BY BILL FERRIS
In this week’s by-the-numbers edition, read about the things you need to know before going 1:1, find the best free web-design tutorials, and read the heartwarming story about how the 112th element finally became a real boy got a name. More after the jump.
BY BILL FERRIS
For this month’s random roundup, we’ve selected the Library of Congress, our nation’s storehouse of pretty much everything worth knowing. As you’d expect, a lot of great resources for teachers have been derived from the Library. See your tax dollars at work by reading the articles linked after the jump.
BY BILL FERRIS
“Back in my day we didn’t have those fancy calculators,” my dad used to say. “We had to use slide rules.” Which was his way of telling me he wouldn’t be much help with my math homework.
Sure, your math students are probably addicted to their TI-85s, smart phone apps, or online tools like Calc5, but sometimes it’s good to experiment with the tools of days gone by. Now you can make your own circular slide rule by following these directions from the physics department at the University of Montana.
Perform searches of computational knowledgeBY JASON DON FORSYTHE
WolframAlpha is an ambitious knowledge repository that functions similar to a web browser. It’s important to note the difference between a knowledge repository and a search engine — this isn’t a competitor to Google. In fact, it functions as a much different application. The concept is to show useful, relevant information based on your query, not give you a list of links to click on and find the information yourself. For example, if you enter a famous person it gives you a basic breakdown biography, more of a when, where, what response that would put important dates at your fingertips.
Looking for ideas or resources for your class? MIT Open CourseWare is there to help. Yes, the same MIT that everyone hopes their engineering-focused little one gets into has created a free and open resource for anyone in the world to use. It’s not just math and science courses either; MIT has published complete course resources for all the subjects they teach, from history to music and theater arts. (more…)
Check out these upcoming educational grants, as listed on Grant Wrangler.
Samsung Focus on Learning Grant Program — Deadline: June 15
Need a Samsung 850DX document camera? Samsung is giving away 50 of them to educators who can demonstrate a need for them.
Universe Adventure Student Video Contest — Deadline: June 15
The Berkley Center for Cosmological Physics and the Honeywell Corporation will give $1,500 in money and new equipment to the students who can create a YouTube video that “demonstrates one of the key fundamental scientific principles or physical laws that governs cosmology or astrophysics in the universe.”
Thomson Gale TEAMS Award –Deadline: June 15
Thomson Gale and the Library Media Connection will award $2,500 cash to three K-12 public or private school teachers who have collaborated with media specialists in the past school year.
New Science Teacher Academy — Deadline: June 30
Second- and third-year science teachers can become a fellow at the New Science Teacher Academy for one year by winning this grant from the National Science Teacher Association.
Coca-Cola Foundation Education Grants –Deadline: Rolling
Coke will support all kinds of educational causes, including dropout prevention, maintaining water quality, recycling and maintaining access to education programs. Plus there’s no deadline. Take a look at their application guidelines and see what you can propose. -BILL FERRIS
When I first clicked on The Particle Adventure, I expected one of those sci-fi adventures where a group of scientists, one of whom is a beautiful woman, get shrunk to microscopic size to face the perils of the subatomic world.
It’s nothing like that. At all.
While it may not be the harrowing journey I hoped for, The Particle Adventure does take visitors on a tour of a world only seen through powerful microscopes — or in the case of dark matter, not at all. You can learn about the basic building blocks of matter like quarks and neutrinos, as well as theoretical stuff. Students can also learn what keeps all these tiny marbles from rolling all over the place.
If you like what you see, you can order charts, posters and other educational materials. And if your students don’t recognize any of the terms on the site, a handy glossary will clue them in.
The Particle Adventure also talks about how scientists experiment with particles, including but not limited to particle accelerators and the Large Hadron Collider. I don’t know about you, but I find acceleration and collisions inherently interesting, even when it happens at a subatomic level. If I can’t have a group of tiny scientists shooting lasers as bacteria, at least I can have a few crashes. -BILL FERRIS
Symmetry Magazine Makes Particle Physics Slightly Less Difficult
The early buzz about the world wide web was that it would throw open the floodgates of the world’s accumulated knowledge, creating a window into the cultures of the most far-flung places on earth. We instead got lolcats, pop-up ads, and meaningless quizzes about which superhero you are.
Fortunately, some wise folks had an eye on that original idyllic vision all along, and those folks now bring us the World Digital Library. A project of the Library of Congress and UNESCO, the site provides access to high-quality digital scans of primary source materials from all over the world.
