You know those graphs that have become really trendy on web sites? Those are infographics and School Library Journal linked to two great sites to create your own with easel.ly and infogr.am
Students, this would be a great addition to those research projects.
Teachers, this would be a different way to present some of your content in a more visually-engaging way.
A big thanks goes to Ms. Renshaw at MJHS for pointing me towards the SLJ article.
There are some beautiful things about learning a programming language:
The trouble is knowing where to start when learning a computer language.
Enter Codecademy.
It’s a brilliant website that walks you through step-by-step lessons on how to program and, more than that, has you try out the code as you read. The creators of Codecademy understand that doing something is a very effective way to learn something. Try it out. It’s free.
Check out intelliPaper, a company making USB drives out of paper. It’s perfect for a business card to have your resume stored on it. It could also be fun to have a birthday card that had photos saved to the drive.
The only downside that I can see (aside from a possible environmental impact), is that you tear the paper around where the drive connectors are. If you didn’t tear cleanly, you could make a mess when you shoved it into your computer.
Imagine being Elmer Riggs in 1900 and uncovering a skeleton that would eventually be the first documented find of a brachiosaurus. He had to figure out how the bones all fit together and how the dinosaur moved using his knowledge of anatomy. (It’s not like he could just walk outside and observe a living brachiosaur in action.) He claimed that the brachiosaur was a land creature, but the scientists of the day argued that it was aquatic. His claim wasn’t validated until the 1970’s, a decade after he died (Side note: growing up I had some older books that weren’t updated and I can still remember pictures of brachiosaurs needing to stay in water just to move.)
You’ll be finding information about paleontology – and, specifically, dinosaurs – to get ready for your fossil dig later this week.
The first site that you will be using is Enchanted Learning. The link takes you to the table of contents where you can find links to the other Enchanted Learning pages.
The 93 Dinosaur Information Pages will be where you read about your assigned dinosaurs.
When you’re done, check out the Smithsonian’s dig site. It has a collection of minigames that simulate an actual fossil find.
Check your sources!
The China’s People’s Daily is China’s communist party’s official newspaper and this week it reposted a satirical article from The Onion about North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as if it were real. Earlier this year, The Onion ran a parody story about how some people in the United States preferred the leader of Iran (a country we have had a bunch of tension with) to President Obama and Iran’s news agency ran it as true.
Also this week, a fake press release about Google acquiring a wi-fi company had been submitted to PRWeb, a site that news agencies can get press releases from. Big tech news sites like TechCrunch took the story and ran with it because it made sense that the giant Google would buy up another company. Since the press release was fake and neither company had been in talks about a buyout, the news agencies had to provide apologies for not checking their sources.
This reminds me of when Shane Fitzgerald posted a fake quote to Wikipedia and then news agencies requoted it as if it were true.
At its core, Michael Grant’s Gone series is about children transitioning into adulthood – and, you know, superpowers and horrific monsters and all that. That theme of transition carries through to the very last page of Fear and it’s done very well. Yes, the story is action-packed and suspenseful, but it’s the tough life situations that the characters grapple with that floors me.
When we transition from our teen years into adulthood, we look at what we’ve been taught all our lives and then form our own opinions and beliefs. Multiple characters in Fear go through this process and are stuck at different stages. That developmental dissonance does get edgy, though, since the same doubts and fears that the characters have are ones that students have and it may hit a little too close to home – or, on the positive, provide a voice for students who may not have someone to talk about with these issues.
I can’t say much more about the plot because that would ruin the great endings of the other books in the series, but I will say that there is a countdown again in this book and I am impressed with how Michael Grant can pull off a satisfying, climactic ending each time and yet keep it pretty free of clichés (even though you know there’s going to be a super-powered brawl at the end of each).
I just submitted the claim to the Guinness Book of World Records. Now we wait four weeks to see if they’ll even adjudicate it.
I’ve been a fan of Kibuishi’s Amulet series since the first book and enjoy seeing more and more of the grand scale of the story. It’s still about the characters, with Emily and Navin developing more into their roles as heroes.
Where this one branches off, though, is in following Prince Trellis of the Elves for the majority of the narrative. We get to walk around in a trippy memory/dream sequence (signified by squiggly borders around the frames, obviously) and learn about the causes of the war with the elves. We do get to learn more about the actual amulet, which is great because some of my suspicions from the first book are finally starting to play out.
Side note: We use the SpringBoard curriculum in our district and this graphic novel ties in with the angle analysis in the unit for The Giver. The perspectives that Kibuishi uses are definitely on purpose to communicate mood and focus.
The artwork is amazing and always captures both the awe and panic of the setting and plot in such vivid detail. My only complaint is the length between each book’s release. After having worked my way through Bone and enjoying the seamless continuity, I miss Amulet‘s flow and found myself wondering, “Who’s that bearded guy? I’m sure I would have remembered such an awesome beard.” Amulet will translate really well into one giant book when it’s all said and done, though, so it’s no big fault on Kibuishi’s part.
The results of Puerto Rico’s vote are in and they have chosen statehood. Now we wait on Congress to approve it. If they do, we’ll have a 51st state.
Jeff Bridges owns the rights to the Lois Lowry book and will be playing the title character. No word as to when it will come out.
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