Northern Kentucky University

Activities for kids: Montréal Science Centre

http://www.montrealsciencecentre.com/kids.html

The Montréal Science Centre's Kids section of their website has some fantastic games and simulations that encourage kids to "embrace interactive challenges", and can shed light on topics adults will find interesting too. Visitors will find that many different topics are explored, including implementing sustainable international development on a natural disaster-hit island in the game called "Sayansi". Visitors hoping to be future forensic scientists or fans of the CSI TV series will enjoy "Interactive File on Criminalistics", which explores the autopsy of a murder. This game won an education prize in 2005, and is suitable for ages 10 and up. The "36 Solutions" game requires visitors to play brief games to reveal a modern invention, and hear what it's about. One of the games revealed an image of a freezer pop that was made of cough medicine and flavoring in order to make medicine more palatable to kids. The narrator emphasizes that the freezer pop is in medical, tamper-proof packaging, so kids don't mistake it in the freezer for a traditional popsicle. There are at least half a dozen other games to play on this site, and all are well worth exploring. [KMG]

Cool Science [Flash Player]

http://www.hhmi.org/coolscience/index.html

Science is quite cool, but you don't need to tell this to the dedicated teamat the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Their website, Cool Science,entertains questions of all kinds, encourages young scientists to "get theirhands dirty", and also provides educators with a range of resources,including interactive media features, lesson plans, and lab exercises. Thesematerials are contained with six primary sections: "For Educators","Biointeractive", "For Curious Kids", and "Ask A Scientist". Educators ofall stripes can use the "For Educators" area to focus in on resourcesorganized by type, topic, grade level, and also to sign up for the resourcesRSS feed. Moving on, the "Biointeractive" area features archived videolectures, virtual labs, and another series of animations on stem cells,cancer, and immunology. There's a great deal to explore here, and it's asite that anyone with an interest in science will want to share with others.[KMG]

Expert Voices Gateway

http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/

Expert Voices Gateway

http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/

Expert Voices is a "science teaching information exchange" sponsored by the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). The topics covered are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and it's geared towards teachers of all levels, as well as students. The blogs are divided up into three sections: "Recent Posts", "Who Says", and "Hot Topics". "Recent Posts" are, as they sound, the most recent entries added to blogs, with a description of the entry, as well as the blog to which it was posted. "Who Says" lists the names of active blogs, sorted by audience level including "K12 Teachers", "University Faculty", "Librarians", "NSDL Community", and "Informal Learners". Some of the blogs fall into more than one of the aforementioned audience categories. Helpfully, there a "Larger Text" option is provided on the top of the far right hand side of every page. [KMG]

Exploratorium: Teacher Institute: Podcasts [iTunes]

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ti/podcasts/index.php

Created by science teachers for science teachers, the Teacher Institute Podcasts are five-minute podcasts that give educators science facts, science history, and pedagogy tips for new teachers. The podcasts are hosted by the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and support for the project comes from the National Science Foundation, The Noyce Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and others. Visitors can browse through the podcast series, and they will find thoughtful and fun suggestions on how to make a straw oboe, how to better manage the classroom, and how to build a Brazilian instrument called the cuica. Also, visitors can read up on the Teacher's Institute's summer institute program for science educators and also sign up to receive new podcasts via iTunes or RSS. [KMG]

Introducing the AMSER Science Reader Monthly

http://www.amser.org/AMSER--ScienceReader.php

Internet Scout is pleased to announce the monthly publication of the AMSER Science Reader Monthly. The AMSER SRM provides readers with a useful online collection of information about a particular topic related to applied math and science by combining freely available articles from popular journals with curriculum, learning objects, and web sites from the AMSER portal. The AMSER Science Reader Monthly is free to use in the classroom and educators are encouraged to contact AMSER with suggestions for upcoming issues or comments and concerns at info@amser.org. This month's AMSER Science Monthly Reader topic is Carbon Trading. The AMSER SRM can also be found in the About section on the AMSER (http://amser.org) homepage.

LearningScience

http://www.learningscience.org/index.htm

Using the National Science Education Standards as their benchmark, the Learning Science organization has developed this site to bring hundreds of science-based learning tools to the general public. The LearningScience organization is a collaborative project created by individuals at the College of Education at Temple University, George Mehler, and teachers at the Central Bucks School District in Pennsylvania. Visitors to the site will notice that the materials are divided into seven primary sections, including "Physical Science", "Life Science", and "Science & Society". Within each section, visitors can browse through the teaching resources, which include interactive web-based lessons, pedagogical tools, and links to external resources created by organizations such as PBS and Rice University. One section is worth singling out for special attention: "Tools to Do Science". Here visitors will find printable rulers, a printable protractor, a stop watch, and printable graph paper. Finally, visitors can search the entire site via a convenient search engine and also send along their own comments. [KMG]

Mobilizing Minds: Teaching Math and Science in the Age of Sputnik

http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibition.cfm?key=38&exkey=1051

In October 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to successfully orbit the earth. With its distinctive "beep", it was a very real manifestation of the Soviet Union's growing influence in the realms of science and technology. In the United States, it spurred educators and others to create new and compelling ways to get young people interested and passionate about these fields. This fun and engaging online exhibit created by the National Museum of American History offers an overview of some of these new and emerging educational tools, which included textbooks, diagrams, hands-on activities, and even such seemingly common- place items as slide rules. These items (and much more) are contained within sections like "The Cold War and Sputnik", "Excitement", and "Curricula-Novelty and Diffusion". [KMG]