These cultural treasures include maps, photographs, manuscripts, audio and video recordings and more, and there’s at least one item from every UNESCO member country. The WDL’s interface is phenomenal, offering beautiful, high-resolution scans with incredible zooming capability. Check out this 18th century Japanese woodblock print; you can zoom in close enough to see individual paper fibers.
The site is also exceptionally easy to navigate — perhaps dangerously so, if you like looking at pretty pictures and are prone to losing track of time. You can browse by place, time, topic, type of item, or contributing institution, and the site is navigable in seven different languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
The possibilities for using the WDL in the classroom are nearly endless: Social studies teachers, obviously, will find a treasure trove of primary source materials, but they can also show works created contemporaneously from around the globe for any era, enabling students to develop a holistic sense of global history. Second-language teachers can have students view culturally significant items in their target language. English language arts teachers can identify exquisite images, audio, and video for use as writing prompts. And the ability to browse by topic provides opportunities for use by those often-neglected STEM teachers: Among the topics to choose from is “natural science and mathematics,” which can be further limited to astronomy, geometry, medicine, physics, etc.
An entry under the topic “mathematical geography” is a 15th-century Egyptian book called A Guide for the Perplexed on the Drawing of the Circle of Projection. Many thanks to the World Digital Library for raising our collective IQ. This is what I always knew the internet could be. -EMILY JACK
Visit the Library of Congress online
Access Primary Sources Online with the Perseus Digital Library
Here’s a quick YouTube video that deals with amazing facts about the thing that our world revolved around — the sun. Learn about what causes sun spots, the northern lights, and solar winds. This NASA-produced video is a good introduction to a unit on the solar system. If your school blocks YouTube, just download it to your thumb drive in bring it with you to class. -BILL FERRIS
Ever wonder what’s the lifespan of a flea? Or how sunscreen works? Or who developed the Nobel-worthy invention of the TV dinner?* Of course you haven’t, but that’s not the point. As any person who has won a trivia contest will tell you, it’s fun to show off knowledge of obscure facts in any subject. Like music and sports, science is a subject that lends itself especially well to this sort of trivia. You can find lots of it at Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress.
The site groups its facts into categories like physics, technology, zoology and plant life. Personally, I enjoy browsing through the questions listed on the site and just see what I can learn. Everyday Mysteries is a great place to begin stockpiling questions for a classroom trivia contest, or if you’re in the mood to learn fun facts about a particular topic. -BILL FERRIS
Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress
Think you know geography? Take this quiz
* 30-90 days, by combining organic and inorganic active ingredients, and several geniuses, respectively.
Photo credit: mastrobiggo on Flickr.
Instructify recently backed out of talks with a certain upcoming summer blockbuster. I can’t name the movie in question, nor can I reveal why negotiations ran aground, nor can I confirm or deny that my own personal “unreasonably greedy disposition” made things go sour. Let’s just leave it at this: their movie about mechanical things that trans — er, change — into other mechanical things would have had some terrific synergy with this posting about Constructor.
The description on the Sodaplay website sums up Constructor so well that I won’t even try rephrasing it with my own words: “Sodaconstructor is a construction kit for interactive creations using masses and springs. By altering physical properties like gravity, friction, and speed, curiously anthropomorphic models can be made to walk, climb, wriggle, jiggle, or collapse into a writhing heap.”
Constructor runs in a separate Java app, so you’ll need to make sure you’re updated. You might do best using it to lead a lesson first and then turn it loose on your students. I searched around in both the application and the homepage, but I couldn’t find any instructions. That means you’re going to have to do some goofing around and exploring on your own, but that’s the fun part anyhow. -NICK YINGLING
Let’s Have Some Phun: Physics Gets Creative for Young Learners
My high-school buddy Umar was obsessed by the number 137. For reasons I didn’t understand, it’s a very magical number for physicists (if anything can be magical for men of science). Now that I’m grown, I have a (slightly) better understanding of 137 thanks to Sixty Symbols, a site that explains the meaning behind a bunch of (that is, 60) scientific symbols. Those symbols include “α,” the fine structure constant, which kinda relates to 137 somehow (hey, I’m not a scientist).
Sixty Symbols features short YouTube videos of physicists and astronomers just chatting about the meaning behind various symbols. It makes for good background information on why certain symbols mean what they do, and I always enjoy watching people talk about something that interests them. Your physics students may enjoy learning about a few of the symbols and terms that show up in their homework, too. Sixty Symbols might even inspire some of them to learn more about 137. If they do, send them my way so they can explain it to me. -BILL FERRIS
If you only knew the power of the dark side of science: The physics of the Death Star
It’s time again for our random roundup. This month’s theme: NASA, pioneers of space and subjects of an awful lot of posts.
