SOPA Strike: http://sopastrike.com/

Briefly, on Wednesday, January 18, supporting sites around the web are going black, meaning literally black and that their content may be unavailable. The purpose is to illustrate the potential impact on free access to information if SOPA passes and the government chose to intervene in the availability of a given site. In their words:

“On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill – PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House – to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity. We need internet companies to follow Reddit’s lead and stand up for the web, as we internet users are doing every day.”

“Now the government and corporations could block any site, foreign or domestic, just for one infringing link. Sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook would have to censor their users or get shut down since they become liable for everything users post.”

Some of the sites going black may impact on library patrons, teachers, and students, who may be unpleasantly surprised to find information resources unavailable. We, as librarians, may need to plan our workflow to accommodate these “outages,” as well as how we provide support or services.

Sites listed as participating in the #sopastrike blackout include (but are not limited to):

CONFIRMED
* FailBlog
* FreePress
* GoodIs
* Monbulk College
* MoveOn
* Mozilla
* Tucows
* Twitpic
* Wikipedia
* WordPress

UNCONFIRMED:
* Mendeley
* YouTube
* Twitter

and many more listed at:
http://sopastrike.com/on-strike/

Organizations opposing SOPA but not currently listed as going black include (but are not limited to):
* American Express
* American Association of Law Libraries
* American Library Association
* Association of College and Research Libraries
* Center for Democracy and Technology
* EDUCAUSE
* Electronic Frontier Foundation
* Google
* Human Rights Watch
* New America Foundation
* Reporters Without Borders
* Special Libraries Association
* Visa
* Yahoo Inc.

Organizations listed as supporting SOPA include (but are not limited to):
* Adidas America
* Advanced Medical Technology Association
* AFL-CIO
* Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
* American Association of Independent Music
* American Federation of Musicians
* Association of American Publishers
* Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association
* Bose Corporation
* Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)
* Business Software Alliance
* CBS Corporation
* Comcast
* Council of State Governments
* Disney
* Eli Lilly and Company
* Entertainment Software Association
* Ford Motor Company
* Greeting Card Association
* HarperCollins Publishers
* Independent Film & Television Alliance
* Johnson & Johnson
* Major League Baseball
* Merck
* Microsoft
* Motion Picture Association of America
* National Association of Theater Owners
* National Basketball Association
* National Criminal Justice Association
* National District Attorneys Association
* National Football League
* National Fraternal Order of Police
* Nike, Inc.
* Nintendo
* Pfizer
* Recording Industry Association of America
* Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
* U. S. Chamber of Commerce
* Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
* Walmart
* Warner Music Group
* Xerox Corporation

More information:

Fight for the Future: Protect the Internet Act: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa

Open Congress: S.968 – PROTECT IP Act of 2011: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show Money

Where I’ve been encountering this a lot lately has been with people promoting an event. This is a very particular use case, with special needs. Often they’ve worked very hard on a poster of the event. Of course, they want to include that lovely image, so they attach a copy. Far too often, I see that they have NO other information in the email. I might be able to get by with this, but that doesn’t mean everyone else can.

EXAMPLE:

TIP 1:
Folk with images disabled, HTML-email disabled, vision impairments, or reading email on mobile devices may not be able to easily get the important content from the picture. So include in the body of the email text whatever important text is on the image.

TIP 2:
Also, some email systems automatically sense when it is an event invitation and offer to add it to your calendar, making it very easy for people to then create a personal reminder about your event, thus making it more likely for them to show up. A real win-win across the board! The best way to make sure their email can sense that this is an event is to use the standard format of:
– What
– When (Date/Time)
– Where
with each element on one line. For location, if you can include a link to a map or directions, that is best.

TIP 3:
Include a link to a website or blogpost if there is one. This should have more detailed information about the event, speakers, directions, special considerations, contact for more info, contact to arrange accessibility accommodations for persons with special needs.

TIP 4:
One more tip? Give the image file you attach a descriptive name. Image001.jpg is not going to help someone find it after downloading.

TIP 5:
Last but not least, if possible, attach a PDF instead of an image file.

BONUS POINTS: If you really want to get the word out, don’t just have a web page and an image, but also have the poster and information in shareable social media spaces, like Flickr or Slideshare.

EXAMPLE Part Two: The Email Could Look Like This

We’d really appreciate it if you could attend our event, and share the information with others.

If you want to promote the event yourself, the link to the shareable version of the poster is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosefirerising/2550027058/

Continuing to update you on progress in this arena. While I was on vacation, FDA finally released their initial partial social media guidelines for comment. Comments are due mid-March.

Here are the files and links to the official documents.

Guidance for Industry: Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices, Draft Guidance (PDF): http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/UCM285145.pdf
Dated December 27, Linked from here: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/NewsEvents/ucm130958.htm
Comments can be made here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2011-D-0868-0001

Here are the main takeaways.

1. Draft guidance was released December 27 (not December 30 as some say). Open for public comment for 90 days. Focus of guidance is on off-label use, NOT social media, but includes social media as a component of the communication process.

9. Keep a record of all communications.

In short:
Explicit request. Private response. Response must be: FASAD (pronounced “facade”)
* Focused
* Accurate
* Scientific
* Appropriate
* Documented

More information from other sources.

Translating the FDA’s draft guidance
http://www.slideshare.net/paliosaratoga/translating-the-fdas-draft-guidance-10909734

Legal overview

Corporate Law: FDA Proposes Social Media Guidance on Off-Label Drug Use
http://corporatelaw.jdsupra.com/post/15625202908/fda-social-media-guidance-off-label-use

Positive view from pharma marketing

ePharma Rx: My Pollyanna View of Recent FDA Guidance (Wendy Blackburn, Tuesday, January 10, 2012):
http://blog.intouchsol.com/2012/01/my-pollyanna-view-of-recent-fda.html

Small selection of important views & concerns

Storify: Fabio Gratton: FDA Guidance and Social Media:
http://storify.com/skypen/fda-draft-guidance-and-social-media

FDA Issues Draft Guidance on Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information:
http://www.intouchsol.com/insights/articles/01-04-12/FDA_Issues_Draft_Guidance_on_Responding_to_Unsolicited_Requests_for_Off-Label_Information.aspx

FDA Guidance on Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information Via Social Media:
http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2011/12/fda-guidance-on-responding-to.html

FDA Guidance on Off-Label Unsolicited Requests:
http://sirensong.sireninteractive.com/compliance/fda-guidance-on-off-label-unsolicited-requests/

WEB EXCLUSIVE: FDA says “Pharma, guide thyself”
http://www.mmm-online.com/web-exclusive-fda-says-pharma-guide-thyself/article/221528/

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Pharmas must step up and lead on off-label, online communications:
http://www.mmm-online.com/web-exclusive-pharmas-must-step-up-and-lead-on-off-label-online-communications/article/221580/

The FDA’s First Social Media Guideline: Off-Label Is On The Mark
http://smhcop.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/the-fdas-first-social-media-guideline-off-label-is-on-the-mark/

The Doctor Who Advent (Adventure) Calendar has been a tradition for years, but those of us in the USA might be less likely to know about it. It is truly fun, and makes me wish daily that some part of my computer lived in the UK so I could get full access.

Adventure Calendar: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/features/adventurecalendar/

Doctor Who Adventure Calendar 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/news/ac_2011a

The Doctor Who Advent Calendars don’t come JUST from the BBC, either, but from the fans as well.

Tardis Newsroom: http://tardisnewsroom.blogspot.com/2011/12/bbc-doctor-who-adventure-calendar-day_23.html

Totally Doctor Who Advent Calendar: http://totallydoctorwho.blogspot.com/2011/12/advent-calendar-day-7.html

Another UK surprise I found while searching for advent calendars on health was Sherlockology. Honest! I could not make this up. Look.

(1) Advent Calendar of people to follow in Twitter who are big names in healthcare.

(2) The Alternative Miss Ireland Advent Calendar for HIV/AIDS

(3) Get Fit Naturally

(4) The Food Doctor Advent Competition

(5) A Hospital Advent Calendar Competition

(6) The National Film Board of Canada provided free access to a healthcare video (Asthma Tech)

(7) Teen health advice advent calendar from KIP Education

(8) BONUS: Not an Advent Calendar, but a 12-day countdown of sexual health information myths (Mythmas)

TEXT 1: Advent calendar and science! An advent calendar from the nice folk at Galaxyzoo.
TEXT 2: @the_zooniverse: The first door of our advent calendar should open tomorrow.

To really appreciate the Zooniverse Advent Calendar, it helps if you know a little bit about them, but even if you don’t, you’re sure to appreciate the mix of games, puzzles, discovery, and challenges. This may very well be the best advent calendar I’ve seen, at least for rewarding and engaging activities to expand your horizons.

I’m going to detour for a second just to talk about their Twitter interface.

