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[ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround K-12 Newsletter

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Greetings,

Happy Reading for Today.

<Karen>


1)
NASA
Sun-Earth Day Web site at http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/.
Sun-Earth Day comprises a series of programs and events that occur throughout the year, culminating with a celebration on, or near, the Spring Equinox. This year's celebration is on March 20, 2008.
Over the past seven years, the NASA's Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum has sponsored and coordinated education and public outreach events to highlight NASA's Heliophysics research and discoveries. This effort involves using celestial events, such as total solar eclipses and the Transit of Venus, as well as Sun-Earth Day during the March Equinox, to engage K-12 schools and the public in space science activities, demonstrations and interactions with space scientists.

2)
Avalanches on Mars
A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has photographed an avalanche in action near the Red Planet's north pole.

3)
Hilton Pond Costa Rica
If you like Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, you may be interested in
knowing what these little balls of fluff are doing within their
tropical wintering range right now--as we await their spring return
to breeding grounds in the U.S. and Canada.

The second installment (Week 2) of our recent hummingbird banding
expedition to Guanacaste Province is the topic for the 02-10 February
2008 edition of "This Week at Hilton Pond." The account includes lots
of photos of Costa Rican flora and fauna, people and places, so it may
take a while to load. I appreciate your patience as you click on
<<http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek080202.html>>

Also included is a summary (through two weeks) of our Costa Rica
banding efforts, plus a miscellaneous note about Groundhogs and
Agoutis. A final report on Week Three in the tropics will follow in a
few days.


4)

The NYT offers a lesson plan called: "Drawing on History : Analyzing the Use of Graphic Novels and Comic Books to Study History and Literature".
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20080229friday.html
based on the article : "No Laughs, No Thrills, and Villains All Too Real" written by Mickael Kimmelman onFebruary 29, 2008, presenting a comic book in which an old lady tells the story of her life during the holocaust to her grand son.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/books/27holocaust.html?_r=1&oref=slogin (with illustrations)
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20080229friday.html

One page of the comic book

You can download one page of the comic book in English ( with the policeman who gives Esther the choice of staying or joining her parents)
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/02/26/arts/27holo_ca2ready.html

Debating about the book

More about the book, from the Boston news, the Telegraph and Deutsche Welle (in English). You could plan to give those articles to your students according to their level : students level A2 or lower can read the page from the comic, students level A2/B1 can read the first two articles, and the more advanced can read the article from Deutsche Welle which is longer and more complex, but an excellent basis to start a debate.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2008/02/01/germany_launches_comic_book_on_holocaust/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/01/wholocaust101.xml
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3102723,00.html
Read also this article from Australian newspaper Sunday Mail "Cartoon Hitler to teach German Children forgotten history"
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23147815-5013016,00.html

5)
Celebrate Women's History Month
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/womenmonth.html

In 1987, Congress expanded the celebration to a month, and March was declared Women's History Month. PDF
COMPUTER WONDER WOMEN PIONEERS PDF
Female Inventors: The Wonder Women who were the first computers. Yes, that is where the name comes from . . . the women who did it by hand, who did the math with pencils and paper! We were the computers, we figured it out by ourselves and we win the smart-epants award.
March is Women's History Month when we recognize and celebrate the diverse and historic accomplishments of women by providing information and educational materials and programs.

6)
St. Patrick's Day
Science: There never been any snakes in Ireland.
Snakes have always been identified with the Goddess Religion. St. Bridget was a Pagen Goddess and St. Peter did his best to get rid of the Goddess Religion. Rome wanted to control the cash flow and power.

Beatha an Staraidhe firinne.
~ The historian's food is truth.

"It should be the chief aim of a university professor to exhibit himself in his own true character -- that is, as an ignorant man thinking, actively utilizing his small share of knowledge." ~ Alfred North Whitehead

7)
There is now one cellphone for every two humans on Earth. From essentially zero, we've passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years.

8)
If your kids start getting credit card offers in the mail, their identities have been stolen. A way to find out is to check with the Social Security Administration, to see if they have earnings reports.
GET HELP WITH IDENTITY THEFT RESOURCES

9)
Candidates aren't talking about education!
Help make education the issue it needs to be, contact the candidates and the television network debate sponsors (fourth and fifth links).
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/02/missing-in-camp.html
http://www.cleveland.com/education/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/isedu/1204113342284890.xml&coll=2
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/
http://www.givekidsgoodschools.org/main/act.cfm?Category=Become_a&Section=Send_Letter_20080224
http://www.givekidsgoodschools.org/main/act.cfm?Category=Become_a&Section=Send_Letter_TV_20080224


9)
The goal of a new study from Vanderbilt University was to examine whether explaining to another person improves learning and transfer. In the study, four- and five-year olds solved multiple classification problems, received accuracy feedback and were prompted to explain the correct solutions to their moms, to themselves or to repeat the solutions. The study found that generating explanations improved problem-solving accuracy following the test, while explaining things to the mother led to the greatest problem-solving transfer. This indicates that explanation prompts can facilitate transfers in children as young as five years and reveals that it matters if the mother is listening. Even though it is possible that prompting children could be a substitute for the positive influences of a listener, there is reason to suspect that explaining to another person improves learning. People often produce more detailed and explicit explanations and justify their ideas more when they are doing so for other people rather than just for themselves. And young people adjust their speech based on the age of the listener. It follows that explaining to others may increase motivation and also support more complete and explicit knowledge. This improved knowledge could be more easily transferred to new situations and problems. The Vanderbilt study’s sentiments seem to be echoed in a new piece in Teacher Magazine written by Kathie Marshall (second link). Marshall begins by noting that a great deal of research has been conducted on the importance of student discussion and its prevalence in class. However, research from Martin Nystrand finds that eighth graders spend an average of 50 seconds per class in sustained conversation, with ninth graders spending only 30 seconds. So Marshall set out to see if discussion could help improve struggling students. After four weeks, Marshall was amazed at the results of this strategy. Many ‘C’ and ‘D’ students were suddenly performing at the top of the class and were highly engaged in their work. One student wrote in her notebooks that "I like this class because in our other classes, we get in trouble if we want to talk about what we are learning."
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/News/KidsLearnWhenMomsListen.pdf
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/02/19/22tln_marshall_web.h19.html?qs=marshall
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/GuavaberryBooks/Domino/More_About_My_Work.html

10)

New School District Added
Cache Public School District in Oklahoma
http://cacheschools.com/
ADD YOUR K12 SCHOOL OR SCHOOL DISTRICT WEBSITE
TO THE  EDUCATIONAL CYBERPLAYGROUND
MASTER DIRECTORY OF SCHOOLS ONLINE
THE FIRST ONE ONLINE - IT'S INTERNET HISTORY
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/schools/



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