School in a Box - Canada

School in a Box has been created by Canadian teachers to cover the core North American curriculum for Grades 1 through 8.

It guides teachers and students through 400 lessons over 2 semesters in English, Math, Science and Social Studies with minimum preparation time.

The layout is clear, precise and easy to follow allowing teachers more time to focus on student needs.

It truly is a “School in a Box”.

http://poptech.org/about

What is PopTech?
PopTech is a unique innovation network – a global community of cutting-edge leaders, thinkers, and doers from many different disciplines, who come together to explore the social impact of new technologies, the forces of change shaping our future, and new approaches to solving the world’s most significant challenges. We are known for our thriving community of thought-leaders, breakthrough innovation programs, visionary annual conferences and deep media and storytelling capabilities.

http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/

http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com


IDEO Toolkit - Developed for Education

- REFLECTIVE
- HANDS ON
- INTERACTIVE

Inclusive Design Toolkit

http://www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/betterdesign2/

Every design decision has the potential to include or exclude customers. Inclusive design emphasizes the contribution that understanding user diversity makes to informing these decisions. User diversity covers variation in capabilities, needs, and aspirations.

It is important to understand the terms design and inclusive design, the ethos behind inclusive design, and the way inclusive design contributes to product success. A number of case studies demonstrate how inclusive design can foster innovation and better design.

Design with Intent

http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/design-for-sustainable-behaviour/


http://research.danlockton.co.uk/toolkit/designwithintent_cards_1.0_draft_300dpi.pdf

My PhD involves developing a ‘design pattern’ toolkit, called Design with Intent, to help designers create products, services and environments which influence the way people use them. The toolkit brings together techniques for understanding and changing human behaviour from a number of psychological disciplines, illustrated with examples, to enable designers to explore and apply relevant strategies to problems.

Can industrial designers use the Design with Intent toolkit to apply insights from other disciplines (psychology, ergonomics, architecture, human-computer interaction, behavioural economics) to generate novel, realistic design concepts, addressing briefs on influencing user behaviour, primarily to reduce the environmental impact of technology use, but also in other social benefit contexts?

How useful is the toolkit to designers, compared with conventional brainstorming? (Assessed by the quantity and diversity of concepts generated, compared with control groups)
How usable are different variations of the toolkit, such as a structured ‘prescription’ approach using a form of decision tree with ‘target behaviours’, a more freeform approach, posters and card decks? (Assessed by observation of participants and a think-aloud method)
What can be improved to make a better ‘product’ which designers will feel comfortable using, and want to adopt as part of the design process? (Assessed by observation, think-aloud method, and surveys)

Interaction by Design

http://www.interactionbydesign.com/presentations/olsen_persona_toolkit.pdf

Interaction by Design helps you create digital products that are not only useful and usable, but also so desirable that people can’t live without them. Because regardless of whether it’s a website, software application or any other “product with a brain,” compelling experiences create compelling returns.

The same holds true for intranets and internal applications. We help you develop ones that are efficient and easy-to-use. Ones so effective your employees won’t want to work without them.

Over the past decade, we’ve helped a wide variety of companies—from start-ups to major corporations like Adobe, The Capital Group and Yahoo!—develop applications and websites that their customers and employees found useful, usable and desirable, and which have generated tangible businesses results.

Find out what we can do for you to help you deliver memorable—and valuable—digital products.

visual literacy

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

sprig toys

http://www.sprigtoys.com/products/storybuilders/pigs.php

Interesting set of toys .... combines ...

1. story board - set of pages with stories
2. Pop up panels - illustration of the stories in 3D
3. Blocks - used to reinforce the story - which can be moved around ...

The same type of model is what I am planning for the tool kit for teachers - which they can carry around ...

Science of Everyday life - Discovery & 3M1

http://scienceofeverydaylife.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?campaign=flyout_students_programs_soel

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/administrators/curricular-resources/science-techbook/#/Content

http://store.discoveryeducation.com/

Student - post online

http://www.cln.org/themes/publish.html


Publish Your Creative Work On-Line Theme Page

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This "Theme Page" has links to resources which will help students to publish their creative work (stories, poetry, art, etc) on-line.