@The_Zooniverse does a great job of saying who they are, what they do, and why they do it. In their words: “A collection of websites where we ask the public to help us do real science online. Our projects include, Galaxy Zoo, Old Weather, Planet Hunters and more…” plus the URL for their website. Now, their websites are all so stunning, I am absolutely baffled why they don’t use any kind of graphic design for their Twitter background, instead relying on the generic default background supplied by Twitter.

Back to the Advent Calendar. The first icon I clicked on turned out to be for a Haiku competition of sorts.

The challenge was to write science haiku and tweet them to the Zooniverse folks, who would retweet the very best of them. A week later they did something similar with another style of poetry, the clerihew, a humorous four line rhyming poem slightly reminiscent of the limerick. I bet they do limericks next year! Here are my favorite two haiku from this year.

TEXT 1: @TychoGirl: Thin galaxy arms / Twirl flamenco-like around / Supermassive core.
TEXT 2: @TychoGirl: Santa, all I want / Is a fueled-up Saturn V / Fly me to the moon.

I already knew that Zooniverse is well known for their work with galaxies and outer space science, so I looked for something along those lines, and found it easily.

This was not a challenge or a game, but directed folk to an interactive prototype of the website for their PlanetHunters project on its anniversary.

Then I stumbled into the Milky Way Project announcement.

I hadn’t been aware that the Milky Way Project had its own Twitter stream until Zooniverse and it tweeted pretty much the same thing at the same time while I was tracking #advent tweets. Their advent calendar highlight was a word cloud celebrating the publication of the first peer reviewed research article from the project.

Hanny’s Voorwerp is probably on of the most magical and romantic stories of unexpected scientific discovery I’ve ever encountered. I was perversely delighted that they turned this into a Voorwerp version of classic pong, based on an open source version of the old arcade game, but using galaxies as the paddles. More about Hanny’s Voorwerp is on her independent website.

Those are just a few examples. Remember, there are a total of 24! Don’t you want to go see what else they have?

A great deal of the content analyzed by the Zooniverse volunteers comes from the Hubble Telescope. It seemed so fitting to include here a separate advent calendar from the Atlantic Monthly made entirely of images from the Hubble.

(1) At-Bristol

At-Bristol is a child-oriented science museum. They have another one of those easy idea, but they aren’t using it as well as they might. The easy idea is an advent calendar of neat science facts. The one shown here for Day 13 is that lightning is three times hotter than the surface of the sun. I had no idea, did you? They use the tag #advent, but they don’t include either a picture or give a link, meaning they are just trying to get you to come look at their Twitter stream, not expand beyond that to their other locations. Their main Twitter stream, which confusingly breaks their brand identity of At-Bristol by using @AtBristol, does show other activities, such as Santa’s Invention Workshop for making science ornaments, and provides a link to their homepage. Their homepage talks about Bringing Science to Life, which is another UK-based child-oriented science education resource, but which is not clearly identified as associated with the museum or distinct from it. Lots of good stuff, but a little confusing.

(2) Elements-Science

Elements-Science has their own Twitter channel, but that isn’t how I found them, as you can tell from one image of a distinctly open-mouthed young man praising the Elements Advent Calendar, and a second tweet implying that they’ve studded the calendar with made up factoids. I had to check this out, of course.

While I agree that highlighting a self-described “media-medic” on a site that wants to be taken seriously in science journalism is perhaps not ideal, I couldn’t actually find any falsehoods in the information provided. Not at all sure to what the tweeter was objecting. On the other hand, one of today’s highlighted articles is about precognition through dreams, so maybe Elements-Science is not as scientific as one might hope. This is a nice way of taking the science fact advent calendar concept to the next level, via the website, use of images, and such.

(3) Planet Science

Planet Science uses their @PlanetScience Twitter account to link to their website, as well as the advent calendar. The interesting slant they’ve used is to frame the calls to the calendar as quiz questions on several days. You click through because the question is so intriguing you just HAVE to know the answer! I also found it clever that the design of the calendar centered around a snowman (typical) who is really a lightbulb (scientific!).

(4) Science Comedy Calendar

I was initially comforted by @Blue_Wode’s posting of the Science Comedy Advent Calendar in part because they also got off schedule and had to catch up. I’m not alone, what a relief. I also like the idea of science comedy, being a fan of both Mythbusters and Beakman. But when I clicked, I found that @Blue_Wode manages an anti-quackery website, which should have been a clue. Personally, I often find that anti-quackery sites are so biased in the opposite direction that they can be trusted no more than the quackery sites. Jim Ottaviani has had for many years an email signature of the original Latin for “Who watches the watchers?”, which is a useful question to keep in mind when viewing any website but especially those that purport to guard the rest of us from ourselves.

