SMARTboard resources-Science

Sometimes, I just stumble onto a great resource.....Today's is such a stumble. I realized that I hadn't included Science in a post of late, so I began looking... Came upon Great Barr School, a science speciality school in the UK. They seem to be working in concert with a web design group (Freezeray.com)to offer a bank of imaginative, highly visual teaching-aids for use with SMARTBoards . The resources use both animations and drag and drop interactivity and would be terrific in the SMART lab or as a demo in the classroom. As you take a look at the site-click all of the tabs and scroll through whole pages - There is a lot of info here. Topics include Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Investigation, Technology, Scientific Literacy.

PE/Health-Wellness may find pieces of interests here as well:

Here is a look at how the dual muscles work in opposition - use your cursor to move the arm

http://www.freezeray.com/flashFiles/antagonisticPair.swf

Understanding the Economic Crisis

The current economic crisis is one of those topics that continues to be a part of daily living and is challenging at best to understand. Thanks to Richard Byrne, following are two really good resources for teaching and understand what has and is happening.

"Reuters has created an interactive timeline of the 2008/2009 financial crisis. The timeline begins in September 2008 and runs through today. Each element on the timeline links to a news article, image, or video about the financial crisis. You can browse the timeline as-is or narrow your viewing by selecting one of five topics; Living, Money, Reckoning, Rescue, or Work." There is a really good intro video that is a look at how all of this has affected people around the world.

Along with this resource, take a look at this video: Economics 101.

Place Spotting - Online seaching

Place Spotting is a website of pictorial geographic riddles. The site is based on the Google Earth platform. Student or teachers can create their own geographic riddles or try to solve riddles created by others. This is a fun way to teach or reinforce geography lessons or other kinds of lessons where a location, site or destination are used. A teacher could write their own riddle giving clues based on information taught in class. While solving a riddle on Place Spotting students are learning how manipulate Google Earth. When you visit the site, you will view a split screen. On the top is a location, and generally there are a few clues--The "game" is to figure out that locale and duplicate it on the lower map.

This would be a fun way to teach or reinforce lessons that incorporate geography. It is simple for teachers or students to create their own "spot". Students can locate historical buildings, geographic features, or sites from a book that they are reading, - AND for the Foreign Languages- "spots" can be created or searched in 14 different language(Remarkably, it works without having the Google Earth program downloaded.)

I created a "spot"- see how good you are(For those of you who view this outside of the PSHS learning community-this will be difficult)