A New TED-Ed Lesson Explains Why There Are So Many Types of Apples

It is apple picking season here in New England. Take a stroll through a local orchard and you're likely to see a bunch of different types of apples. In fact, you might even find a type of apple that you haven't previously seen. The reason for this is explained in a new TED-Ed lesson titled Why Are There So Many Types of Apples?


In the lesson students can learn how new types of apples are developed, the benefits of developing new types of apples, and how many types of apples currently exist in the world.

MindMup Adds New Options to Their Mind Mapping Tool for Google Drive

MindMup is one of my favorite online mind mapping tools. MindMup works in your browser and it can be integrated into your Google Drive account where you can then collaborate with other users.

In the spring MindMup added an option for vertical structuring of mind maps and for creating hierarchies in your mind maps. This week a new design option was added to MindMup. You can now have multiple roots within the same mind map in MindMup. The branches coming off of each route can be connected to show overlap between the ideas originating from your multiple mind map roots. See the Tweet embedded below for a visual explanation of the newest MindMup feature.

here's what @davedf and I did this week :) pic.twitter.com/ip8SBcJKpo

— Gojko Adzic (@gojkoadzic) September 22, 2016

Applications for Education
Creating mind maps is one of my favorite ways to organize ideas and information. I've often had my students create mind maps as an exercise in making visual connections between important concepts, events, and people in a unit of study. The new multiple roots option in MindMup could make a good tool for having students illustrate the connections between ideas originating from different places.

Which Parts of the Brain Do What?

Which Parts of the Brain Do What? is the title of a new MinuteEarth video. In the short video students can learn a bit about the origins of brain studies, how FRMIs changed the way brain function is studied, and why correlation does not always equal causation. The video also introduces students to the terms brain lesion, Broca’s area, fusiform face area, hippocampus, and amygdala. A look at the video notes on YouTube will provide you with a list of the resources used in creating the video.



If you want your students do more than just watch this video, you could have them take notes while watching then share their notes with you. These three tools will enable them to do that. You could also develop a quiz based on this video by using the Vizia video quiz creation tool.