Keep on track with an online timer

The Online Countdown Timer is easy to set and plays a YouTube when the time is up. Suggest it to your students to use it to keep them on track. It even comes with a snooze button.

Creative Commons Search

Creative Commons Search is way to ensure that you and your students use material that is free and legal.

Graph Paper - download and print

Free online graph paper from incompetech is just that. Give a link to your students as well.... as a teacher you will lessen your chance of seeing a graph on hand drawn grids in a lined exercise book. Many different types of graph paper, almost any type you can think of, and you can also customise them if desired.

Spezify - Social Media Mashup

Spezify is a great way to examine how soical media is portraying an event or phenomena. It draws together photos, tweets, youtubes, music and snippets from websites about whatever it is you are spezifying. For instance if you were discussing Lady Gaga, it gives a glimpse into current buzz on the internet.

Physics Interactives - Forces and Time

If you liked "Who Wants to live a Million Years" then you will also love this interactive on Newton's Laws that covers all three laws as well as including a quiz.

Scitoys and Science Toy Maker websites

In 2003 I was in a tiny school that had next to no equipment teaching year 11 and 12 Physics. I discovered the Scitoys website and with the year 11 students we made a steam boat and a film cannister rocket. Scitoys has great ideas and projects to do with your students to demonstrate some of the principles of science in a constructive, practical manner, however some of the instructions are a bit complicated or the materials are difficult to obtain.

Qwiki the Multimedia Search Engine

Imagine the love child of a search engine, World Book and the Discovery Channel.... that is Qwiki. It contains the same kind of range of topics you would find in an encyclopedia, each entry has a script that is read by a computer voice while a pastiche of images plays in the background. I can see this has huge potential in primary and secondary classrooms.

Silk Art

If you have a few seconds, visit Weave Silk and make a work of art.

BrainPOP with Tim and Moby

You can join the BrainPOP site which costs, or you can watch these science ones for free.

Metamorphosis
Ecosystems
Plant Growth
Photosynthesis and Respiration
Mitosis
How Joints Work
Bone Structure
Respiratory System
Eye
Fertilization and Birth
Circulatory System
Heredity
Immune System
Digestion
Six Kingdoms
What is Weather?
Bacteria
Protists
Scientific Methods Seed Plants
Sponges
Invertebrates
Vertebrates
Cell Structures
Radiation
Tides
Relativity
Acceleration
Acids and Bases
 Rock Cycle
Water Cycle
Thunderstorms
Atoms
Batteries
Big Bang
Compounds Mixtures
Crystals
EM Spectrum
Eclipse
Electricity
Energy Sources
Gravity
Heat
Life Cycle Of Stars
Light
Magnetism
Mass Vol Density
Periodic Table
Printer
Radio
Rainbow
Relativity
Scientific Method
Solar System
States of Matter
Static Electricity
Telephone
Temperature
Thunderstorms
Waves
pH scale

There are a lot more brainPOP movies than this, over 400 in language arts, math, science, social studies, technology and health. I found these free ones either on the site or by searching using the filetype:swf limiter. It shows what you can find if you know how to search effectively.
Each movie is accompanied by a 10-question interactive quiz, experiment, comic strip, timeline, and printable activities (example), so you may want to go on the brainpop site... there is a free trial. Check it out, get your students using this valuable resource.

Genochoice Designer Babies

You can pose ethical dilemmas to students, but playing an interactive game is more fun. Genochoice is a  realistic website which lets you create a child. With enough money you can have the perfect blonde, blue eyed child free from any genetic abnormality.

Natural Selection Game

"Who wants to live a million years?" is a very engaging interactive. I have played it with year 10's and 12's and it brilliantly shows how genetic variation and selecting pressures result in changes in the gene pool or extinction. Survival is the name of the game.

Evolutionary Biology in a Flash

Here are two sites I have used when discussing comparative physiology/ evolution.

Becoming Human is an interactive documentary I have used over the years, it utilises stills and music to create a majestic atmosphere of enquiry and discovery. You can launch the documentary online, or you can download it for use on your machine without internet connection. It is hard to believe that this is over ten years old.. it is still an awesome resource that hasn't dated.

Carrot Search - a new way to display search results

Tired of your everyday search engine? Want something new with flavour and high in fibre? Try Carrot2, this clustering search engine just might help you see in the dark! I stumbled upon this last night by following one of my blog's referring sites and I have been playing with it ever since.

YouTube videos without the other stuff

You can strip away all the other stuff in youtube... the ads, the comments etc etc with safeshare. Great for the classroom, minimising any potential distraction. You have to make sure you have searched for the video beforehand - but you definitely should be previewing all content before showing anyway.