Do-it-yourself is in, even with podcasting at NASA!
It seems that every time you turn around these days someone’s encouraging you to complete a DIY project. Why pay for someone else to do it when you can do it yourself? Apparently, NASA has the same attitude on its website on Do-It-Yourself Podcasts.
Set the controls for the closest planet to the sun: NASA Mission to Mercury
This site includes up-to-the-minute clocks that record the elapsed time of the mission as well as the Orbit Insertion time. Watch the actual August 3, 2004 launch of Messenger from mission control. You can take your class through a tour of images already taken by Messenger as it zooms toward Mercury.
Blast Off with the NASA Kids’ Club
NASA Kids’ Club is a great way to learn more about space exploration. It’s got great pictures, games and activities that will pique the interest of space-minded kids. As a no-cost way to learn about the space program, the NASA Kids’ Club is the Right Stuff.
Observe NASA’s Earth Observatory
What if we were able to turn our telescopes around and get a closer look at what is happening right below our feet? The folks at NASA have done just that with their Earth Observatory site. Teachers, head right for the Experiments tab and give your students interactive ways to study global warming and plant biomes around the world. If you love reading blogs (and I know you do!), check out the Expedition to Siberia blog that offers almost daily updates and pictures of this fascinating trip.
Cool satellite image from the inauguration
Check out this great picture from the presidential inauguration. As the GeoEye-1 satellite hurtled through the cosmos, it took this snapshot to commemorate the historic occasion. That’s a lot of people! Not only that, I now know the roof of the Capitol is tarheel blue.
Observe Mars in 3D
Still have some of those promotional 3D glasses kicking around from after the Superbowl? Fire up one of NASA’s 3D image galleries to take your students on a tour of Mars.
You’ve almost certainly got a few sports fans in your science class, and probably a few who play on one team or another for your school. Sport Science from Fox Sports Net might be a good way to teach some scientific concepts to them in a manner they can easily relate to. Athletes like Jerry Rice, boxer Chris Byrd, hockey legend Luc Robitaille and, one of my favorites, running back Maurice Jones-Drew serve as test subjects as the show demonstrates the science behind dunks, slap shots, and speed.
However, don’t assume only the athletes in your class would get a kick out of Sport Science. I myself am an avid sports fan, despite having no athletic ability of my own (similarly, I enjoy cartoons despite not being able to draw, and being a lousy cook has never discouraged me from eating). While you can’t count on everyone in your class wanting to know whether a collision between two sumo wrestlers packs more force than a punch, or whether Barry Zito’s curve ball defies physics (take one look at his ERA and you’ll know it doesn’t), Sport Science should appeal to enough kids to be useful.
The FSN site doesn’t have videos of the show, but they’re widely available on YouTube (if YouTube is banned at your school, see our entry on How to cope when your school blocks YouTube). Seeing science in action is almost always fun, and Sport Science gives you that, plus a little competition, too. -BILL FERRIS
Quick! Name five famous discoveries honored by the Nobel Prize…(crickets chirping)….Um, Al Gore won one, right? Ask your students and you’ll likely get a similar response. The people at Nobelprize.org decided that they didn’t want children growing up not understanding the significant accomplishments honored by the Nobel Prize. By visiting the educational outreach section of the website, you can introduce your students to these accomplishments in a fun and engaging way, as well as teach your course content.
The site offers several interactive activities for each category of Nobel Prize — physics, chemistry, literature, medicine, peace, and economics. There are games, readings, and simulations in each section. In my class, I’ve used the blood typing game to help students understand the differences between blood types. In the physics section, there is an interesting simulation about microscopes. By using this, you could show students what the different types of microscopes can do. There is also a microscope quiz that could be used to assess understanding. Another neat feature is the readings. In the DNA-RNA-Protein reading, for example, you can select a “Basic” or an “Advanced” text. This would be excellent for differentiating instruction.
Lest you think this site is only good for Science, there is a section about the Nobel Prize in Literature, and a game about William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies. I’m kind of a science gal, so I didn’t do so hot on that game; maybe your high school English students will do better. Regardless, you will find this site useful. -REBECCAH HAINES
Educational Games via Nobelprize.org
moxie design studios
