Hip Hop High

The musical language of the street has new fans: teachers, who are using it as a classroom tool.

Excerpt:

Is your Game tight?

It's a message other educators around the country are starting to hear. In classrooms from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and everywhere in between, teachers realize that the popularity of hip-hop is a powerful tool that can be used to engage students and teach everything from English to algebra to the periodic table of the elements in chemistry class.

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Edutopia

Kids build real-life roller coaster

Here's an interesting activity that ties in with the Roller Coaster Tycoon learning curriculum: a group of 14- and 15-year-olds built a 400-foot roller coaster in their school gymnasium. Apparently, each year, students in the program try to out-do the previous year's roller coaster achievement, and this year, the students were limited in their design by the size and height of the gymnasium. According to Dominic Farrar, a cocreator of the Odyssey program in Southern California where this happened:

In each of these projects, concepts such as simple machines, algebraic equations and physics principles such as Newton's laws and other various applications become relevant to the learners as they create tangible products that bring the curriculum to life...And there is the roller coaster, and literally this is just an overwhelming experience, powerful like none other, and it's really not what the teachers have done, it's what the kids have been able to create. But it's magic. Because there is a spirit. Because there is a passion. They believe.

Wholey Moley

Introducing: Wholey Moley, a loveable little character who digs around under the ground looking for delicious fraction-laden tubers to make him "whole" again.

Our friend Wholey Moley plows through his caves at breakneck speed, picking up fractions to make whole numbers. When students make a whole number out of the fractions, they earn points and unlock bonus time. But if they run into the various underground obstacles, they come to a screeching halt and lose the fractions they've accumulated. Play Wholey Moley and help contribute to the delinquency of a "miner!"

Holey Moley -- Helping learners visualize fractions

The problem: learners often have a difficult time understanding what "1/3" *looks like*.
The concept: make the process of visualizing and then adding fractions the strategy for winning a game
The pitch: Holey Moley -- Players role a ball around picking up parts of a whole, getting a point only when they make a whole ball. If they go over the whole, they start a new ball.
The approach: create a working prototype, then a Flash-based version of the game to sell others on the idea, test with learners, and ultimately hope to port to the iPod.