MasteryConnect Helps You Map Curriculum to Common Core Standards

MasteryConnect is a service that offers a few products that I think teachers in U.S. public schools should know about. First, they offer a good system for tracking your students' mastery of Common Core standards. Second, they provide a great community of educators who are connecting and sharing lesson ideas. And third, MasteryConnect now offers a curriculum mapping tool that allows you to easily connect your current lessons and curriculum to Common Core and or state standards. You can see the MasteryConnect curriculum mapping tool in the video found here.

Disclosure: MasteryConnect helps feed me and my dog every month through their advertising payments.

Incentives, Rewards, and Motivation

Read Write Web and Wes Fryer both posted an interesting video in which RSAnimate animates a talk given by Daniel Pink. In the talk Pink shares some interesting discoveries about the science of motivation. In the talk Pink explains why larger financial rewards don't always, in fact rarely, equal better performances on tasks. Pink's idea that innovation should be rewarded more than performance on a standard task is the idea that I liked best. That idea will influence my thinking about curriculum design this summer when I'm reworking parts of the courses I teach.

Watch the video below.


Here is a related item that may be of interest to you:
Three Ways the Brain Creates Meaning

View Ancient Rome in Google Earth... A Chance to Win Stuff Too

I'll start this blog post by stating the obvious, I love Google Earth and Google Maps. Today, Google gave me another reason to love Google Earth. Starting today, the public gallery of layers now includes a 3-D fly-over tour of Ancient Rome. You can explore more than 6000 3-D drawings of buildings in Ancient Rome. At each placemark in the tour you can explore historical information. The short video below shows you how to access this new layer as well as some of the things that can done with the Ancient Rome layer.



Applications for Education
The Ancient Rome layer is obviously useful for history teachers, but could also be useful for literature teachers. Literature teachers may want to provide their students with some visual perspectives of stories that students are reading.

Google Earth is useful in so many content areas because of its flexibility. Over the course of the last twelve months I've seen, and shared with readers, examples of using Google Earth in History, English, Math, and Science classrooms. If you feel confident developing curriculum using Google Earth, you may want to consider entering the Ancient Rome 3-D Curriculum Competition. Winners receive a prize package that includes a MacBook and $500 gift cards to Target or Office Depot.