Waffle Bytes

From: Deb Renee Biggs and Sonya Schryer Norris,  Library Consultants at the Library of Michigan With a recently released re-design, Health and Wellness Resource Center...now has the tools and features that customers expect from Gale databases, including a mobile-responsive design, Google/Microsoft integration, citation tools, Readspeaker, language translation, and more. The update also includes a new topic browse experience for the most popular and highly-searched health and wellness topics, featuring portal topic pages that organize results from different content types on one page, similar to Gale’s In Context product line. While the look is new, HWRC delivers the same comprehensive, up-to-date content that customers have trusted for years. Now users can more easily search and work with HWRC’s broad collection of full-text reference sources, including respected Gale medical encyclopedias; full-text articles from health-related journals, magazines, and newspapers; ...

Part of my job in working with technology is trying out both iOS and Android apps for their uses in education.  While it is fun to play with the kids' apps, it's also nice to find some that are useful personally.  Here's a running program app I use lots that is available for both iOS and Android. Some background: My oldest son started showing an interest in running several years ago.  He decided he wanted to run in some 5Ks.  Knowing I'd be the one to take him,  I figured I may as well get back in shape and run in the races too as long as I'd be there. Hence, one of my favorite "health" apps became Ease into 5K by Bluefin  Software (formally the app was called C25K).  They now have a whole series of apps, but Ease into 5K is the one that I used when I started running again two years ago. (This was after about a 10 year hiatus.) As a running program (plan), I liked it as it follows the  Couch to 5K running plan . This running plan...

(Today I've been weeding through over 120 emails containing great websites to check out from my Diigo Groups.  I ended up reading several blogs and articles that are mulling around in my brain today.  I'm trying to articulate a huge concern I feel growing as a parent & educator.) I can see a big circle developing that is scary to think about:  as we pile more and more "stuff" on our children, somehow we are losing the essentials... Importance of Character Education - specifically performance character traits not moral character traits - are a greater predictor of a student's success in life than other factors such as IQ.  A couple points from the article What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? that hit home with me: " measures of self-control can be a more reliable predictor of students’ grade-point averages than their I.Q.’s" "People who accomplished great things , often combined a passion for a single mission with an unswerving ded...

Often, finding good web resources are the hardest part of the job for an educator.  With all the demands on a teacher's time, who has time to spend searching?  If this is you, here are some resources you may found useful.  Please feel free to share with others! General- Download Tube: http://downloadtube.org/ Enter the URL of a YouTube video & select which conversion you want.  The site will retrieve & convert YouTube video, then allow you to download it.  Free service allows for 1 conversion & download every 90 minutes.    ELA- 10 Best Websites for Free Audiobooks: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easy-listening-pleasures-10-websites-free-audio-book-downloads/ A blog posting with links to some of the best locations to find free audiobooks.  Math & Science- Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/#browse “Browse 1800+ videos by topic” –there are other topics there, but a lot of mathematics (Developmental Math throug...