Jokes You Can Use:

A little boy was starting to dig into his dinner. His father gently reminded him that they hadn’t said a

prayer yet.

“It’s OK, we don’t have to. Mommy is a good cook”.

On Our Mind:

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

8 weeks to go.

ISTE

Eileen Award:

●PivotalEllie Ellie Dix

●Ron Peck: Thanks for the Twitter answer.

Advisory:

How to Listen to Music

Music has a powerful grip on our emotional brain. It can breathe new life into seemingly lifeless minds. But

if there is indeed no music instinct, music — not just its creation, but also its consumption — must be an

acquired skill. How, then, do we “learn” music? Even more curiously, how do we “learn” to “listen” to

music, something that seems so fundamental we take it for granted?

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/12/elliott-schwartz-music-ways-of-listening/

Body Language Decoder

http://lifehacker.com/5901468/use-this-body-language-cheat-sheet-to-decode-common-non+verbal-cue

s

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or [email protected])

This is a three part feature on outstanding science tradebooks for students in Grades 6 - 8.

Part 1:

The National Science Teachers Association has recently announced its Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students

K-12. In this podcast we look at two of the books which are very appropriate for students in grades 6 - 8. They are:

Biomimicry: Inventions Inspired by Nature

by Dora Lee

Trapped: How the World Rescued 33 Miners from 2,000 feet Below the Chilean Desert

by Marc Aronson

From the Twitterverse:

Watch for middle level tweets on Twitter with the hashtag #midleved.

Resources:

An Open Letter to Educators

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-P2PGGeTOA4

TED offers free video lessons for high school and college students

By Lyndsey Layton, Published: March 12

Imagine you’re a high school biology teacher searching for the most vivid way to explain electrical

activity in the brain. How about inserting metal wires into a cockroach’s severed leg and making that

leg dance to music?

Starting Monday, that eye-popping lesson, performed in a six-minute video by neuroscientist and

engineer Greg Gage, is available free online.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/ted-offers-free-video-lessons-for-high-school-and-colle

ge-students/2012/03/09/gIQAuw5O6R_story.html

http://www.youtube.com/tededucation

Web Spotlight:

Sound Maps

Use the interactive maps to find recordings of regional accents and dialects, wildlife and environmental

sounds, and selected world and traditional music.

Includes dialects, and the Millenium Memory Bank. Also includes Holocaust survivors.

http://sounds.bl.uk/sound-maps

Ultra Slow Motion

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/13/ultra-slow-motion/

What Happens When A 35-Year-Old Man Retakes The SAT?

*Warning - Not Safe for Work language is used.

Shockingly, little about the SAT has changed since I set foot in that classroom. Most students still have

to take the test using bubble sheets and a No. 2 pencil, which is insane to me. They've managed to

digitize VOTING

http://deadspin.com/5893189/what-happens-when-a-35+year+old-man-retakes-the-sat

Strategies:

Seussisms

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/11/seuss-isms/

How Long Is a Piece of String? BBC and Comedian Alan Davies Explore Quantum

Mechanics

by Maria Popova

In How Long is a Piece of String?, they enlist standup-comic-turned-physics-enthusiast Alan Davies in

answering the seemingly simple question of the film’s title, only to find in it a lens — a very blurry lens —

on the very fabric of reality.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/09/how-long-is-a-piece-of-string-bbc/

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events: