Credit: Bill Duke
Cosmeo
Discovery Channel; $10/month (introductory), $99/year (after free thirty-day trial)
www.cosmeo.com
Looking for a homework-help tool? Here's a virtual library that includes more than 30,000 video clips, 15,000 interactive quizzes, and tens of thousands of photos and images for school projects. The easily navigable interface allows for instant reference to streaming videos and more than 27,000 research articles in key subject areas such as science and health. While kids surf the site, they'll forget they're actually learning!
Credit: Frances Gant Williston
Letters to a New Teacher: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Year Ahead
By Jim Burke with Joy Krajicek
Heinemann; $22; 208 pages
www.heinemann.com; 1-800-225-5800
"How do you manage thirty-five sophomores who won't stop talking?" "What is your approach to teaching writing?" "How do you do it all, especially with kids and a wife?" These were questions new teacher Joy Krajicek asked English instructor Jim Burke, and the answers to these and others are in this guide, which compiles letters and emails over two semesters between the novice and her mentor. The questions grow complex, and Burke's responses build on one another, creating a consistent and compassionate way of thinking about the teaching of English -- and one's new life as an educator.
Credit: Bill Duke
i-DRiVE TV
i-SAFE America
xblock.isafe.org/idrive.php
Quiet on the set. Cue music. Enter i-DRiVE TV. Created for students, by students, this half-hour online show, scheduled to air in the fall, will showcase interviews, projects, and discussions with experts on various Net-related issues. Three-to-five-minute audition tapes for "digital correspondents" are accepted monthly, offering roles on the team to help produce episodes and vodcasts, or video podcasts, on topics such as freedom of speech on the Web. Aspiring filmmakers become mentors in Internet safety education, which is the focus of i-Safe America.
Credit: Frances Gant Williston
Math Maze Game System
$15 starter set, $20 mastery set
www.mathmaze.us
Trash those cheat sheets and multiplication charts. Join the new craze called Math Maze, a card game developed by a longtime math and science teacher who realized that students of all ages are ill prepared for high school algebra and advanced mathematics. The starter set, available in English and Spanish and appropriate for regular and special education students (it can be special ordered in French and Chinese, too) deals with whole numbers in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, while the mastery set introduces players to integers and fractions. The game also reinforces a social, supportive setting in the classroom, on the playground, and even in the family room -- rather than hover over your children as they stare puzzlingly at their homework, you are actively involved in their learning.
Credit: www.brainwareforyou.com
BrainWare Safari
Learning Enhancement Corporation; $349 (one user), $599 (two users), $799 (three users)
www.brainwareforyou.com; 1-877-272-4610
Ready to train that brain? This software for ages 6-12 embeds clinical cognitive exercises into a video game set in a lush South American rain forest landscape. Kids weave through the wild with furry friends such as Jackie Jaguar and Moby Monkey in 168 exercises for a "mental workout," strengthening forty-one skills that boost memory, reasoning, auditory and visual processing, and hand-eye coordination. The graphics and sound effects, and activities like Rhythm Ribbet and Llama Logic, extend the often-short attention span of little ones and condition their brains as just another muscle. Regular use may increase a child's level of mental ability; try it for thirty days, or your money back.