LD Resources

Wonderful story, nicely produced by Jerry Bowen at CBS. The kicker is that Kramer is dyslexic and his struggle with that no doubt routed him into doing things with his hands.

[via Jon Moss]

Small California town fears birth defects linked to toxic waste

It’s like Erin Brockovich never happened.

Math Worksheets World

Free math worksheets by email or download.

Kindle for Mac

Install this free application on your Macintosh and connect to your Kindle account at Amazon to read books, just like on a kindle.

Frankly, I’m amazed it took them this long to do this. I hope Apple does it with their iBooks application.

Building a Better Teacher

But what makes a good teacher? There have been many quests for the one essential trait, and they have all come up empty-handed. Among the factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try. When Bill Gates announced recently that his foundation was investing millions in a project to improve teaching quality in the United States, he added a rueful caveat. “Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn’t have a clear view of what characterizes good teaching,” Gates said. “I’m personally very curious.”

When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once.

Fascinating article. Watch the video too.

[via Sanford Shapiro]

The iPad is a natural for these kinds of books and activities. This is a mock up of some ideas for interactive books and learning tools for the iPad. Great stuff.

[via Sanford Shapiro]

Apple iPad Thumbs-Up: Brain Fitness Value, and Limitations

The user activity monitoring piece is not exactly an important limitation IMHO. I mean, the iPad isn’t an “integrated learning system” and if it were it would never appeal to it’s target audience: people who want to independently and easily get work done.

[via Sanford Shapiro]

Temple Grandin at TED.

[via Dilip Muralidaran]

Ways into Shakespeare’s Othello

English teacher Sabrina Broadbent leads a masterclass on Shakespeare, using her expertise to engage a group of Year 10 students.

Let me state up front, I’m a poor reader, was a poor student, hated Shakespeare, and at this point in my life I’m as cynical as ever about education.

But, I have to say, Sabrina Broadbent knows how to engage students and make Shakespeare come alive and if you watch this video my guess is you’ll agree. It takes some time but it’s well worth it.

This is one more example of the old adage: a good teacher can make any subject come alive. Sabrina Broadbent is a great teacher.

Granted, her students are more than educable, they are excellent students with excellent memories but my guess is a teacher like Sabrina could and would find ways to make Shakespeare accessible and exciting to people like me with language disabilities.

Teachers like Sabrina give me hope.

Playing musical instruments may improve reading

Learning to play a musical instrument could help to improve children’s reading and their ability to listen in noisy classrooms, according to new research.

“Our eyes and ears take in millions of bits of information every second and it is not possible for the brain to process all of that, so the sensory systems in our brains are primed to tune into regularities or patterns in the signals it receives.

“People who are musically trained are better at picking up these patterns because they learn to recognise notes and pitches within melodies and harmonies.

“The better you are at picking up these patterns in music, the better reader you are. This makes sense as letters and words on a page are really just patterns.”