Cafe

How did we come up with our system of telling time? Why do we divide the day into 24 hours of 60 minutes each, and put 60 seconds in each minute? Where does the definition of a second come from? And who decides what clock shows the correct time? There's clearly a lot of questions when it comes to time.

Scientists have combined ultrasound, viruses and synthetic drugs to control regions of the brain.

Often we concentrate on showing the negative effective of new technologies on the development of babies, but could tablets, smartphones and other touchscreen devices help improve their motor skills?

How much would a floating city weigh?

The fast rendering capability of this new machine actually let me eat dinner with my family on the first night I used it. This is incredibly important to me.

Tiki-Toki is a web-based timeline software. Any class can have a timeline. Use these timelines for assignments, class notes or homework. They are easy to make and understand.

This post explains how and why educators should begin to form personal learning networks. It also discusses some easy ways to start the process and includes links to some great resources.

"Technology is changing not only how people write, but also how they learn to write." This free ebook discusses necessary changes in pedagogy and introduces approaches and experiences of real teachers teaching writing with technology.

Social bookmarking can help you save time by accessing your bookmarks from any computer and sharing great professional development resources with your personal learning network. This article provides an intro to social bookmarking and some links to the most useful tools out there for teachers.

Here are some great new ideas and examples from Youtube on creating your own instructional videos for blended learning classrooms like ours.

The Definition: The flipped classroom inverts traditional teaching methods, delivering instruction online outside of class and moving homework into the classroom. Increasingly common in the last few years and made more popular by Khan Academy, the flipped classroom concept is a perfect match for the SMRT curriculum. ESL students in particular can benefit from watching grammar lectures before school starts and having�extra class time for active learning and skill building. Want more information? Try the Teacher's Guide to Flipped Classrooms by Edudemic. �This technology education blog has compiled a comprehensive list of flipped class resources with teacher support, examples and videos.

Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free -- not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. With Coursera (cofounded by Andrew Ng), each keystroke, quiz, peer-to-peer discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed.

Bringing multimedia into the classroom is a great way to engage students in learning. Supplementing lessons, opening up new interests, and offering inspiration, online videos make for an incredible teaching tool. Check out the very best sources for educational videos on the web.

One problem with integrating most technology is that schools and teachers rely too much on Internet access. We forget that even without the Internet, laptops and mobile devices are very powerful learning tools. Here are a few ideas of the many, I do with students that do not require a class Internet connection.

Check out these excellent apps for your mobile device of choice!

We're not always teaching Generation Y, but learners think and behave differently than those from previous generations. These students were born into a world of information technology; they regularly multitask and they trust the ideas of peers and web videos more than their teachers.Generation Y is significant: it constitutes 20 percent of the world's population. As Gen-Y occupies the young end of the population demographic, we can assume many second language learners belong to this group; it demands our attention and understanding.

Educational researcher Sugata Mitra won the 2013 TED Prize. His wish is to build a school in the cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another using on-line resources and collaboration. Dr. Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall experiments have shown that children are able to teach themselves and each other without formal teaching, if they're motivated by curiosity and peer interest.

Lead by Kevin Brookhouser, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer and Google Certified Teacher. Learn some more ways you can use Google Docs & Sites in your English classrooms to have a collaborative writing process and dynamic assignments.

All you need to do is enter the sentences you want to scramble, each on its own line within the box. There are even a few other options to try out as well. A perfect tool for creating your own quiz.

A seemingly endless collection of smartphone apps that teachers can put to work in the classroom and beyond, creating a powerhouse of school mobile tools. Read on to discover over 50 of the best smartphone apps for teachers.

Jellybean Scoop provides material for different levels of accessibility. Each article provides audio and more importantly, they also provide interactive exercises for each article. It is also possible to have a class account and registration is easy to do.