I just came across an interactive Periodic Table. When clicked each element pops up with information. For example the information on calcium reads:
Calcium may make you think of chalk and bones, but in pure form it is a firm, silvery metal that reacts slowly with water to give off hydrogen gas. It is rarely seen and has few applications in metallic form.
Several grad students from the University of Alabama are in Antarctica and they’re blogging about their experiences. Also, they’re posting photos of their experiences on Flickr. It may be of interest to some students to see science in action.
On a technical note, their feed shows up in my news reader but the links don’t work. Hopefully they’ll get that fixed soon.
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In keeping with my recent post about simulations, I’ve been looking at some simulation and game sites. The Nobel Prize Website has several educational games dealing with lasers, conductive polymers, international trade and more. I’ve only looked at a couple of the games but they look to be geared to upper elementary and middle school students.
If you’re attending my What’s Up With Wikis session today, you’ll find links and notes at the ISB Tech Pioneers wiki.
In the March 2007 issue of Edutopia, Marc Prensky writes about the usefulness and importance of using simulations in the classroom. In the article he states that
Computer-simulation technology is a way of looking at objects or systems that encourage a learner not only to wonder, “What would happen if . . . ?” but also to try out those alternatives virtually and see the consequences. It is a way for learners to acquire experience about how things and systems in the world behave, without actually touching them.
He calls simulations “interactive pretending.” After making his case for using simulations in the classroom, he outlines why simulation use is not widespread. Reasons include,
Finally, he outlines several ways to “eliminate the barriers” to the use of simulations.
His article is well worth a read. I followed a link to another of Prensky’s articles A Side of Sims which has many useful links.
Jakob Nielsen suggests that there is value in teaching students skills that they can use immediately but that we should be careful. We should not teach skills that will change as soon as a software company updates their program. Instead we should be teaching students “deeper concepts that will benefit them forever.”
He outlines those concepts as:
After my last post Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us I scrolled down to see that since the video was posted to YouTube a month ago, it’s been viewed 1,554,437 times. There have been 3,916 comments posted on YouTube. (That doesn’t included blog posts like this one.) And it’s been “favorited” 16, 583 times. That’s a bunch. When does a video on the web become mass media? When does it reach critical mass?
U.S. teens now live in a world in which the Internet, cell phones, text messaging and other technology dominate their communication and are an integral part of life as they understand it.
Okay, that’s not exactly earth shattering news but the pole does have some interesting statistics regarding the way teens view and use communication tools like cell phones, IM and social networking sites. The press release is available here and as a pdf at Harris Interactive’s website.