Luckily the Science Digestive blog by @garwboy, despite appealing to the extremists, does include both genuine science and genuine humor. The links direct to a blog, with a sadly hideous interface stuffed with animated gifs (perhaps that is part of the humor?), but when you click through to the individual posts and cover up the images with your hand, the written content is wryly humorous.

(5) Cheltenham Festivals

Cheltenham Festivals focuses on four topics: jazz, science, music, and literature. Don’t ask me why they distinguish between jazz and music. What interested me is that their advent calendar is also a Christmas competition on their blog, with the highlighted topics switching between these focus areas. So, while it includes significant amounts of science, it is not an entirely science-focused countdown calendar. It is unusual that they use audio almost exclusively in their competition trials, asking their audience to listen and identify the speaker or performer. It rather excludes people who are deaf, but perhaps all their events do the same.

For today, I’ve chosen one of my absolute favorites of all the Advent Calendars. You can tell, because I actually keep going there every day! It represents much of what I love most in the world — libraries, museums, history, science, healthcare, beauty, emerging technologies, trivia, arts and crafts, kids and … well, you’ll see what I mean shortly. This is just too, TOO good to mix up with anyone else’s delightful offerings. You may think I’m raving. Yes, I am. There is a reason.

The Wellcome Trust is one of those places I’ve never been to, but I can’t get enough of it anyway. If I did go, I suspect I’d never want to leave. That will have to go on my list for my next life. Their areas of special interest are pretty much the same as mine — biomedical science, technology transfer, international, public engagement, medical history and humanities, ethics and society. Now if you just added in educational technologies, disaster & crisis planning & response, crowdsourcing, and a couple other small points, I’d be completely unable to contain myself. See why I might just be a tad giddy over the work they do? And they’ve done an ADVENT CALENDAR. Can you even imagine? Oh, my.

The Wellcome Trust includes the Wellcome Library, one of the more luscious medical and science libraries in the world, with exemplary collections in the areas mentioned above. One of the major resources forthcoming from their amazing collections is Wellcome Images. Wellcome Images includes a truly massive database of images remarkable for its range, diversity, quality, historical and scientific value, and importance to research both in science as well as in the arts and humanities. Much of the content is available under a Creative Commons license, while there are charges for some images and some uses.

As if that isn’t enough, they also have galleries of selected images on specific topics, with current highlights including dirt, treasures, tattoos, high society, their 75th anniversary, and the images and results of their annual images contest.

And if that isn’t enough, they are doing this all over social media. Not just “come to our database and search”, but also via Twitter, and Flickr, and their blog. Oh, that’s right, I promised you an advent calendar.

What they are doing is simple and delightful, although I suspect it was a lot more work than it looks like. A LOT more. From their existing online collections, they have selected images that in some fashion connect to the stories or symbolism of the winter and Christmas holidays. These images are put in a blogposts with an educational and informative text full of stories and trivia and engaging witticisms. The blogpost is given a truly clever title that just begs you to click through and find out what the heck they are talking about, and this is tweeted with the link. Picture + Story + Promo. Here are a few of my favorite examples.

TEXT: Health warning! Avoid mistletoe this Christmas. Find out why here. Alternative Advent joy. (Remember that other post I did on alternative advent? That was how I found the Wellcome stream.)

TEXT: Tits, nuts, and liver cancer

TEXT: Something sickening

TEXT: Feeling viral?

You may have noticed that virtually all the post titles are puns, with sly double entendres and subtle allusions to sex, dirt, and grade school humor, however each and every one of them turns out to be scientific and educational and utterly wholesome. They really have a brilliant crew working on this. I am hugely impressed. I wish I was half so clever.

I could hardly believe it when something in their advent calendar lead me to even more Wellcome holiday goodness. Remember I said arts and crafts? Here they come!

