By Grace Rubenstein, CEI Intern Engaging, fun, hands-on experiences. Makerspaces serve as a balancing act against the stifling nature of a classroom learning environment. First, psychological research indicates that passive school education may inhibit a person’s internal drive to learn, whereas active learning can enhance that drive. Second, the vast variety of learning types means that few actually benefit from passive education. For instance, auditory learners may do well

By Suzan Mullane. Well, three cheers for Bridging-Apps and its creator Sami Rahman! BridgingApps is a website where educators can explore recommended vetted lessons. Rahman’s Review of Lesson Apps are not only described in detail given a visual simulation, but ranked in quality given 1 to 5 stars. Quality control counts; our students demand it. Special education teachers, speech therapists and the students who have used them are involved in assigning the star quality. Here’s

Notability is one of several iPad apps for taking notes. Notes can be hand-written, with or without a stylus. You can import pics from the iPad library or the web. Notability also lets you open PDFs and annotate them to fill out forms or to mark. Docs can be printed or shared. The program does not import video (unlike Pear Note). The features are intuitive and the layout allows for tabbing, automated lists, and ‘paper’ and font changes. You can imbed audio while taking notes.

The test scores of girls living in an insecure region of Pakistan saw a dramatic rise after they began using SMS to communicate with their teachers from the safety of their homes, with their parents’ permission, during school breaks. After four months, the percentage of girls who achieved an A level on literacy examinations increased from 27 percent to 54 percent. Likewise, the percentage of girls who achieved a C level on examinations decreased from  52 percent to 15 percent