Dorman’s Trouvailles

There is a new series on the Discovery Channel that has me hooked, Doing DaVinci.

Leonardo da Vinci was the original Renaissance Man — master of science, master of the arts, master of war. His revolutionary designs were the most advanced weapons of their day and were capable of unparalleled destruction. Yet no proof exists that they were ever constructed.

In Doing DaVinci a team of expert builders will try to construct these unique inventions using only materials available in da Vinci’s own time. It’s a modern twist on the classics, but will these outrageous machines work? Or were Leonardo’s genius ideas better left in the history books?

Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PT

This series is devoted to testing the plans and inventions imaged by Leonardo da Vinci hundreds of years ago.  There are also some terrific interactive resources available online:

• Da Vinci Timeline
• Leonardo’s War Machines
• Da Vinci Video Highlights
• Da Vinci Personality Quiz
• Da Vinci Puzzles
• How Da Vinci Works

If you are interesting in exploring the world of Da Vinci with your students, be sure to check out the resources in DE streaming and DE Science.  In streaming teachers and students can access 24 full videos, 53 video segments, 9 articles, and 18 images.  Here are a few highlights:

• Achievement of Leonardo da Vinci – video segment
• Leonardo da Vinci – full video
• Leonardo da Vinci – article

DE Science subscribers can access 3 full videos, 8 video segments, and 3 images.  One of my favorites are the three video clips about da Vinci in Understanding Robotics.

EdSITEment has a series of great lesson plans that are part of “Leonardo da Vinci: Creative Genius.”

Science NetLinks also has a few lesson resources for teaching about da Vinci:

• Leonardo’s Machines
• Exploring Leonardo
• Mona Lisa’s Smile

So, if you are looking to bring one of the Renaissance’s greatest thinkers to life in your classroom or you are brushing up on your history for a Dan Brown novel, check out some of these lesson resources and Doing DaVinci on the Discovery Channel.

I admit that I am a bit of a Twitter junkie.  It’s not like I get the shakes when I am away from Twitter for too long (though, TwitterBerry may have something to do with that . . .)  Really, Twitter is one of the primary places I go to learn.  I have an AMAZING professional learning network populated primarily by Discovery Educators and Twitter is one of our primary sharing platforms.  Sometimes I just jump into the Twitter stream and immerse myself in collective knowledge.   Other times I enter with a specific purpose of seeking answers or suggestions.  It’s a bit like open swim verses lap swimming at the local pool.

Twitter polls are a terrific way to accomplish the latter.  I have used twtpoll numerous times to gather information in a highly visual format.  I have found twtpoll to be very effective in gathering information quickly and succinctly.

There are a couple of other really good Twitter polling applications:

PollDaddy Twitter Polls

StrawPoll

All of these polling applications are simply a way to visualize the results you might receive with @responses on Twitter.  One advantage is that respondents have anonymity which, for some questions, may increase your response percentage.  Plus, you “see” the results instantly without having to filter through responses over time.

So, if you are looking for a quick way to harness the collective intelligence of your professional learning community on Twitter, try out one of these free polling applications.

[Note: Cross posted on Cliotech]

I’ve been looking for services that could possibly step in where GCast starting charging and phone.io might just fill that void. I already use drop.io constantly to share resources with others and collab.io for virtual meetings.

phone.io is a service of drop.io designed for recording voicemail directly to the web, and podcasting. In two clicks you get a custom phone line and record MP3s instantly to the web. You can then share via web (URL), email, iTunes, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook ‘outputs’.

Make a phone.io ‘drop’ for voicemail and podcast now

drop.io
phone.io
podcasting
audio
RSS
Twitter
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