Just paste the youtube link into the box and it will generate a safeshare link to play your video.
The safeshare link looks like this http://www.safeshare.tv/v/GaSRRXWCBtQ and works a treat.

Biological and Medical Animations

When I taught medical science last year I would have loved to have stumbled upon Penn State's Medical Animation Library. Here is a huge catalogue of flash animations to aid students learning. My medical science students' understanding and retention was greatly enhanced by using flash animations I incorportated into lessons.

The animations are grouped into topics which makes finding the right one a breeze:
Allergy and Immunology
Cancer
Childcare
Dermatology
Ear, Nose and Throat
Endocrinology
Eyes and Vision
Fitness
Gastroenterology
Neurology
Ob/Gyn
Orthapaedics
Pregnancy and Embryology
Pulmonary
Surgery
Urology

The range of topics makes this site useful for science, biology, health, P.E and child studies. They all come with captions so if you have a room of laptops and no headphones, the students can read the commentary.

Physics Videos

This 5 part video is from NASA on the Electromagnetic Spectrum.



This youtube is really good too, visible light is such a small pat of the spectrum!



Professor Jim Al-Khalili is a favourite physics presenter, this series is called "The Atom". I used parts 1 and 2 for relief lessons for my year 11 Physics class - also very relevant to chemistry. They are 44 minutes long each (I have only embedded the first part of each video)

Part 1 - The Clash of the Titans



Part 2 - The Key to the Cosmos



Part 3 - The Illusion of Reality



If you discover any of these links broken, please email me using the "Email the Author" form in the right hand column - thanks.

Psychology Drug Videos - Brain and Behaviour

National Geographic Drugged Series.
This video is not blocked outside the US (sadly most of their stuff is) and if you watch my embedded videos you don't have to watch the ads. (you do if you watch on the Nat Geo site) If you click on the "High on ..." links and click on the tabs there are particularly good infographics like this one.

Drugged: High on Marijuana 



Drugged: High on Cocaine



Drugged: High on Ecstasy



This is  an American 60 minutes story on students boosting their performance with ADHD drugs.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Spicynodes Mind Map

Spicynodes is another web 2.0 mind mapper, similar to Bubbl.us and Popplet. The finished mind map is engaging, but I don't find the interface as simple. There is some extra functionality, like the ability to insert hyperlinks. You can click on the nodes and it will open my most popular posts.




I would probably use spicynodes myself when I need a mindmapper that has hyperlink capability, however I probably wouldn't use it directly in the classroom.

Simulations from PhET

The University of Colorado have been making their PhET simulations (Physics Educucation Technology) since 2005. What make these sims particularly engaging is the sense of fun in some of them - for example in the projectile motion sim you can blow the pants off the statue of David. It never takes long for my students to figure that out!

You can run them straight from the web page, download individual sims or download the entire suite.
If you haven't looked for a while there are some excellent new sims - Build an Atom and Reactants, Products and Leftovers are two brilliant simulations that enable students to see the unseeable. I would definitely use them with year 9's and up. The sims come supported with teacher guides and worksheets, you can even submit your own worksheets.

 There are all manner of science and math simulations. In total 99 simulations available in an amazing array of languages. Subscribe to their newsletter.

Virtual Art Tour via Google

Google have used their StreetView technology to make some of the world best art galleries accessible to anyone with a computer connection with Art Project. You have a choice of just viewing the art work or virtually touring through. You can look at a floor plan so you won't get lost. The interface gives you a view of how the paintings appear in the gallery. The level of zoom is quite amazing, you can see every brush stroke. (see zoom below - not even at full zoom)

Starry Night - Vincent van Gogh

There is also information with every painting.

You can even create your own galleries, I can see this would be a very very cool toy for an art teacher.

How they made Google Art Project

Alice and Bob in a Physics Wonderland

Alice and Bob are two engaging cartoon characters that answer some of the mysteries of Physics in short videos - all downloadable thanks to the Perimeter Institute.

Why doesn't the Moon fall down?

Why is it dark at night?

There are others, see this page and download them.

The Power of Ideas page is very engaging, use the slider to flow through the ideas and click on videos and pdfs.


Check out all the Perimeter Institute's Teacher Resources for classroom videos, activities and worksheets on subjects as diverse as dark matter, GPS and quantum reality.

Paper Rater - Essay Checker

Paper Rater is an excellent resource for students and teachers. It is 100% free and works like this:
1) You paste your essay/prac/letter/email/job application/whatever in their search box
2) Fill in some boxes, year level, type of text, your reference list
3) Click "Get Report"

and you get a full report that highlights any problems (in a very engaging interface!)

 It checks your title, for plagiarism, spelling, grammar, word choice, style, vocabulary words and grade.

It even can help you increase you vocabulary by sending you to Vocab Builder.

Their blurb "PaperRater.com is a free resource, developed and maintained by linguistics professionals and graduate students. PaperRater.com is used by schools and universities in over 46 countries to help students improve their writing.
PaperRater.com combines the power of natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, information retrieval (IR), computational linguistics, data mining, and advanced pattern matching (APM). We offer the most powerful writing tool available on the internet today."

I tested this blog post and it gave me a B, however on the plus side it noted:
"Excellent work! Your usage of sophisticated words is on par with other well-written papers! Nevertheless, you may still wish to use our Vocab Builder to maintain your edge."

Test it and tell your students!

More Science Documentaries

The Science Documentaries site is dedicated to online science documentaries (funny that), specially selected to ensure there they don't contain psuedoscience, with thoughtful reviews added.

Today I watched Between the Folds, a documentary on origami - where art meets science.

Psychology Perception and Attention Videos

This series of videos have been produced by Simons and Levin. Enjoy.





I love Derren Brown's extended take on this.

DNA Videos and Animations

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the amazing depth and breadth of resources I find that I don't know where to start. But cyberspace is a lot like travelling the globe, there are so many places to visit and experiences to have you can't possibly do it all at once; you can only really scratch the surface in a lifetime.
There are so many excellent DNA/Biology sites

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) site has really excellent animations and video (download wmv or mov)

DNA tube has brilliant videos and animations sorted in topics and categories, fully searchable (not just DNA - chem and physics too).

Dolan DNA learning Centre

I have used several of their sites, like Genes to Cognition when teaching the brain in Psychology - the 3D brain is very impressive.

The Your Genes Your Heath site could be easily set for an assignment as an investigation into genetic diseases.
The DNAi site allows you to compile a "lesson" using Lesson Builder in the myDNAi site. You lesson is assigned a link which you can go back to again and again. This is something that I compiled as part of a relief lesson back in 2006 and it is still there! Or you can choose a premade lesson.

Do you remember the series DNA that came out in 2003 with ground breaking visualisations of transcription and translation? Watch the series on DailyMotion. (53 minutes per episode)
DNA - The secret of life
DNA - Playing God
DNA - Human Race
DNA - Curing Cancer
DNA - Pandora's Box

You can download them using the keepvid site.

Wolfram Alpha - The search engine that knows stuff.

Imagine a search engine that doesn’t know where websites are (like Google), but instead it knows stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. It knows how many, how far, where, what – it knows people and places, science and math. That is Wolfram Alpha.

What stuff do you want to know? Maybe....

• Biology: You want to know the genetic relationship between roundworms and flatworms or the nutritional information of a Big Mac
• Chemistry: You want to know the structure of benzene -type "benzene"
• Physics: You are setting a physics problem and you need to know the mass of an average car - type "mass of car"
• Geology: You want to know about recent local earthquakes - type "earthquakes in Australia in the last 5 years"

This page has lots more examples.

There is real time data as well - "Adelaide weather" provides more info than you can poke a stick at.

The most powerful features of this search engine is in maths - it is a computational knowledge engine - it can do all manner of maths and physics problems, AND show all the working steps. This "(x+5)*(2*x-3)" yields the graphs, roots and all sorts of information. Students doing homework may never have to think EVER AGAIN. That there is an iphone app means that students can solve problems instantly at their desk without having to think. I know a lot of maths teachers who would be unhappy with this revolution - but we must embrace change, work with change. Show students how to use the tool to check their work.

Introduction to Wolfram Alpha

View more presentations from Julie Starr.

60 Second Science video competition

 The 2011 COMPETITION OPENS ON January 31 2011
REGISTRATION Deadline - Friday 16 September 2011 5pm A E S T
UPLOAD VIDEO(s) - by Friday 28 October 2011 5pm AEST

The 2011 60 Second Science video competition is open! Free entry and over $10000 in prize money. Get your entire class to submit an entry, or with the new open category - make a video yourself!

