Science in Action

Homework: Your assignment tonight is to share at least three things that you have learned at the Discovery Educator Network Science Institute by posting a comment to this blog post.

Extra Credit: Share a resource, website, or application that you think other attendees will find useful by posting a link to wiki.

As part of the Discovery Educator Network we want to provide an avenue to share resources within our community of educators.  In order to allow our attendees to share favorite resources and sites I have created a wiki to post your notes, resources and files.  Please join wikispaces to be allowed to post and I will accept your request to share resources.  The wiki site is http://connectedk12.wikispaces.com/Science+Institute.  For our homework assignment tonight please go here.  We look forward to sharing more tomorrow.

I am constantly amazed by how little is known about the way our brain works, but I am equally impressed by how much we are learning every day.  Just today I was reading an article that that talks about brain research around why people walk in circles when they are lost, why some people (myself included) cannot seem to hold a tune, as well as interesting information about our sense of smell.  I immediately started wondering what resources we have in Discovery Education Science to help explain how the brain works to our students.  For our elementary students I found a couple of exciting explorations called Nerves and Nervous System that will help your students learn the importance of different parts of the brain.  For our middle school students we have The Brain and Your Nervous System and Listen Up which take a closer look at the role the brain plays in our everyday lives.  With how much we continue to learn with today’s technological advances I can only imagine what we will learn in the future as technology continues to improve, but that is only we have future neuroscientist that will continue the work of neuroscientist today.  If you are interested in the original article that got “my brain” thinking you can find it here.  Have fun helping your students use their brain to explore the same.

Discovery has launched a new website called Discovery Parent Corner.  The website is designed to “Parent Corner provides parents and others a powerful suite of free digital resources that can help bridge the gap between home and school, and ensures that parents and other caregivers have the digital tools they need to help students continue to learn once they leave the classroom.” (Dale Fulton, Senior Vice President of Curriculum Development, Discovery Education).

The site offers parents digital content that engages learners of all ages.  The site resources include:

Motivation Station - Offering tips and suggestions about fitting in at school, managing homework, dealing with sibling rivalry, and more.

Homework Help - Providing  thousands of online videos, simulations, texts, and links – are useful study aids that engage students of all ages in learning.

WebMATH - A digital tool that generates answers to specific math questions and problems, WebMATH answers are generated and displayed in real-time, demonstrating how the solution was reached, after a user types in their math problem and clicks “solve.”

Head over there and check it out.  Once you see the powerful tools available for parents with children of all ages I feel certain you will want to add it your class website, blog, or wiki.

On Wednesday, August 12th at 4am ET the Perseid Meteor Shower will be visible.  The Perseids appear to come from the constellation Perseus but are actually bits of debris from the Swift-Tuttle comet, which has been orbiting the sun for centuries. The Earth passes through these streams of shooting stars every August.  The key to a good view will be finding an area with little light pollution.  Astronomers expect up to 200 meteors per hour, although many of the fainter fireballs will not be visible due to moonlight.  If you want to help your students better understand what meteors are or how meteor showers occur check out the great content on Discovery Education Science.

Google Earth continues to impress me with the features they add.  If you want to experience what the Apollo astronauts experienced then you have everything you need.  With Discovery Education Science you have nearly 40 video segments from the missions themselves that you and your students can watch.  With Google Earth Moon you can:

• Take tours of landing sites, narrated by Apollo astronauts
• View 3D models of landed spacecraft
• Zoom into 360-degree photos to see astronauts’ footprints
• Watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions

Now if you really want to enhance your experiences your students can embed the videos from Discovery Education Science onto the Apollo sites provided by Google Earth.  You and your students can watch each mission from start to finish and then experience the sights from the moon.  If you do not have access to Google Earth in your classroom, do not dispair.  You can still experience the sites by going to Google Moon.   This will not provide th same 3D experience as Google Earth and it is not possible o embed video, but it will work for those without Google Earth.

It is hard to believe it has been 40 years since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon.  What is next for mankind.? Do we head back to the moon or do we head to Mars?  These are he questions scientist and scholars have been asking and will continue to ask for years to come.  For those curious the last manned trip to the moon was on December 11, 1972.  For those who remember the first landing on July 20, 1969 it is amazing to hear how riveted the world was by this amazing feat.  If you have never had the pleasure of talking to someone who remembers that day, take the time and sit down with someone who does.  It is an amazing experience to see their eyes light up as they tell their story of that day.  For those you who would like to learn what scientist have learned from our visits to the moon you can check out are great interactive video called “The Moon, it’s Composition, and and Origins”.

As I read a discussion on wind power the other day I started thinking about how little our students understand the concept of alternative energy.  In Discovery Education Science there is a great virtual lab called WOW! Windmills.  This is a great lab for students to explore how the location of windmills can effect the power being generated, but I thought there might be more students could to explore the concept once they have a greater understading of wind power.  As I searched for some ideas I found a great lesson from the UK that showcased the power of blending science with Google Earth.  The resources and image are from a site called Juicy Geography and is an example of students researching a proposed Wind Farm in England to and providing the students with all of the data and concerns to help develop their discussions on the proposed wind farm.  What I loved was that students created the wind farm virtually in Google Earth using Sketchup.  To see their creation download the kml file.

I found plenty of other possibilities for bringing Google Earth into the Science classroom as well.  For some examples check out these sites:

Designing and Creating Earth Science Lessons

Google Earth - Earth Science Directory of Resources

Earth Learning Idea

Due the popular response from the comic life post.  I decided to share my full presentation “Learning Through the Funnies” from our NECC pre-con.  In the session I shared with teachers how they can use such sites as GoAnimate, Xtranormal, Pixton, and Comic Life in their everday activities with students.  The one below is from Xtranormal.  It is very basic, but shows the power of using the green screen feature of Xtranormal and video content from Discovery Education Science.  You can find the other examples I shared as well as my full presentation in MediaShare.

Also keep an eye out for a special webinar series that will highlight new features within Discovery Education Science.  I expect to announce dates and times by the end of this week.

Are you or your students a fan of the Sunday funnies?  Check out Comic Life for a new way to engage your students with curriculum content.  As I started playing with Comic Life I found an amazing collection of science resources created by students.  I also found a wonderful collection of templates that help get you started.  With the great collection of images correlated to curriculum units within Discovery Education Science get a trial of Comic Life and give it a try.