Science, science, and more science

The focus is on (yes, you guessed it), Science!

A great link for science teachers is the The Periodic Table of Videos. This is a site that displays a Periodic table and when you click on each element, a little YouTube video pops up discussing and demonstrating the properties of that element. Very clever! You can find the link here -http://www.periodicvideos.com/#

The next site is called Wonderville which is done by the Alberta Science Organization. It is an interactive site with lots of games and activities. It can be found at www.wonderville.ca

The last site, which is great for biology, is called Cells Alive. It does a great job with animations demonstrating the biology behind cells including the different parts of cells. Definitely worth checking out if you teach biology.

The Big Picture

This weeks entry deals with a site from the Boston Herald called "The Big Picture". Every couple of days a Boston Herald reporter posts high resolution photos of an event that is signinficant somewhere in the world. These photos are taken by professional photographers and they are often stunning!

This weeks photos include pictures of H1N1 activity from around the world which you see to the left, Remembrance Day services across the globe, and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not all entries are based on current events - there are thematic entries as well.

The photos are great for creating discussions within y0ur class - you could have them write about what they see, analyze particular photos for specifict deatails or talk about what's signifcant about the picture they are seeing.

New photos are published every other day and you can check the archive at the top of the page for previous posts.

Just a note- when you first go to the site you will see one photo of that event. If you scroll down, you will be able to find a link that will reveal up to 40 photos of that particular event. The photos look amazing when blown up on a big screen - you don't need a smartboard for this application either.

Check it out at www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Glogster

Recently my students have been using a program called Glogster - you can find it at http://www.glogster.com/. It is a way of creating interactive posters using a variety of media. The students quite like them and it makes creating an informative poster much more interesting and fun.
You can sign your class up for a school account at no charge. To do this go to http://www.edu.glogster.com/, register yourself, select how many students you want (you can have up to 200 and I suggest you select that, as you'll have enough for all your students should you want multiple classes to use it.), then they will email you a list of passwords and login names that your students can use.

The great part is you can control the content, who sees it, and be aware of who is creating what.

To see an example watch the video below.