eBooks Could Spur Kids' Interest in Reading

Innovative educators who want to incorporate eBooks into their instruction when they are teaching the literary classics have a number of free online resources at their disposal. A few websites specialize in providing free downloads of eBooks, and classic literature is particularly prevalent because the copyright on such books has long ago expired. Students can be given the option of reading the books at home online, and forgetful students will never again have the excuse that they forgot their book in their lockers. Numerous classic titles are available online and students have access to them wherever they have an Internet connection, even on handheld devices and e-readers like the Nook and Kindle.

One site dedicated to providing free eBooks is Planet eBook, which provides numerous titles in classic literature online as free downloads. Titles include many that are commonly taught in the classroom and assigned as reading outside the classroom, such as A Tale of Two Cities, Gulliver's Travels, Les Miserables, and The Great Gatsby. The site allows you to sign up for a newsletter that lets you know when new titles are available. If anything else, you can use the site as a creative way of coming up with extra credit assignments for students.

Another great site is Project Gutenberg, which has more than 33,000 free eBooks available to teachers or anyone else for that matter. The site allows teachers to search by title or author. Among the most popular titles are: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Paradise Lost and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Project Gutenberg allows users to download in six different formats, such as HTML, Kindle or plain text. A limited number of audio books are also available through this site.

Finally, another site you can use to look for eBooks not only in classic literature, but also in a number of other topics is E-Books Directory. If you look under the children's category, you will see numerous titles available for free download, including Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Call of the Wild and Jungle Book. Under literature & fiction category are more titles for older readers, such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. There are also descriptions of each book posted under each title listed on this site.

This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online courses. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7 @gmail.com.

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Blink and How it Relates to the Classroom

I've wanted to do a post for some time about Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink and how it relates to the classroom, but I just haven't found the time. A link from the KnowHR blog called Top 10 Best Presentations Ever led me to a presentation by Gladwell at the SXSW Conference about Blink. Although short, his presentation provided just enough information to get me thinking about my post again.

Blink is about rapid cognition, the kind of thinking that takes place in the blink of an eye. One of the stories from the book concerns a European musician named Abby Conan. Gladwell gives an account of her audition for the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and how, playing behind a screen which conceals her identity (and the fact that she is a woman), she wows the judges, only to be greeted with astonished silence when she steps around the screen. Expecting a man, the judges instead get a woman.

Gladwell talks about how we tend to think of judging auditions as concious, deliberate, drawn-out processes. This is false. Auditions actually belong snap judgement kind of thinking. "You hear and you know," he says. He goes on to say that snap judgements play a much bigger role in more than just auditions, but in how we make sense of the world in general. Furthermore, these judgements are heavily influenced by our personal biases. So to be better decision-makers, we must sometimes do more with less. This goes against our cultural assumption that quality decisions are based processing vast amounts of information.

So how does this relate to the classroom? I'll answer a question with a few questions.

• How much information do we need about a student to help them be successful? The beginning of the school year is the time for many teachers to dig through student files to get as much information about them as possible. I have never done this. I don't disagree that there is much to be learned about a student by looking at their history. But I guess I like to see every student as a clean slate and make it my job to fill that slate with my personal impressions as the year goes on. I do not want to be influenced by test scores, previous teacher comments, etc. as I know that these could possibly affect my behavior toward the student.
  
• How often during the day do we make a snap judgement about a student that could be detrimental to their learning simply due to our biases? There are many factors that affect how we treat our students: race, sex, age, socioeconomic status, etc. Do these influence our snap judgements about them? Something that Gladwell refers to in the book is the Implicit Associations Test, which measures your level of "unconscious prejudice." That's the kind of prejudice that you have that you aren't aware of, that affects the kinds of impressions and conclusions that you reach automatically, without thinking. You can take the IAT at Project Implicit. I highly recommend it. You'll be surprised at your results.
  
• Priming is another topic that Gladwell tackles in the book. Priming refers to when subtle triggers influence our behavior without our awareness of such changes. Do we unconciously prime students to perform better/worse in school?
  

There is so much more to think about in Blink. Gladwell covers the topic of rapid cognition in thought-provoking depth, forcing readers to consider how they make decisions.

Technorati Tags: Blink| learning | Gladwell

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Wired News: Nature Giving Way to Virtual Reality

"As people spend more time communing with their televisions and computers, the impact is not just on their health, researchers say. Less time spent outdoors means less contact with nature and, eventually, less interest in conservation and parks.

Camping, fishing and per capita visits to parks are all declining in a shift away from nature-based recreation, researchers report in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Wow...It seems that Richard Louv was correct. In his book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Kids from Nature Deficit Disorder, Louv spoke of precisely the same issues that are covered in the Wired article. One of these is the decline in national state park visits. From the article:

"By studying visits to national and state park and the issuance of hunting and fishing licenses the researchers documented declines of between 18 percent and 25 percent in various types of outdoor recreation.

The decline, found in both the United States and Japan, appears to have begun in the 1980s and 1990s, the period of rapid growth of video games, they said."

