Learning-Friendly Classroom Design!

It's no secret that the spaces and places in which we live and learn can have an enormous impact on our mood, our attention span, our ability to focus, and our social interactions. So it's incredibly important for educators to think about the way their classrooms encourage students to be engaged in the learning process. This is particularly true as educators integrate education technology into classroom spaces in ever more organic and thoroughgoing ways.

If you're interested in challenging yourself to create a learning space that's more "brain-friendly," then join the Classroom Cribs Challenge! There are four easy steps that will help you rethink and redesign your learning space to enhance the learning experience, and then share your new ideas with others.

Take a look at this video by interior designer-turned-teacher Erin Klein, where she talks about what it means to design a classroom space that really helps students engage with learning.

Who Knew Science Could be Tasty?! Food Chemistry and Cooking!

Whether you're looking for fun educational activities for your own kids as the summer winds down, or whether you're interested in finding ways to integrate exciting, hands-on learning into your science lessons in the coming school year, CHECK OUT THESE ACTIVITIES from PBS Learning Media, collected here on the KQED Website.

Building and using solar cookers to cook s'mores and explore sustainable energy... Learning to read labels and understand how to make healthy choices... Exploring cheesemaking to get a better grasp of biological processes... Digging into the anthropology of food practices and holiday food rituals... Even learning about the chemical compounds in onions that make us cry!

There's plenty of fun--and learning--to be found here, so take a look and get excited about the science of food!