suitable resource. We landed on Brilliant.org. It has courses on math, physics, and computer science, heavily focused on problem solving skills and puzzles. It's got some content that can be accessed free, or subscriptions access the whole lot for $20/month (or $8/month, if you buy a year at a time).

With Carson, we're using Physics of the Everyday, which is pretty cool. So far, we've looked at the physics behind refrigerators, toilets and water tanks, among other things. Some background knowledge may be necessary, or some additional searches for information may be necessary. But I love that it shows just how much of a role physics plays in our everyday lives.
#math #physics

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Brilliant - Build quantitative skills in math, science, and computer science with hands-on, interactive lessons.

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Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you've likely seen a video from the band OK Go. They're impressive enough that they got invited to give a TED Talk called How to Find a Wonderful Idea. Their videos have all sorts of applications in education, and it seems they know it, because they've created this website for teachers who want to use their videos in STEAM. To take the quote off their page: "We want to give teachers whatever tools they need to connect the joy, wonder, and fun in our videos to the underlying concepts that their students are learning."

This site is pretty awesome. It's got Q&A sessions about the videos, as well as challenges for students to try, inspired by the videos. Seriously, check it out.
#STEAM #video

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OK Go Sandbox is an online resource for educators that uses OK Go's music videos as starting points for integrated guided inquiry challenges allowing students to explore various STEAM concepts.

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My dad got me a Galaxy S8 and a Gear VR for Christmas. I've been thinking about using it in class, but the issue, of course, is that I've only got one of them.

Yesterday, I went searching for options for streaming what's on the Gear VR to my computer, and came across the app TeamViewer. It's free for personal use. Install the main app on the computer, and QuickSupport on the phone. Run both apps, and enter the code to pair them. Now, when you run the Oculus app on the phone, it'll show up on the computer screen!

Zeke and I tried it out this morning, using Titans of Space Plus. Zeke enjoyed his guided tour of the solar system, and I could see where he was at. The computer side was a little laggy, but Zeek said his side of things was fine. Now I just need to bring in a second pair of Bluetooth headphones, so we can both hear the audio without bothering the folks around us.

I am seriously looking forward to further exploration of VR apps in the classroom. I have quite a few in my library, just waiting to be tried!
#VR #science #tech

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Given yesterday's walkout related to the Parkland shooting, this new resource from the Harvard Graduate School of Education seems particularly appropriate. I haven't used the resource myself, yet, but it looks pretty solid.

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Advice on Leading Change from Experienced Youth Activists and Allies

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I'm guessing most teachers know about this site already, but if you don't, it's worth knowing about. Years ago, a cousin in another state asked Sal Khan to tutor her in math. He wound up creating YouTube videos that were soon being used by other family members, and then others outside the family. These days, Khan Academy's strong suit is still math, but they offer classes and videos in a variety of subjects, and they continue to grow.

I'll be honest: I hate the videos, personally, but I love the math practice with instant feedback. I also appreciate the mastery approach. Today, Megan and I were using the SAT prep tools. The coaching dashboard also allows me to see what my students are doing and what they're struggling with. The format is not so engaging that my younger students like it, but for someone who wants to learn, it's a good place to pick up some skills.

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From their mission statement, "Common Sense is the leading independent nonprofit organization dedicated to helping kids thrive in a world of media and technology. We empower parents, teachers, and policymakers by providing unbiased information, trusted advice, and innovative tools to help them harness the power of media and technology as a positive force in all kids’ lives."

The education arm of Common Sense maintains a database of EdTech tools, including reviews and pricing information. They also offer materials for teaching digital citizenship and offer professional development opportunities. I subscribe to their mailing list to keep an eye on what's new, and often use the database to find tools that will help me teach.
#technology #resources

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Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find a free K-12 Digital Citizenship curriculum, reviews of popular EdTech apps, and resources for protecting student privacy.