Now I can't say that I think the declines are caused by kids playing video games, but I definitely buy into what is being written about kids spending less time outdoors. And it scares me to death that this is leading to less of a concern for nature and conservation. Hopefully, parents will catch wind of studies like this and books like Louv's and provide their kids with more experiences like the one I wrote about this past summer.

Technorati Tags: education | video games | nature

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Concrete Experiences and the Brain

How do I get my students interested in social studies? This has been one of the big challenges I have taken on this school year. My efforts have lead me to the book Made to Stick, a book about how ideas become sticky. I've been reading the book for a while now and using the ideas from it to try to liven up material that fifth graders have a hard time getting interested in--history, economics, and geography. Many of the concepts embedded in these topics can be a little abstract--how does one define economy for a 10 year-old--so my students have a difficult time learning them.

One of the six traits that the authors assert make ideas sticky is concreteness. Take an abstract idea and make it concrete, and people will remember it. Concrete messages evoke the senses, and the more senses they call up, the stickier they are.

An article in the December/January edition of the journal Teaching Children Mathematics actually explains how the brain processes sensory experiences. The part of the brain sensitive to sensory input is the sensory cortex. "Sights, sounds, touches, smells, tastes and muscle sensations children experience all go this part of their brains" the authors state. So it makes sense to use it as a starting point for learning. What kind of sensory experiences can we use to make learning stick with our students? Below is a list:

• Manipulatives
• Field Trips
• Projects
• Role Playing
• Visual Representations
• Sharing and listening to ideas

Thanks to the above reading, I've been able to brainstorm (and use) new ideas for helping my students learn social studies better. For instance, when teaching about the history of the Southeast Region of the United States, I plan to use cotton balls in some way (not sure yet) and relate them to the region's agrarian economy and dependence on slavery. I've even become open to ideas from colleagues that I may not have used before (a suitcase--what would we pack it with if we were traveling to a certain region of the country).

Photo Credit



Technorati Tags: Made to Stick, education, teachers

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Made to Stick & Inquiry

I picked up the book Made to Stick after reading about it on the Presentation Zen blog. As with all the books I read now that I like, I checked out the author blog and decided to subscribe. The book, and the blog, are very teacher friendly. Seeking to answer the questions Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas?, the information they present can surely help any teacher make his/her lessons stickier. In fact, the authors often talk about how to their strategies in the classroom.

Several of their recent blog posts caught my attention. Check out Oceanography, Amplified; 100 Books for 100 Stories; and The Screaming Man in the Four Stroke Engine.

The strategies they present seem very much like those used in an inquiry-based approach. Check it out and see if you agree.



Technorati Tags: Made to Stick, education, blogs

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Acadia: No Windshield Tour for Me

"I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds and crystal waters of the mountains..."
--John Muir

My recent trip to Acadia National Park was a great experience that reinforced in many ways what I have been reading about in Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.

• Primary vs. Secondary Experience - No windshield tour for me - My friend and I hiked over 10 miles of the park's trails through boreal forest, over three peaks (including Cadillac Mountain), and along the craggy coastline. Our park experience was far more intimate than that of the "windshield tourists" that we came across at the summit of Cadillac Mountain. We encountered multiple ecosystems (tidal pools, bogs, and the forest), observed rock formations created by glaciers, and, best of all, got to experience the solitude of the park--something only those who wander off the beaten path can do.
• "Restorative Environment" - Speaking of solitude, certain areas of the park were remote enough to allow us to enjoy something that is nearly impossible outside of nature--pure tranquility. Sitting on a mountaintop, the only things that broke the silence were the occasional dragonfly clicking by or a breeze rustling the conifers. By the second day of the trip, my body felt completely relieved of any stress.
  
• A sensory experience - The atrophy of the senses is an important topic that Louv covers in his book. Without much direct experience with nature, many people become two dimensional--visual and auditory--when it comes to their senses because that is what the electronic world offers. Being in the heart of Acadia--on the trails--I not only used my sight and hearing, but also smell, touch, and taste. The boreal forest has much to offer those who senses are rarely tested--the cool air, the different smells of nature, and blueberries growing wild.
  

My trip helped reinforce much of what I have learned this summer through my reading and experiences. First, when learning about nature, nothing comes close to direct experience. I can learn a lot about nature by watching The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, but simply walking in a forest and being observant can teach me much more. Second, nature could possibly be the most underrated natural medicine there is. Louv speaks of its healing powers often in his book, and I have now felt its restorative power.


Technorati Tags: Acadia, education, books, Maine

A Whole New Classroom: Bringing Right Brain Aptitudes to the Classroom

One of the most influential books I have read since becoming an educator is A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. In fact, I have to admit that the books that influence my teaching the most are books that are not really for teachers at all; rather they are books targeted to the business crowd. With so many changes taking place in the world today, I feel that it is more important to know more about the world in which my students will work than to learn about yet another teaching strategy or technique to get more kids to pass a test.

What I like so much about Pink's book is that it not only describes the present and future world, but it also explains what skills workers will need to prosper in it. Pink's hypothesis is that they will need to develop right brain skills--design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning--to be successful.