Museum of Science and Industry: Online Science

http://www.msichicago.org/online-science/

The Online Science website created by the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is for those visitors who are too far away, too busy, or too wary of Chicago traffic to visit the Museum. There are "Videos", "Activities" and "Podcasts", which cover the cute, the gooey, and the awe-inspiring in science. The video of "Baby Chicks Hatching" is a minute-and-a-half of rooting for life, and it was filmed in the Museum's own baby chick hatchery. The "Activities" area may seem geared towards kids, but the timeless scientific concepts, and some new ones, will refresh and stimulate the memories of any adult. Visitors will love "Simple Machines", the tale of Twitch an adorable, lazy, red blob with legs, who has work to do at the Museum, but wants to use as little force as possible to do it. This game teaches about planes, pulleys and levers, accompanied by a charming soundtrack. The podcasts are lectures by people involved in and behind the exhibits at the Museum, and include topics such as the repairing the Hubble telescope, human longevity, tornado science, and the science workforce.[KMG]

National Science Foundation: Classroom Resources [pdf]

http://www.nsf.gov/news/classroom/

The Classroom Resources section of the National Science Foundation's website has a collection of materials for school teachers, students, and parents of students. The lessons are suitable for grades K-12, higher education, and lifelong learners, and they are drawn predominantly from the National Science Digital Library. Visitors can choose from the range of research topics by clicking on the links in the middle of the homepage. The available topics range from "Astronomy & Space" to "Chemistry & Materials" to "Nanoscience". Visitors interested in the issue of educating girls in science and math, or the history of women in the sciences would do well to take a look at the "Computing" and "Physics" topics for links to such information. In all of the twelve research topics, there is a link at the end of the list of resources to an overview of the research that the National Science Foundation is doing in the selected area. For instance, in the "Earth & Environment Research Overview" link, the major questions that are being studied by the NSF are posed in the form of clickable links, such as "How can organisms live without sunlight?" or "What part do we play in the Earth's changing climate?". [KMG]

NOVA Teachers

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers

The NOVA Online: Teachers site has expanded greatly as of late. Visitors to the site will immediately notice the "Watch, Interact, Explore" section, which allows interested parties to access short video clips and interactive features culled from NOVA program webpages. The materials here are all tied to state educational standards, and visitors can browse the subject headings, which include anthropology, forensic science, and space science. The "Technology" area has some great features in particular, including "Inside a Solar Cell" and a bit titled "Killer Microbe", where visitors learn how biotechnology is used to analyze the evolution of a harmless bacterium into a highly drug-resistant one. Finally, visitors can also sign up for their weekly email bulletin.

Resource: Teaching High School Science

http://www.learner.org/resources/series126.html

Both new and experienced science high school teachers will find something of interest within this six-part series created by WGBH Boston. The creation of the program was supported by the Annenberg Media organization, and visitors can view all of these programs in the comfort of their home (or classroom). As the program site notes “The Teaching High School Science library will help teachers integrate national science standards and inquiry learning into their curricula.” The programs include classrooms investigating chemical reactions, experiments involving crickets, and explorations into how the Mars landscape may have formed. After viewing these programs, visitors can also view a list of related programs that are also made available as part of the Annenberg Media’s online video library. [KMG]

Science, Art and Technology

http://www.artic.edu/aic/education/sciarttech/

The Art Institute of Chicago's education section of their website "began as a year-long course offered…to Chicago Public School science teachers interested in exploring the relationship between science and art within a museum setting." The website has six different lessons encompassing several different scientific disciplines, including "Art and Astronomy", "Perception, Light, and Color", and "The Chemistry and Physics of Light and Color". At the top of the page links to "Lesson Plans", "Student Projects", "Self-Guides", and "Books and Media" are also available. The "Self-Guides" are "guides for museum visits", and address concepts such as color and pigment in paintings, as well as particular artists' styles. "The effects of acid rain on stone sculpture" is one a fascinating lesson plan where students study the effects of acid rain on sculptures they make. The "Student Projects" tab has some great examples of charts that were made by classes to summarize what they had learned for the chosen lesson plan. As the site indicates, determining how to authenticate paintings was a popular lesson plan for chemistry classes. [KMG]

Skylight: The Science Centre for Learning and Teaching [pdf]

http://www.skylight.science.ubc.ca/

Established in 2001 at the University of British Columbia, the Science Centre for Learning and Teaching was created in order to create "an environment that supports reflective science teaching and learning practices." While Skylight's work is primarily focused on working on improving these efforts at the University of British Columbia, they have also created a number of online resources designed for science teachers everywhere. Perhaps one of the best resources on the entire site is the "Teaching Large Classes" area. Within this section, visitors can find highlights from the research literature on teaching, descriptions of practical strategies to enhance learning outcomes, video clip demonstrations, and a selection of links to other relevant resources. There are even other features worth perusing, such as the document "Why Calculus Workshops Really Work" and an interactive presentation on how to create a highly interactive classroom. [KMG]