Summary: Jokes: In Medical Terms Advisory: NCMSA Want to send a message from your school to outer space? Send it on two lightsail missions. http://bit.ly/8ZQBqO On Our Mind: Gender Equity: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/17/national/main6307774.shtml From The Twitterverse: From our Listeners: Thank you to Language Arts Teacher for the iTunes post. We greatly appreciate it! To all of those who are now our fans on Facebook - Thank you! (You know who you are!) MAMSE: http://middleschoolmatters.com/Conference_Notes/MAMSE_2010.pdf Service Learning Students take leadership roles. They develop the activities. Webspotlight: Solving Algebra on Smartphones Research shows that a project to use the devices as teaching tools in some N.C. districts has had a measurable impact on student achievement in math. By Michelle R. Davis Students, some initially skeptical that a phone would help them do better in math, have been quick to embrace the idea of using the mobile device to learn, says Denton, who attends Dixon High School in the 24,000-student Onslow County, N.C., schools. For some math classes, particularly Algebra 1, Project K-Nect had mathematicians at Drexel University in Philadelphia develop short animated video math problems that teachers can assign to students as homework or classwork. Some students have taken the technology a step further and created movies with graphics, student actors, and stories highlighting math. Particularly popular are student-created movies with a “CSI” theme in which the drama uses math to solve a crime. One student produced and posted a rap song on polynomials, which was ultimately posted to YouTube and spawned thousands of imitators, says Gross of Digital Millennial Consulting. Learning Science: http://learningscience.org/index.htm Slum Dog Millionaire and Education: "Having watched hundreds of Indian children learning without teachers at the Hole In The Wall computers, it became obvious that all children can work by themselves, if they want to," Mitra says. "Most British children grow up with the internet and have the means to learn what they want in minutes, and this challenges the traditional idea of school being about learning things that will come in handy in the future. They become disengaged." Mitra is not alone in noticing this problem. John Dunford, head of the Association of School and College Leaders, last week told the group's annual conference that computer games and websites have made children impatient and harder to motivate. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/16/slumdog-millionaire-education-online-independent NCMSA10 Conference Notes (Todd Williamson) http://thetechnorateteacher.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/ncmsa10-education-in-japan/#comment-285 MAMSE10 Conference session notes hosted by Dexter Public Schools. http://www.dexterschools.org/~millcreek/mamse2010/MCMAMSE/Resources_Pg1.html Events & Happenings: Calendar of Events: NMSA News:
