Teach-nology technology resource

Today I had about ten minutes to prepare my lesson, I had to come up with an age appropriate graphing exercise. Google helped me to locate what I was looking for. Teach-nology had 40 different exercises in graphing I could have chosen from - I used a line graph with data I knew would form a straight line. There are plenty of worksheets and exercises that you can access for free. This is the data I used for my students.

There is no need to kill trees and spend time photocopying, you can use digital resources with a data projector like I did - I added a few questions on hypothesis and variables, got them to copy the table and graph the data. Teach-nology certainly seems to have a wide variety variety of worksheets in Math, Science, Art and Languages in all manner of topics.

Physics.org Resources for Physics teachers

Physics.org is a site designed to engage and stimulate interest in Physics. Two sections in particular would be useful to Physics and Science teachers - Discover and Explore.

Explore contains a searchable data base of resouces that is ranked in popularity. The launch page shows content that is relevant and ranked by popularity. The site asks people to submit web resources thay have found valuable to add to the catalogue.

Discover contains their own resources to stimulate interest in physics, including interactives, games and  videos of experiments you could do in class or at home.

The latest news gives teachers a glimpse at the forefront of physics:

Microscope Interactive

Before you let your students loose on the real deal, get them to use this microscope tutorial.

It shows the anatomy of a binocular microscope then guides the students through the steps in using a microscope. Students were instantly engaged in the interactive and were more confident in the use of their microscopes. It is equally as effective if done with a data projector, calling up students to navigate through the screens by manipulating the interactive microscope. I would definitely recommend this to any class about to embark on some microscopy.

Chemwars - sumo wrestling atoms

Chemwars is a game where you get to bet for or against the reactivity of metals. The metals then battle and  construct the activity series.

I could only get the program to work in Windows Explorer, it clearly is not made for Firefox. It shows real before and after shots of reactions, such as this before of an iron screw driver in copper sulfate. It is a short activity that may be a way to teach the reactivity series without using chemicals.

Periodic Table Games

Sheppard software offer numerous free flash games on the periodic table that are graded into levels. I will be definitely be trying these out with my year 9's as we start the periodic table this week.

They also have sound which is very handy when a student is trying to figure out how to say americium or praseodymium.

The various games tests the students knowledge of the symbols and position of various elements. 

I love showing the periodic table flash sung by Tom Leher.

Hippocampus - flash tutorials in most subjects

The Hippocampus website has scores of flash tutorials in a multitude of topics. This facility is made available to the public at no cost by NROC - the National Repository of Online Courses.

Topics include:

Algebra
American Government
Biology
Calculus
Environmental Science
Physics
Psychology
Religion
Statistics
US History

The flash tutorials can also be accessed via a "mini-site" a more student friendly. Here is the example of the Physics lessons available.

The flash interactives contain video and animations, as well as testing you on the materials before you move on to the next portion. They are easy to fast forward and replay. This is a first class resource for students who need assistance.

WeatherSpark - interactive weather graphs

WeatherSpark is a site that moulds vast amounts of data into easy to read graphs. You can interact with the graphs by panning and zooming to get the information for any weatherstation on the globe at any time in the last 50 years.

You can see temperature maximums, minimums, averages all displayed across time, as well as cloud and precipitation data. You can display it daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. You could analyse graphs across locations and time and draw inferences of latitudes and seasons.

Free Physics eTextbook

The People's Physics Book is an excellent free reource for students and teachers. The book contains numerical and conceptual problems, all with answers. It can be downloaded chapter by chapter or as a complete book.

The chapter list:


Ch 0.1: Introduction and Vision  (includes information on how to print books)
Ch 1: Units and Problem Solving
Ch 2: Energy Conservation
Ch 3: One Dimensional Motion
Ch 4: Two Dimensional and Projectile Motion
Ch 5: Newton's Laws
Ch 6: Centripetal Forces
Ch 7: Momentum Conservation
Ch 8: Energy and Force
Ch 9: Rotational Motion
Ch 10: Simple Harmonic Motion
Ch 11: Wave Motion and Sound
Ch 12: Electricity
Ch 13: Electric Circuits: Batteries and Resistors
Ch 14: Magnetism
Ch 15: Electric Circuits: Capacitors
Ch 16: Electric Circuits: Advanced Topics
Ch 17: Light
Ch 18: Fluids
Ch 19: Thermodynamics and Heat Engines
Ch 20: Special and General Relativity
Ch 21: Radioactivity and Nuclear Physics
Ch 22: Standard Model of Particle Physics
Ch 23: Feynman Diagrams
Ch 24: Quantum Mechanics
Ch. 25 Using Calculus with Physics(under construction)
Ch. 26 Global Warming
App. A: Numerical and Short Answers to Problems
App. B: Equations

Teaching Tsunamis and Earthquakes

With the tragedy unfolding in Japan, schools play an important role in educating students about the science behind earthquakes and tsunamis.


Tsunamis can be poorly understood by students as they are erroneously called tidal waves.
Flash animations are helpful in showing students how they arise, here are two:
Tsunami animation by Mindpath
Geoscience Place tsunami animation

The Physics of Tsunamis is a great site for senior students.

This tsunami worksheet which is suitable for a physics waves topic.



Here are some earthquake resources.
Map of earthquakes in the last week
United States Geological Survey map of earthquakes in the last 7 days
Edinburg Earth Observatory a great resource worth exploring.
Active volcano map
How a seismograph works - flash animation.
Tsunami monitoring - flash animation
Propagation of the boxing day tsunami - flash animation
Iknowthat.com - a flash animated site good for younger students to self-explore.

Scitable - Biology Resource

Scitable is an engaging resource for teachers and students of biology. The site says "Scitable is a free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world's leading publisher of science."
Major Topics covered include:
Genetics
Cell Biology
Ecology

The Spotlights section is particularly useful:
"Spotlights are focused explorations of key topics in science: current issues in the news, emerging lab techniques, thought leader perspectives, governmental policy, and a range of other subjects"

Each Spotlight page has an overview and links to resouces to other scitable pages, but also other sites such as Nova, NPR and DNAi.

Spotlights include Genomics, Heart Disease, Genetic Testing, Nanotechnology, Doping in Sport and many more. It may be a good place to start of your student have to choose a topic for an issues based assignment.

Google Streetview Parking Strategy

This week I was strategising where I could park for free near my University, not excited by the prospect of paying $1.10 an hour or $4.00 a day charged in the University car parks. The Uni is surrounded mostly by bush and I had already tried the only adjacent suburb and found unfriendly 1/2 or 2 hour parking zone for the entire suburb... not sufficient for my purposes.

That is where Google maps came in handy.

Happy Pi Day!

Hooray it is Pi day! If that isn't exciting enough it is also Albert Einstein's birthday. It is the perfect day to make a pie, providing it is circular.

Student Laboratory Safety Assessment

These day school labs are in OHWS overload. So it is a great idea to get the student do their own safety assessments before doing the practical.

Curriculum in Context

How often do you teach a unit that is not instantly recognisable as have a context? A topic title of "Motion in 2D" or "Kinematics and Dynamics" may not have the same instantly recognisable real world context as "Rocket Science".

Biology and Psychology Practical Resource - Serendip

Serendip is a site that has over 30 000 web pages devoted to biology and psychology education.

Google Image Swirl - Grouped Images

When looking for images it is frustrating to find an image that is similar, but not quite what you are looking for. Imagine a button that you could click that says "I want an image that looks like this" ... that is Google Image Swirl.

"Google Image Swirl organizes image search results based on their visual and semantic similarities and presents them in an intuitive exploratory interface." 

A Raft of Practical Ideas

RAFT stands for "resource area for teaching" which contains hundreds of practical ideas for teaching downloadable in pdf form.

"RAFT provides innovative project ideas, hands-on learning materials, professional development and teaching support to pre-K-12 classroom and after- school teachers, child care providers, and nonprofit community service groups."

Photosynth - Photo stitcher

Photosynth is a site by Microsoft that mashes images together and allows a complete stitch of multiple images. I was a bit disappointed because it doesn't flow smoothly from one image to the next like Clevr. It stitches images of varying perspectives which makes for a disjointed viewing experience if you click on the photos to navigate.

Sweet Search Engine for Students

Sweat Search is a search engine that will only point to websites that have been evaluated and approved by research experts, librarians and teachers. Rather than ranking the results by popularity, they ensure their results are ranked by credibility.

Create a Motivational Poster

The Motivator site from Big Huge Labs lets you make your own motivational poster. Students could use it to make a poster quickly in class or for homework. It doesn't need to be motivational, it could be demonstrating a science concept or portraying a historical moment in time. This poster uses a screenshot from ChemEd DL.

Biology Animations

I have previously posted about the Dolan DNA Learning Centre, they have a collection of self paced learning flash animations on an array of topics such as:

cloning
restriction enzymes
gel electrophoresis
PCR 
stem cell lines

The Benefits of Chewing Gum While Studying

I started tutoring students over a decade ago and always recommended that my students chew gum for several reasons. It stopped them from yawning as it kept them more alert with the secondary benefit of curing any breath problems they may have had!

Physics Resources Sites for Students

Two sites: Khan Academy and Learn Physics blog.

I often give students links to tutorials and other resource materials so they can conquer an area of difficulty in Physics. I takes time to find good resources and so it is great to see a compilation of different resources that students can access over the internet.
The Khan Academy has ramped up their YouTube tutorials since being recipients of a Google Grant of $2 million USD to further their not for profit education work.

Construct a Stirling Engine

I was intrigued when I saw a clip on the instructables website of a Stirling engine. Instructables have all sorts of projects and may just be the place to direct a science minded student to if they have to do the Personal Project (IBMYP) or the Research Project (new SACE).