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I was a substitute for Nate today, and he was working on DNA transcription and translation. He introduced me to a YouTube series called the Amoeba Sisters. Based on their protein synthesis video, this is a cool series of animated science videos. Not too technical (they didn't get into the details of 3' and 5' ends, for example), but accurate as far as they go. Looks like a cool teaching resource to me!
#biology #videos

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We are two sisters on a mission to demystify science with humor and relevance by creating videos, GIFs, comics, and resources. Our content is focused on high school biology (Pinky is a former high school biology teacher), though we do receive comments that some of our content is useful for intro biology courses at the college level as well. We’re for anyone wanting to learn biology! We frequently remind viewers that we cannot include all of the fascinating exceptions and details in a video under 10 minutes. We like to create memorable visuals to the content, but they’re not scientific illustrations. Meaning, nitrogen and carbon don’t tap dance. Our illustrated cell and molecule cartoons are definitely not to scale. DNA is usually a right-handed double helix (well...there are exceptions) and it doesn’t have eyes...a face...or a top hat…

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Udacity is an online course provider, focusing primarily on technology-related classes. At least some of the courses they offer are free, including the Introduction to Physics course Carson and I have been working through. One of the things I like about the format (at least for this course; I haven't looked at others) is that it uses short videos (often a 2 minutes or less) that then ask the student to answer a question based on what they've learned. This class is fairly math-heavy, but that's actually kind of cool, because it's letting him see where the math he's learning in Kelsey's class can actually be used.

For a list of courses, filterable by topic skill level and expected duration, go here. Just be sure to check the "free courses" box if you don't want to pay for the class!
#physics #courses

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Another podcast I listen to is The Naked Scientists, a weekly science show originally launched in 2001 (which makes it one of the first podcasts out there). Based out of Cambridge University, they work with broadcasters internationally to produce a high-caliber science show. What makes it particularly useful in the classroom is that their high-quality website breaks out individual stories, and includes supporting materials.

I thought one of the coolest stories this week was about how crickets use holes in leaves to amplify their songs (below). After listening to this story, a student could even try experiments to create their own baffle!
#science #podcasts

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Crickets have been shown to be able to create and use tools for the first time. The insects can amplify their mating calls by creating 'baffles' from modified leaves, getting a volume increase of up to 400%. Chris Smith heard from Natasha Mhatre, who has been investigating how...
Natasha - These creatures are called Tree Crickets. They're about a centimetre in length - they're really beautiful. Most of us see crickets from the pet store which look kind of brown and a bit cockroach-like. Tree crickets are really pretty: they have translucent wings, they have long antennae - those small green things - a there's tree cricket species more or less all over the world. The ones that we're working on come from India.

All tree crickets do with really amazing thing which is that they sing to attract mates. They put up their wings, which are resonant, rub them together and set them into vibration and produce really beautiful tonal sounds; that's what you can hear on a summer nights. These sounds are heard by the females who can use them to identify males of their own species from other males, and find the males.These tree crickets also do this amazing other thing which is that they make an aid that helps them be louder than they would be on their own.

Chris - Really; what do they do?

Natasha - They make a things called a baffle. A baffle is, for a tree cricket, very simply a hole cut in a leaf that they sing from. They place their wings directly against this hole and sing from inside it, and this makes them louder.

Chris - Is that a bit like you see people walking around in the old days on Hollywood sets with a megaphone, which was basically a cone with the end chopped off and they shout into it? Is it sort of doing something similar, they're creating an amplifier from a leaf to make themselves louder?

Natasha - It's a bit similar. I'll try and explain the physics as simply as I can. If you can imagine the wings as a board that's vibrating back and forth. Every time the board moves forward, it produces high pressure in front of it and behind it it produces low pressure, and this is essentially what sound is - its changes in pressure. But what will happen is that the high pressure and the low pressure will meet at the edge of the board, and when they meet with each other they'll cancel each other out. This is something we call acoustic short-circuiting.

Now the smaller the board is, the more of the sound that's produced is short-circuited. If you can somehow prevent these two, high pressure and the low pressure from meeting each other, then you can prevent acoustic short-circuiting. And that's essentially what's happening when a cricket puts itself in the hole in the leaf. What happens is that the front face of the wing is, effectively, acoustically separated from the back face of the wing and they end up being louder.

Chris - How does the cricket find the leaf and the hole in the first place?

Natasha - Ah, there's a big secret in that. One of the things that we did was to see whether there are different baffle designs. It turned out, if you model this, you find that some baffles perform a lot better than others. And the baffle that performs the best is made with the largest leaf with a hole that's exactly the size of wings and placed dead centre in the leaf.

Chris - Right. So next question then: given that that's the optimal solution what proportion of the crickets actually opt for that?

Natasha - Well, it depends on the situation. But when we did an experiment in which we gave 19 crickets the choice between a small leaf which wouldn't make such a good baffle and a large leaf which would make a great baffle, 15 crickets made a baffle and every single one of them made a baffle in the large leaf. They made a baffle in the large leaf with the optimally sized hole and they got pretty close to the centre, so all of the crickets seemed to know how to make an optimal baffle.

Chris - Now, given that crickets sing at night, they're therefore able to work out the size of a leaf, discriminate between leaves that are bigger and smaller. Then having worked out the size of the leaf and made a choice, they're then working out where the middle is. How on earth are they doing that?

Natasha - Yeah, they are doing that. We have no idea. There may be different ways in which they're doing this: one is to walk along the edge of the leaf, the other is use these really beautiful long antennae that they have to touch the edges of the leaf to see if the edges are further away on one leaf than another other and using themselves to centre in the middle of the leaf. But, to be honest, the answer is we don't know how they're doing it yet.

Chris - How much louder is the baffled cricket compared with a non-baffled cricket? In other words, what sort of an advantage - a sonic advantage do they gain through doing this?

Natasha - A cricket that's in an optimal baffle will be four times as loud as a cricket that's on its own.

Chris - This completely changes our view of insects, doesn't it? Because we mostly think of insects as sort of dumb automatons but here you've got very simple organisms, they're making a sequence of decisions informed by their own measurements in order to achieve an outcome and that's really quite striking.

Natasha - Absolutely. It has been a long-held view that invertebrates are stereotyped, and vertebrates, mammals, birds, etc. are extremely clever. We've been having to change this view. I think one of the first things that really jolted this was when they found that octopuses can make tools. They were making all sorts of tools. Now, if you think about it a little bit an octopus is a mollusk, it's the same as a snail. So really, we can't hold onto this idea any more that invertebrates are simpler animals. They're just different from us and we're absolutely going to have to look very closely at how insects behave in order to be able to appreciate what's going on that's not immediately apparent on the surface.

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Baffled: Crickets use tools to boost their song

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Crickets have been shown to be able to create and use tools for the first time. The insects can amplify their mating calls by creating 'baffles' from modified leaves, getting a volume increase of up to 400%. Chris Smith heard from Natasha Mhatre, who has been investigating how...

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I listen to a lot of podcasts, and some of them are even explicitly education-related. As a science teacher, one of my favorites is Lab Out Loud, hosted by former physics teacher Dale Basler and former biology and chemistry teacher Brian Bartel. Both are now Technology Integration Specialists in Appleton Area School District's K-6 schools. The podcast is sponsored by the National Science Teachers Association and discusses a combination of science news and science education.

For example, this week's episode featured an interview with Neal Manegold, director of Minecraft Education, and discussed the new Chemistry update. The podcast comes out weekly during the US school year, and is typically in the 30-minute range.
#science #podcasts

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In a recent survey, Nature asked scientists about their use of Twitter, and discovered that many decreased their use of [...]

Talking Science with the Hosts of Lab Out Loud Saturday, April 13th, 11:00 AM - Noon America's Center, Room 151 [...]

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Richard Byrne has a website and a couple different versions of his newsletter where he highlights Free Technology for Teachers. He's often got cool stuff, and always highlights how it might get used in a classroom. Of course, he's talking about a more traditional classroom of 20-30 students, but much of it is useful in the one-on-one setting, as well.

For example, his most recent e-mail highlighted ViewPure's new curated video collections for teachers. These videos are presented in a clean format, without all the distractions common to YouTube.
#technology #videos #resources

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I subscribe to a lot of resource-related things. One of the more fun ones is Ian Byrd's Curiosities and Puzzlements. His thing is gifted students, and he sends out a newsletter each Friday with 5 links to cool things.

My favorite this week was about canyon-spanning bridge between two communities in Peru that has been rebuilt by hand each year, using woven grass, since the time of the Inca. You never know what you're going to get, but it's likely to be cool!
#resources

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Many students don't feel comfortable being curious at school. They've learned that asking a question might make them look foolish, slow down the class, or even upset the teacher. So if you want curious students, you have to retrain them to be curious again. You have to spend some time creating a culture of curiosity.

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Zeek and I tried this out today, and he said it was worth doing and sharing with other students. It's a pretty quick game (I think it took Zeek about 15 minutes), and runs the player through decisions from choosing a college to attend to how they're going to spend their money. Pretty cool! (Also, free.)

#financial

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Can you make it through college without drowning in debt? Play Payba¢k and find out. Brought to you by Next Gen Personal Finance.