Wellcome Images had retweeted something from Wellcome Trust about their “Tree of Life” project. For decorating the Christmas tree, they decided to make their own ornaments, an excellent idea. While many people decorate their trees with a mélange of ornaments made or gifted by family and loved ones, some folk go with a theme. Me, I have every year for decades collected animals for my tree — bears, snakes, mice, aardvarks, armadillos, flamingo, skunks, cardinals, and more. Wellcome had the idea of designing ornaments from plasticine on science themed concepts. Shown here is the swine flu ornament, but they also made a diatom, pollen grain, Weil’s disease, periodontal bacteria (with the label misspelled, but I’m also a dentistry librarian, so I knew what they meant). They gave away free packets of crafty supplies until they ran out, and offer a prize for the best ornament. How will they know what you did? Everyone is supposed to take a picture and put it in their Flickr group! I confess to being rather fond of the mitochondrian, the sundew leaf, and diffusion tensor imaging, petri dish ornaments, and the Christmas brain, but HBT was kind enough to allow embedding of his Neutrophil Undergoing Netosis, so that is the one I will show you.

As long as we’ve had factory-style education, we’ve had cheaters. As long as we’ve had money, we’ve had cheaters. Before that, we had thieves. If there are resources worth having, there will be those who want or need them who don’t have the skills, resources, initiative, energy, or general wherewithal to get it themselves through through their own efforts, and will find ways to get them some other way. That’s true in academia absolutely as much as anywhere else. I remember the first time I actually graded assignments for a class (of graduate students!), and found in a class of 100 four people who had obviously copied each others work. I am guessing there were probably more examples that I didn’t notice because of my inexperience in looking for this. It isn’t just plagiarism, you know. Another couple students didn’t copy, but falsified their results, which was obvious to me because I really knew the content in the assignment.

What was the problem with them cheating? Well, firstly, they don’t learn what they are supposed to learn. More important, this was a grad program for healthcare practitioners, all of the students had signed an ethics agreement and used an honor code assuring that they were being responsible and ethical in their learning. When someone cheats as a student, you kind of wonder about whether they have the ethics and responsibility to be a healthcare provider. Another reason is that ultimately misappropriating someone else’s work creates undocumented gaps in the intellectual record, undermining the effectiveness and utility of science overall and destroying credibility in the scientific method. This was a big topic of discussion at the recent CI Days where the actual science behind the core issue of reproducibility of research and its implications was presented as a keynote by Victoria Stodden.

That cheating is wrong is one of those things “everyone knows.” Now, what if it wasn’t? Or what if there was truly another side to the story? What if, instead of insisting that each student do the assignment independently and not copy (and having 100 assignments to grade that took me 2 months to finish), I had instead organized the assignment as a small group project? The students would have probably learned more, they would have self-policed, copying would have been virtually impossible, and I would have had fewer assignments to grade. Win-win.

Flash forward. A faculty member phoned me this week with a question, and I didn’t expect the question or have a clue what the answer was. The doc had just written a research article, was submitting it, and had been advised by the department chair to run it through a plagiarism checker before submission. The question was which plagiarism checker to use. I think I saw stars before my eyes, I felt so stunned by the idea.

I did find the answer (more on that later) but thought this was significant enough to provoke further thought and conversation. Why use the plagiarism checker BEFORE submitting? To prevent the researcher from ACCIDENTALLY copying without attribution. That’s a lovely thought, but you would think that people making a sincere effort to avoid this would be ok. Not so. Journal editors are not routinely checking all submissions. The idea is that if the software says you cheated, you want to know it before you get your hands slapped. Now why would the software say you cheated if you didn’t? Lots of reasons. One of the big problems with many plagiarism checkers is that when you scan your paper, it is added to their database of papers. If it passes the first time it is scanned, it then flunks the second time. If that is true of the software you use, and if the journal uses the same software, scanning before submission could guarantee that you would never be published again. Scary thought. Another thought. The preferred plagiarism checkers are expensive. How fiscally responsible is it to pay the software company twice for the same task? I’m really having issues with the way this picture is shaping up.

I’ve been tracking RetractionWatch for a while. Fascinating blog that gathers information on examples of research that has been pulled or which is headed that direction, and why — plagiarism, data falsification, ethical malfeance, misrepresentation, misinterpretation, errors in data analysis, etc. Another fascinating blog is NCBI ROFL that focuses on research published in scholarly journals to which the thoughtful reaction is either “duh!” or “hunh?” Both of these raise the same question brought forward by Dan Atkins at CI Days as to the perception, reputation, and credibility of science in the eyes of the general public. The next obvious question is what happens to the funding for science if the general public widely believe science lacks credibility? I don’t really want to find out, do you?

Now I had already been working on this blogpost when I found an article published TODAY by the authors of RetractionWatch.

