In the best-selling and highly readable book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, Dr. Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, cofounder of Singularity University (along with Ray Kurzweil, chief of engineering at Google), and well-known science writer and coauthor Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, infinite computing, ubiquitous broadband networks, digital manufacturing, nanomaterials, synthetic biology and many other exponentially growing technologies—including educational technology—will enable innovators to make greater gains in the next two decades than in the previous two hundred years. To help educators tap into the ideas of the most brilliant minds in these areas, Dr. Diamandis is providing copies of Abundance to teachers and others interested in “abundance thinking” for just the cost of shipping and handling ($6.95). For every copy requested through the link below, Dr. Diamandis and his publisher (Simon & Schuster) will also distribute a free digital copy of Abundance to high-achieving, underprivileged high school students and their teachers. In addition to a free copy of the hardcover book, you’ll receive a series of three free videos that cover the major insights of “exponential and abundance thinkers” and how they leverage technology. You can also download a free chapter of Abundance by clicking on the “About the Book” tab at the top of the web page describing the book.
Click Here to Get Free Abundance Book and Videos
Engage Students in Active Summer Reading
Gobstopper is a free tool for assigning, monitoring and leveraging summer reading in the classroom. As students read, they will see questions and get feedback, and they can stay motivated by earning badges. Teachers can use the tool to assign books, check on students’ progress throughout the summer and even benchmark data on students’ mastery of Common Core Standards before the start of the new school year. The tool can be used on all devices that have a browser and Internet access.
Click Here to Access Free Tool
GeoSettr helps you create your own GeoGuessr games. When you visit GeoSettr, you will see two screens: the one on the left displays a map with a Pegman; the one on the right, the Street View imagery for the Pegman’s current location. Move the Pegman around, and zoom in if you like, until you find the location that you want students to guess. When you’ve chosen the location, click “set round” to save the location. After you’ve set five rounds (locations), your game is assigned a URL that you can distribute to students. When they play your GeoSettr game, students use the visual clues in the Street View imagery to guess the location. After making a guess, students see the correct location and its distance from their guess.
Click Here to Access Free Tool
Powered-up Professional Development
Incorporate Cultural Perspectives into Science Learning
Participants in TESOL’s online course “ESL for the Secondary Science Teacher” will explore the role of cultural perspectives in learning science, guiding principles of second language acquisition and methods of instructional alignment of objectives, teaching and assessment of scientific learning. Through guided instruction and active engagement, participants will explore, plan and apply principles from TESOL’s preK–12 English Language Proficiency Standards and current research. Ultimately, participants will design instruction that aligns content and language standards, teaching methods and student assessment in secondary science classrooms. The online course will take place from July 8 through August 4, 2013. The cost for TESOL members is $380; for nonmembers, $505.
Deadline: July 1, 2013 for registration
Heighten Your Science Knowledge and Teaching Skills
The New Science Teacher Academy, cofounded by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and Amgen Foundation, is a professional development initiative created to help promote quality science teaching, enhance teacher confidence and classroom excellence, and improve teacher content knowledge. Designed as a career-enhancing program for middle school and high school science teachers in their second through fifth year of teaching, the year-long professional development and mentoring program offers unique support and resources throughout the year, with the intention of heightening teaching skills and content knowledge and easing the often difficult initial years as a novice teacher. The Academy provides each teacher with a year-long, discipline-specific mentor; web-based content development courses and other resources; membership with full benefits in NSTA; attendance at the 2014 National Conference on Science Education, including air travel, lodging, meals and registration fees. Hundreds of teachers will be chosen to participate in the 2013–2014 Academy and take advantage of cost-free, consistent online professional development activities along with face-to-face educational experiences.
Deadline: August 1, 2013, for applications
Learn without Limits
Coursera has added a “teacher professional development” category to its collection of online and videotaped courses, allowing busy educators to participate according to their own schedule. The courses—developed by Coursera in partnership with seven schools of education, plus educational institutions and museums—help K–12 teachers and other individuals worldwide develop understanding of a wide range of education topics, including the Common Core State Standards and blended learning.
On-the-Go Learning
Let Your Fingers Do the Hiking
Fotonauts’ free Fotopedia National Parks app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch lets users explore all 58 National Parks in the United States—from Acadia to Zion, including Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park—a journey that would require several years. Users will first discover the diversity of the national parks through a selected set of 1,500 photos; then they can dive into specific parks to find even more photos. The collection includes 3,000 stunning photos by the renowned professional photographer QT Luong, along with photo-stories based on the images of the national parks. In addition, each image is linked to a related Wikipedia entry. The app is available in 10 languages.
Plus: Celebrate the beauty of the world with the free Fotopedia Heritage app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Created in cooperation with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Fotopedia Heritage provides a virtual passport to the hundreds of sites that constitute the world’s collective cultural and natural human legacy. This app was recently selected as one of the top 50 apps of all time in Apple’s new Hall of Fame. With 30,000 awe-inspiring photos, the app has been called the world’s largest photo book, an inspiring travel guide, an entertaining teaching device and even a bedtime relaxation tool.
Solve the Mystery in Los Griegos
Mentira is a place-based augmented reality game using the Augmented Reality for Interactive Storytelling (ARIS) platform, developed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for use on the iPhone and iPod touch. The game consists of close to 70 pages of dialogue and informative text, almost all in Spanish, about 150 photos or pieces of still visual art and four short movies. The game is a murder mystery consisting of current and Prohibition-era fictional events, all set in the Los Griegos neighborhood in Albuquerque. The basic structure of the game is directed conversations between the player and fictional characters (Non-Player Characters, or NPCs) concerning the murder and its solution. Each conversation is situated at a particular place and time in the game’s narrative, somewhere between reality and fiction. Visit the Implementations section of the game’s website for information on how the game can be used in Spanish classrooms.
See It in 3-D
AndAR Model Viewer is a free Android app that is capable of displaying 3-D models on Augmented Reality markers. The goal is to help young students better understand the differences between shapes such as cones, cubes and squares, a Common Core math requirement. It helps build students’ spatial reasoning—they can zoom in on these objects and interact with them in the virtual space—and it gives students an understanding of what these objects look like in real life.
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