How I Spent 10 Minutes Changing the World Tonight

I spent 10 minutes today correctly identifying 100 words at http://freerice.com/
For my time of brushing up on a few words and making myself a little smarter I donated 1000 grains of rice through the United Nations.

It is pretty fun and is basically a creative billboard, but it also serves to show that games work. I wouldn't have stuck around as long as I did if a little game wasn't at work here. Plus I felt good every time I got a word right. Seeing as that it is very similar to many of the vocabulary tests that show up in standardized tests I could also see this used as a tool in the classroom. Maybe an enrichment exercize or as part of a center.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding the Superintendency - The Role of the School Board: A Basic Overview

Image
In recognition of School Board Member Appreciation Day last week, here is a primer on what it means to be a school board member. As a superintendent I have a single supervisor that consists of 7 people. These 7 volunteers are elected to serve as representatives of the community. As community members indicate they are interested in serving as Board members, before they run for a 4-year term, I share this document with them: “ What it Means to Serve on the Board ” that serves as an introduction to the role. I also meet with them and share my experiences as a superintendent, but also as a former board member. Most of this information I provide is from the Illinois Association of School Boards , the professional organization that supports school board members in Illinois. The IASB outlines 6 main responsibilities of a school board: Clarifies the district's purpose Connects with the community Employs a superintendent Delegates authority Monitors performance Takes respons...
Read more

Embedding Google Calendar in Another Language

This question came up today in the Google Apps Certified Trainer Group.  It is actually pretty easy to do.  To make the change you add &hl=XX where XX is the   language code   to the embed code . So - this calendar With this embed code:  <iframe src=" http://www.google.com/ calendar/embed?src= jkloc408t9h5rdv686c8d567hs% 40group.calendar.google.com& ctz=America/Chicago " style="border: 0" width="400" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> Requires  a simple change to display in Spanish (&hl=es)   <iframe src=" http://www.google.com/ calendar/embed?src= jkloc408t9h5rdv686c8d567hs% 40group.calendar.google.com& ctz=America/Chicago &hl=es " style="border: 0" width="400" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> Pretty simple! Some of our ESL teachers are displaying their h...
Read more

Brain Research and Visual Learning

I had the opportunity to hear Wes Fryer keynote today at the 1-1 Laptop Conference in Chicago. He used a stat that I have heard before and have debated a little. The idea is: "What we see travels to the brain 60X faster than what we hear" We discussed it afterward because I have recently looked at that information for another presentation that I was working on. I think it should actually be: "At any one time 60X more information can travel to the brain from the eyes than from the ears" Did some research tonight to confirm my off the head numbers today and here is what I found... Optical nerve fibers = 1,200,000 Several spots on the web - here it is from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_nerve Auditory nerve fibers - 20,000 - 30,000 depending on the source wikipedia has it at 30K At 20K you get the 60X number 1,200,000/20,000 = 60 That would just impact the amount of information that could be carried at any one time. It is all electrical impulses trave...
Read more