What I'd like to do in this space is to explain how I have tried--knowingly and unknowingly--to cultivate these aptitudes in my classroom and what my efforts will be to do so this school year. One of my favorite right-brain skills to work on is design. Being a science teacher, it's easy for me to end most of my units with a project-based assessment--an assignment that requires my students to create an artifact that displays their knowledge of concepts learned in the unit. Most often this takes the form of a gadget. For instance, this past school year I had my students use their knowledge of open and closed circuits to create electric gadgets. Their task was to make the gadget work by creatively finding a way to complete a circuit to perform some kind of task. Batteries were the only power source they were allowed to use. With a little direction from me, and multiple examples from a book called Electric Mischief: Battery Powered Gadgets Kids Can Build by Alan Bartholomew, my students built incredible creations--cars, dice spinners, stop lights--that not only displayed their knowledge, but also often required a great deal of problem-solving and further learning to complete.

This project also required students to use the right-brain skills of symphony (combine their knowledge to form new product), and, I'm guessing, play (no test to assess their knowledge, but a fun project). I have planned similar projects for the coming school year. The one I'm most excited about is the Blue Man Group project--an assignment I will use to assess student learning of the properties of sound. I'm always looking for classes to collaborate with...


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Folksonomies Scare Me

The other day I made the big switch: from Furl to del.icio.us. I'd been having problems with the Furl It! button working in my browser. Whenever I clicked it, my computer essentially locked up on me as the Furl window loaded. Sometimes it took quite a while to load. I couldn't stand waiting, so I made the jump.

I have to admit though that I'm a little apprehensive about using del.icio.us--the whole tagging thing scares me. David Weinberger states my feelings perfectly in the introduction to his book Everything is Miscellaneous (published on Wired.com today):

"That's the big change the rise of the miscellaneous brings. We're adding massive amounts of metadata -- tags, links, playlists, even taxonomies -- to all of the resources available on the web without prior planning and coordination, making a huge mess."

And this is how I feel when I tag the pages I add to del.icio.us--I'm just creating a big mess. Now I'm by no means a novice when it comes to tagging--I love Flickr, Slideshare, and other Web 2.0 sites & tag all of the photos, slideshows, etc. that I put on them. But for some reason I have no problem finding the right words to use to tag a photo; but tagging something like an article called Teen Brain Exposed just throws me for a loop. I'm reading the article because I want to learn more about how the kinds of kids I'm teaching work (actually how they will work--I teach fifth grade). Below is my thinking process (and why I get so confused):

• education seems like an appropriate tag because I want to use the article to improve my teaching. But then it will be lumped in with Web pages that may pertain to assessment or classroom management. The concepts don't seem related at all and if I tag everything I come across that relate to teaching with education then the number of entries under that tag will grow out control.
• teens is too general. I need something more specific, but teenbrain doesn't seem to work either. Besides, I'd like to keep my tags limited to a certain amount (no idea how many) and teenbrain seems like one I'll never use again. So how about brain?
  
• digitalkids works for me since I like to lump articles about today's kids under this category, but it really isn't article about digital kids.
  

So you get the point. Keep in mind that I'm typically multitasking while I'm doing this so I'm usually in a hurry to get the site into del.icio.us.

I can't finish without once again quoting Weinberger. He actually goes on to say that the huge mess is helpful:

"...that mess actually enhances the available ways we can find and make sense of what's available to us. All that unplanned metadata lets us pull pieces together, and then it helps us contextualize and understand those pieces."

Perhaps with a little more thought and experience, this will happen for me and I'll be able to choose just the right tags for a particular Website.

Any helpful tips on tagging? Let me know in the comments.


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Technorati Tags: education | internet | David Weinberger

Everything Bad is Good for You

Is this a common scene in your house? Or, instead of a football, does your child have a game controller in his hands? Well, it turns out that these scenes may not be as detrimental to your child's mind as you think.

This summer I had the pleasure of reading Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, where he asserts the belief that video games, television shows, and other forms of popular entertainment are actually making us smarter. In it, Johnson describes video games that require "probing" and "telescoping" to solve problems and advance through various levels of the game. He also compares modern television shows like 24 to shows of yesterday like Hill Street Blues to demonstrate the complexity of today's TV programming.

All in all, he convinced me that I needed to see for myself just how challenging television has become. I do watch some television, but I have never seen even an episode of the shows he describes in his book (with the exception of Seinfeld). One of these was The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin. When I found out that Sorkin would have a new show on this fall, Studio 60, I figured this was my opportunity to see just how challenging television really has become.

I was afraid to breathe throughout the entire first episode, afraid that if I did, I may become distracted and miss something important. I was glued to the television for the entire hour, trying to keep track of the action on screen, off the screen, and what had happened on the screen before the show started.

The show is now going into its fourth week and I have yet to miss an episode. I can't wait to experiment with video games. This test, however, will take place in my classroom. More on that later.

Steven Johnson | Popular Culture

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