Teachers Tools

http://www.4teachers.org/tools/

4Teachers Family of Tools

Expand your curriculum with our timesaving educational resources that use technology to improve instruction across all content areas and grade levels. Find current resources that align with standards, promote higher-order thinking, and support the development of writing skills. Monitor student research and writing, evaluate student performance, and create bilingual online lessons, classroom calendars, and quizzes in less time than traditional methods.

http://blog.4teachers.org/

Rishivalley School - KFI

http://www.rishivalley.org/

http://www.river-rv.org/contactus.html

http://river-rv.blogspot.com/

Silent revolution - British council

What is PBL?
According to Wikipedia, Project based learning, or PBL, is a constructivist pedagogy that intends to bring about deep learning by allowing learners to use an inquiry based approach to engage with issues and questions that are rich, real and relevant to their lives. This strategy is well served since the onset of the read/write Web. Teachers have ready made content easily available via the Web and the tools to allow for creative student directed creation of content related to the problems and questions contained in the project being studied.

PBL - Wikispaces - documents

http://abpc.wikispaces.com/Project+Based+Learning

What is PBL?

According to Wikipedia, Project based learning, or PBL, is a constructivist pedagogy that intends to bring about deep learning by allowing learners to use an inquiry based approach to engage with issues and questions that are rich, real and relevant to their lives. This strategy is well served since the onset of the read/write Web. Teachers have ready made content easily available via the Web and the tools to allow for creative student directed creation of content related to the problems and questions contained in the project being studied.

EDUTOPIA - Core Strategies

http://www.edutopia.org/core-concepts

The diverse and innovative media resources available from The George Lucas Educational Foundation are designed to connect and inspire positive change in all areas of education.

• Edutopia.org: An in-depth and interactive resource, Edutopia.org offers practical, hands-on advice, real-world examples, lively contributions from practitioners, and invaluable tips and tools.
• Edutopia video: Through an extensive offering of documentaries, Edutopia video is a catalyst for innovation by helping educators and parents, as well as business and community leaders, see and understand pioneering best practices.

To understand more about why we are passionate about our work, read about our Core Strategiesand about what our founder and chairman, George Lucas, has to say about education.

http://www.edutopia.org/core-concepts

Project based learning - Explained

ABL Report - Anandalakshi

ACTIVITY BASED LEARNING 

A Report on an Innovative Method in Tamil Nadu 

By S. Anandalakshmy Ph.D. 

Assisted by the Bala Mandir team: Usha Ramakrishnan, Indu Balagopal, Lakshmi Gopal, Jaya Krishnaswami, Swatantra Saktivel, & Anne Panghat. 

Preamble 

This is year 2007. India is completing its sixty year cycle, since Independence. A time to reflect. A time to take a critical retrospective scan of the education of children in the country. A time to acknowledge that the country has failed to provide a satisfactory education to the millions of children, who look to the State with hope and anticipation. Dozens of studies have substantiated the failure of the system on the whole, even while there are some pockets of successful pedagogic efforts. Innovative methods which engage the children and enable them to achieve mastery over school- related competencies and skills can be located here and there. However, they are small in scale and number.

Workshop on Implementation initiative on Project Based Learning

http://www.intel.com/cd/corporate/education/APAC/ENG/in/newsarchive/news33/410442.htm

http://www.intel.com/cd/corporate/education/apac/eng/in/tools/elements/467739.htm

Intel® Teach Elements: Project-Based Approaches

Are you looking for high-quality free professional development that you can experience now, anytime or anywhere? Take our first course in a new series of high interest, visually compelling short courses that provide deeper exploration of 21st century learning concepts using: Animated tutorials and audio dialogs to explain concepts Interactive knowledge checking exercises Offline activities to apply concepts Intel® Teach Program The Intel® Teach Program improves teacher effectiveness through professional development, helping teachers integrate technology into their lessons and promoting students' problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration skills. With more than 7 million teachers trained in over 60 countries, Intel Teach is the largest, most successful program of its kind.

Project based learning - Checklist

http://pblchecklist.4teachers.org/index.shtml

A project based learning method is a comprehensive approach to instruction. Your students participate in projects and practice an interdisciplinary array of skills from math, language arts, fine arts, geography, science, and technology.

"The collaborative nature of the investigation enhances all of these valuable experiences ... as well as promotes a greater appreciation for social responsibility (Scott, 1994)."

http://www.rmcdenver.com/useguide/pbl.htm

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=6148

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/ed_init/pkguidelines/PKG_Final_100808.pdf

http://www.tpriandtjl.com/catalog/index.php?osCsid=4mqhikl5md7ou5pd6612fmp3p0

ABL - course

In Activity-Based Learning courses, students do public service, fieldwork, community-based research and internships in conjunction with in-class work. ABL pedagogy aims to enrich students’ academic experience and learning outcomes by connecting theory with practice, and concepts with methods, using data and insight they obtain through engagement with the larger world.

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k1985&pageid=icb.page29716