I love my Info Pusher. She spends shocking amounts of time finding and absorbing information, and whenever she finds something I might like, she shares it with me. And when it’s something I think teachers and educators might like, I share it here, and it makes me look clever and connected. Everybody wins. Thank you Info Pusher.
First, an amazing tool (still in beta) to help with math homework, called Mathway. This bit of genius lets one type in a math question, and spits out not just the answer, but all of the steps towards getting the answer, with explanations. It’s absolutely brilliant, and I can see it saving the evenings of many a parent helping with homework. Here’s a link: www.mathway.com/ . A big cheers to the developers.
Second, a Boing Boing review of a book called Boy Proof that sounds fully worth checking out. The author, Cecil Castellucci, is apparently also a graphic novelist, intriguing to me because I’m doing a unit on Comics/GNs this year and there wasn’t anything exceptional on my list specifically for girls. I have ordered both from the library. Looking forward to checking them out.
This ugly bug, the Info Pusher sent me with the caption “This is you”. It’s a bunch of very ugly bug portraits, shared via a blog called Dark Roasted Blend. Pretty awesome.
The OER (Open Educational Resources) Commons is a great site (albeit a little hard to look at) that shares zillions of teaching ideas and lesson plans for all levels of teaching and learning. Signing up for membership (free) allows one to “tag, rate, review, comment and save favorites to a portfolio”. Looks like a place one could spend some useful hours.
Not sure if this is schooly or just cool, but Find How looks brilliant and useful. Haven’t tried it yet – but in theory it’s a search engine that only looks for quality instructions, which seems to be one of the best things going on online. Just in the last few months, my IP and me have used this sort of free internet helpfulness to make our own granola, learn to play the drums, find a good deal on cars, tune a guitar to the drop-D, use DJing programs, and make certain baked goods. If this place pulls all that together, right on.I love geeks, I love the internet, but I love the Info Pusher more.
A Different Fish 