Help middle and high school students truly understand the news by explaining the science behind it. The Educational Insights Blog writes about The Why Files, started by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Board of Regents in conjunction with the National Institute for Science Education, and how it aims to offer "broad access to the scientific enterprise" by explaining the relationship between science and everyday life. Recent stories explained include shortages of certain medications and The Secret Life of Cats.

Created by a former Sesame Street producer and his late sister, a Kindergarten teacher, One More Story takes popular children's books and set them to music, and reads them aloud. You can also see the text that will help students read on their own. Their library may be smaller than Scholastic's BookFlix, but it's growing everyday, and is much more affordable for the school market. Titles include such notables as Ezra Jack Keats' A Snowy Day, and William Steig's Pete's a Pizza.  Teachers can get a FREE trail through October 31, 2011 by clicking here.

The Educational Technology blog ITBabble.com has a comprehensive review of the timeline creator Dipity. Dipity is quite the package, offering both free and premium accounts. It offers the user the ability to create a timeline from already existing images, like from Flickr, YouTube, or a blog post. It gives users great flexibility in entering a date, and a fantastic zoom feature that will allow one see the whole timeline, or a specific event. One of the best features is its ability to embed timelines into another blog. Read the review here. 

App of the Week: Kids Time Fun

Telling time is one of the hardest concepts for young learners to grasp. Kids Time Fun, and app from NSC Partners, LLC is a comprehensive, yet simple app that will test the user's knowledge of time concepts and vocabulary, elapsed time, and basic time telling with different learning activities and "belts" to be earned. Available for $1.99 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.