Science publishing: The paper is not sacred: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7378/full/480449a.html

I’ll say this three times if you need me to: GO READ THIS PAPER. We already know that existing publication models are failing, failing researchers, failing libraries, failing the readers, failing the process and progress of science and research. There are people thinking deeply about what models would work as alternatives. Last week Paul Courant was suggesting a shift to a POST-publication review model. Victoria Stodden is urging folk to create and use open data repositories, and provide scholarly credit for authoring code. I’m a big fan of the LANL XXX Archive, as it was once known, now simply the Arxiv, which has been active and tested in the field of physics, where it has worked quite nicely indeed for over 20 years now. We need more people thinking about these alternative publication models, their impact on scholarship, and the risks that imperil scholarship if the current model persists as status quo. This article is another important voice in that process.

Alright now, I’m going to let you all go off and think about this a bit, hoping we’ll come back for more conversations. In the meantime, I said I found the answer about what software to use to check your article for accidental plagiarism before you submit. I’ll share some of those links. You think about if you really want to do this, and if plagiarism checkers are really the answer.

How to check your scientific paper for plagiarism, by George Lundberg, MD: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/02/check-scientific-paper-plagiarism.html

CrossCheck: http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck/index.html

iThenticate: http://www.ithenticate.com/
– Understanding the Similarity Score: http://www.ithenticate.com/plagiarism-prevention-blog/bid/63534/CrossCheck-Plagiarism-Screening-Understanding-the-Similarity-Score

Elsevier: Researcher tools for evaluating trustworthiness: CrossCheck Plagiarism Screening and CrossMark: http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/lcn/0801/lcn080108.html

Elsevier: Editors: Plagiarism detection: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/editorsinfo.editors/plagdetect

CrossCheck Plagiarism Screening: http://www.slideshare.net/CrossRef/crosscheck-plagiarism-screening

(1)

TEXT: Roselink: ESL Advent Calendar 2011 – Christmas Quizzes, Games and Activities

An advent calendar for English as a Second Language includes tips and tricks and games for engaging learners in the language, often with inexpensive and easy resources. The example shown is on using Youtube music videos for language learning.

(2)

TEXT: Little Wonders’ Days: Reindeer Games, Advent Day 8

Little Wonders’ Days focuse on preschool education with a variety of teaching, learning, engaging activities and games.

(3)

EducationCity is a UK-based commercial education resource providing learning resources and games that seem to be targeting the grade school age child. They have both UK and US oriented websites, however the Twitter stream appears to be managed by the UK team, as does their main blog. The US team hasn’t posted to their separate blog in months. If you go to the US site you are unable to locate the Advent Calendar, and really need to get to it through the EducationCity Twitter stream. Some of the free activities provided have potential, while others are primarily a sale price on their other services.

“Join us each week day until the 16th December and open a door to reveal a special treat; from festive fun makes, to cultural fact sheets; competitions to offers, we’re bound to delight with our advent countdown.”

(4)

This is kind of a daisy chain of found items which I think spun off from the previous entry as one of the things to which they linked. I’m not sure about that, though. The blogpost here is just the beginning. At English Learning in Our World we see here the beginning of a series of posts on educational activities to use in a classroom. They are all pretty clever, and this first one is a real gem.

She was inspired by the Macmillan Education Advent Calendar shown below.

The Macmillan calendar has each day giving ideas for educational activities themed around the holidays, such as this one brainstorming how reindeer might fly to foster creativity. Sharon then took the idea and made a Powerpoint template to make her own version of the Advent calendar to use with her students.

Even better, she provides the Powerpoint template as a free download! Now that is quite generous. Check out some of her other ideas.

(5)

TEXT: StephanyKouJou: @coolcatteacher @edgalaxy @scribbled_au You might like my advent calendar and inform some parents about it. [link] Thanks!

Stephany is a dyslexia trainer, and her remarkable advent calendar provides activities for working with students in this area, many of them quite creative. The example shown here, “Finish the Christmas tree,” is an exercise to build many needed skills – fine motor control, visual awareness, mirroring, the ability to reverse both simple and complex shapes, working with lines, and so forth. Impressive.

(6)

I think all of the rest of these came from @CoolCatTeacher, so I am going to combine them in one section. @CoolCatTeacher used Visibli to share the links. The example shown here is from Michelle Green, who used Livebinder to organize her collection cloud-based interactive e-learning tools and resources.

BONUS:

TES Free Teaching Resources: 12 Games of Christmas. Play the games either on the web of via a free iOS app.