A couple of interesting articles...

As we approach back to school ----- I thought these two articles were interesting.

From      

Five critical skills to empower students in the digital age, by Ki Sung, 8-17-15

From    

10 emerging education technologies, by Pamela DeLoatch, 8-13-15

Free resources!

I received this from Read Naturally and thought this was worth passing along!

Free Resources to Help Struggling Readers

Where's the best place to find free resources to help your struggling readers? We offer a multitude of them on our website--specifically in the Knowledgebase. The Knowledgebase is full of valuable resources, including downloadable materials, how-to videos, research studies, product samples, and much more. We created this data hub to give educators easy access to absolutely everything they need to turn struggling readers into successful ones.

Learn More

Free webinar

No More Homework Battles:
Learn proven homework, organization and planning techniques to make your child's school year a success

Tuesday, August 18, 2015
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM (ET)
Free Webcast

Ready for a new approach to homework this school year?

Cut down on those dreaded homework battles. Joshua Langberg, PhD, author of ImprovingChildren's Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills, will give you the information you need to make homework more productive and less stressful for you and your child. He will also offer organizational and planning tips. Learn:

• How to set realistic homework and organization goals with your child.
• What is positive feedback and how to share it with your child.
• How to let your child know what you expect without a fight.

Feel confident going in to this school year! Attend this special back-to-school Ask the Expert and get the tools you need to assist your child with these skills. Dr. Langberg's webcasts fill up fast. Register early while there is still space.

Joshua M. Langberg, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University where he serves as co-director for the Center for ADHD Research, Education, and Service. His research and professional interests are focused on improving the academic performance of children and teens with ADHD. Dr. Langberg developed his Homework, Organization and Planning Skills (HOPS) method to address the specific academic difficulties frequently experienced by young people with ADHD.

Free webinar: Portfolios as performance assessments

Free Webinar: 

Portfolios as Performance Assessments

At the Native American Community Academy (NACA) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, teachers are implementing an electronic portfolio system to evaluate students' knowledge, skills, and understanding with the goal to create a standards-based grading system using portfolios. Join the NACA 6th–8th grade Native Literature team in an informative webinar to learn how they used an ASCD PD Online^® course to backward-design a portfolio system for both formative and summative assessment purposes.

The team will share their PD Online learning experience and discuss the benefits of portfolios, the design of a multi-grade electronic portfolio system, and the instructional practices to structure reflective portfolio creation.


Portfolios as Performance Assessments in Native American Literature Coursework

August 20, 2015, 3:00 p.m. ET (US)

Register Now

Okay, while I was researching articles for the STEM LibGuide which I hope to post out at the end of the month ---- I stumbled upon this article in EdTech Focus on K-12:

Google Spotlights 20 Student Science Fair Finalists

20 teens and their brightest STEM concepts come to life in the latest Google Science Fair.

 by D.Frank Smith

Check out what some of these 20 global finalists and their science projects were ---- 

1. Matthew Reid, U.K. — Arduorbiter: Democratizing low-Earth orbit
2. Pranav Sivakumar, U.S. — Automated search for gravitationally lensed quasars in the Sloan digital sky survey
3. Anela Arifi and Ilda Ismaili, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Catch it on the Wing: Production of hydrogen storage material and biodiesel from chicken feathers and fat
4. Zhilin Wang, Singapore — Affordable renewable energy
5. Anika Cheerla, U.S. — An automated diagnosis of Alzheimer's
6. Alexey Tarasov, Russia — Exploring the logic of ternary logic in electronics
7. Girish Kumar, Singapore — Revup: Improving learning through automated study questions
8. Tanay Tandon, U.S. — delivering rapid, portable and automated blood morphology tests
9. Anurudh Ganesan, U.S. — Vaxxwagon: a reliable way to store and transport vaccines
10. Eliott Sarrey, France — Bot2Karot: gardening through a a smartphone-activated robot
11. Calvin Rieder, Canada — Extracting clean water from air: Solar-powered potable water
12. Wei-Tung Chen, Taiwan — Calculating the 3D position of an object from a single source
13. Isabella O'Brien, Canada — recycling shells to reduce ocean acidification
14. Lalita Prasida Sripada Srisai, India — Absorbing water pollutants with corn cobs
15. Deepika Kurup, U.S. — clean drinking water through solar-powered silver
16. Laura Steponavičiūtė, Lithuania — Detecting the environmental changes of nanotechnologies
17. Krtin Nithiyanandam, U.K. — Improving diagnoses and treatment of Alzheimer's with a new, molecular "trojan horse"
18. Yo Hsu and Jing-Tong Wang, Taiwan — Knock-on fuel: Detecting impurities in gasoline with sound-pattern analysis
19. Adriel Sumathipala, U.S. — A rapid, portable and affordable means of early detection for cardiac disease
20. Olivia Hallisey, U.S. — using silk to better store and easily transport Ebola antibodies

Webinar

The Importance Of Customizing Your AAC  App – What Is Possible And What You  Should Consider Wednesday, August 5

There are many hundreds of communication apps  on the market and identifying the best fit to meet the  needs of an individual user can be, well – complicated!  Perhaps what we should consider is how well an app  can be customized to meet those needs and create that  perfect fit. This webinar will focus on what considerations   to take into account when it comes to customization –  what age is the user? What is the ability of the user?  Does the user have a visual impairment? Does the user  require a switch? We will then demonstrate a range of  settings within Therapy Box’s own apps that demonstrate  how AAC apps can be adjusted for a range of requirements. • Time: 10:00AM to 10:45AM CDT • Presenter: Rebecca Bright, BSpPath MRCSLT regHPC MASLTIP • Level: Beginner