Eight categories

• INTERNATIONAL OPEN : (any age, for non-school-age entrants, professional, amateur film-makers welcome)
• INTERNATIONAL PRIMARY/JUNIOR/ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Students
• INTERNATIONAL SECONDARY/ HIGH SCHOOL Students
• INTERNATIONAL LOTE -- (Produce a video with spoken soundtrack in a Language Other Than English - AND with English subtitles) - school students only

• AUSTRALIAN OPEN : (any age, for non-school-age entrants, professional, amateur film-makers welcome)
• AUSTRALIAN PRIMARY/JUNIOR/ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Students
• AUSTRALIAN SECONDARY/ HIGH SCHOOL Students
• AUSTRALIAN  LOTE -- (Produce a video with spoken soundtrack in a Language Other Than English - AND with English subtitles) - school students only

Move to the cloud

Schools spend thousands of dollars on learning management systems/intranets/servers … comprehensive solutions for schools to manage an internal online environment. Some LMS are free (like Moodle), some cost thousands.

Coming back to school in 2010 was chaotic as our eLearning portal crashed. All backups that were meant to easily resurrect the system in the event of such a crash - failed. It was then that I decided to ditch the eLearning portal once and for all and move to the cloud - for me that was Google Sites.

Benefits of moving to the cloud:

1) Your choice of portal to communicate with your students – blogger, google sites, wikispaces whatever.
2) Access to all your precious resources when you have moved on from your school. It must be heartbreaking to spend countless hours setting up on your schools LMS only to have to walk away from your hard work. Also all those emails lost to the schools server!
3) Your choice of the degree to which you wish to share your resources… your students, colleagues or the world. That most LMS are completely closed to the external environment does not help teacher to share beyond their school.
4) Promotes collaboration - it doesn't matter what operating system or software other people are using, anyone can collaborate with anyone else on the cloud.
5) Access from anywhere - the cloud is on the internet so can be accessed from anywhere - intranets are not always accessible.
6) The cloud is here there and everywhere - a single system failure will not cause you to lose data.
7) Small clouds are free ;-)

The time when the cloud saved my butt   

My email is in the cloud. Sure every day when I log on my email comes into my inbox to reside on my machine - but if my computer dies all my messages I ever received live somewhere in one of Google's servers stored in perpetuity. I had a request last year for an exam written in 2005, that I couldn't locate on my machine. I remembered I had emailed it back then - and hence was preserved in perpetuity. Found in the cloud!

So if schools throw away their servers and learning management systems and move to the cloud and use  solutions like Google Apps for Education, they no longer have to maintain their servers and software - saving time and manpower. If you organisation doesn't move to the cloud, your class can with wikispaces, google sites, etc - all for FREE!

Documentaries for the Classroom

Here are some documentaries I can thoroughly recommend. If they have a asterisks next to them I have shown them to a class. I found them all online -  download them for class viewing.

A brilliant madness (about John Nash – maths/psychology)

The race for absolute zero* (about breaking the temp barrier - physics)

Who killed the electric car* (about the ev1 – environmental)

An inconvenient truth* (Al Gore doco – environmental)

How Kevin Bacon cured cancer (about network theory - maths)

My Brilliant Brain series – Born Genius, Make me a Genius*( intelligence- psychology)

The boy with the incredible brain* (about Daniel Tammut, autistic savant - psychology)

Free eTextbooks - go paperless!

Amazon has reported that it has sold more Kindle ebooks than paperbacks in the US during the final three months of 2010. This is a trend that will continue; so what are the ramifications for education? 


eTextbook benefits:

• you can have copies at home or school.
• you don't have to lug around multiple large textbooks.
• easy to update to the latest edition.
• multimedia support - hyperlinks, videos, simulations.
• they can be FREE if you know where to look.

eTextbooks drawbacks

• you require hardware, either computers or eReaders to view the textbooks.
• if using computers to view eTextbooks you need to ensure students have access to powerpoints.
• not all people are comfortable reading on screens.

As schools shift to electronic devices they have significant challenges - cost, technical support, powerpoints availability, provision of secure lockers etc.


Many paper textbooks come with CD's and I have discovered that leaving them in the book is a bad idea as they do have a tendency to snap. I make sure I copy the CD onto my hard drive and I have a special folder set up in Documents called Textbooks.

In 2009 the Governator decreed that Californian students would no longer lug around textbooks The  California free digital textbook initiative has chosen CK-12 to be the portal for their text books.

"CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning through the FlexBook Platform™."

Benefits of Flexbooks: You can create your own library where you can edit, delete, share, and print your FlexBooks. You can download them for computers, iPad or Kindle. There are even teachers editions!

watch CK-12 video demo.

I used cK-12 as a textbook for my year 11 psychology class in 2009 in the topic of intelligence.
Other than cK-12, I have also downloaded the Light and Matter series by Benjamin Crowell for Physics classes.

My big tip - when viewing pdfs on a laptop - 

• Ctrl Shift + turns the page sideways
• Ctrl L makes the screen full size
• Use arrow keys to turn pages. 

Much better for ebook reading on a laptop!