Winter Olympics

I admit it- I am an Olympics Geek. I will plan the next two weeks of my life around the Winter Games schedule. If you are interested in any of what will be taking place in Vancouver, following are ways to bring the Games into the classroom

• NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, has teamed up with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to produce a 16-part video series focusing on the science behind the games. Scientific principles are explored in the new video series, called "The Science of the Olympic Winter Games." The videos illustrate how scientific principles apply to competitive sports. In each video segment, an NSF-supported scientist explains a particular scientific principle, while Olympic athletes describe how these principles apply to their respective sports. The science is explained by capturing the athletes’ movements with a state-of-the-art, high-speed camera which has the ability to capture movement at rates of up to 1,500 frames per second. This allows frame-by-frame illustrations of Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum, friction, drag, speed, velocity, and other scientific concepts
  
  
• Canadian Olympic School Program has been providing teachers with free classroom resources since 1988.



• The New York Times has two sites that are pretty cool:
  

One takes a look at the Olympic torch over time
The other takes a look at venues of the Games

• The Associated Press has/will have a great highlight/recap site
  
  
• Winter Olympics: Sport By Sport” is a feature from ESPN. It provides a short, accessible slideshow and description for each sport played at the Olympic games.
  
  

(Thanks to Linda Casey and Larry Ferlazzo)

Fake facebook profiles

The web site READ WRITE THINK states that their mission is to "provide educators, parents, and afterschool professionals with access to the highest quality practices in reading and language arts instruction by offering the very best in free materials." The site is a wealth of resources-for Classroom Activities, Professional Development, Afterschool activities.

What I discovered while sorting through all of the resources is a free program called the Profile Publisher. Profile Publisher allows students to create and print mock-ups of social network profiles. Students can create profiles for themselves or for fictional characters. Profile Publisher includes fields for "about me," "blog posts," "interests," and all of the other profile fields typically found on a social network. Completed profiles can be printed-but not saved.

The Profile Publisher could also be used by history teachers to have students create profiles of historical characters, by English teachers to create profiles of book characters, by PE teachers to create profiles of athletes-past and present, by science teachers to create profiles of scientists... get the picture?

I created a profile for Harry Potter-You can find it here

Let's talk FACEBOOK

"Facebook.com exploded out of a Harvard dorm room and hit the mainstream stage. It has grown exponentially since its launch and the number of people using the service has consistently doubled every six months.Chances are the majority of your real-world friends have a Facebook account." Here are two options for getting to know the internet phenomenon :

"Facebook for grownups" is a practical guide to getting started with Facebook and unlocking some of its more powerful features for those who are just getting started.

For those of you who are already users, the Finer Points of Facebook demonstrates everything from untagging yourself from unflattering photos, super charging your privacy settings, creating your own Facebook family page, adding a Facebook badge to your site or blog and even hiding parts of your profile from certain people, like your boss, your co-workers... or your Mom

Martin Luther King Resources

Enclosed are resources the might be useful as we approach Martin Luther King day.

* Here is the I Have a Dream Speech from a resource other than YouTube.

* A short King biography, this time from the Library of Congress.
* The Seattle Times has an exceptional special report on King.
* There’s a good CNN Special Report on King.
* A short video of King from the Biography Channel.
* Scholastic has information and a slideshow at The Legacy Of A Leader.
* Time Magazine has a slideshow on King’s life.
* The Atlanta Journal Constitution has online videos, a timeline and other good resources.
* National Geographic has an online video about King.
* EL Civics has a online lesson on King.
* The Associated Press has a number of multimedia resources on King.
* The Atlanta Constitution has an interactive reviewing King’s life.
* Enchanted Learning has some very simple resources on King.
* The Orange County Register has an interactive graphic about King.
* The King Center has a site that provides audio of King’s famous “The Drum Major Instinct” speech. In addition to the audio, it shows the text (in an artistic sort of way) on the screen.
* Here’s a nice color slideshow of King’s life.
* The Do’s And Don’ts of Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr’s Legacy from Teaching Tolerance. It has some excellent guidelines for teachers.
* CBS has an interactive of famous quotes from King and other information.
* MSNBC has a slideshow on King’s life.
* The New York Times has another slideshow.
* Here’s another good interactive timeline of his life.
* Honoring Dr. King is a slideshow from CBS showing celebrations of his birthday throughout the country in 2009

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo a teacher @Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California.

Great clip art site

We all know about google images and/or other sites that allow searches for images or clip art. We also know about the pit falls of this kind of search and some of the inappropriate photos or images that may find their way into a search. If you are into clip art, here is a really nice alternative.

Free Clip Art by Phillip Martin is a pretty impressive site for clip art that’s free for non-profit use. The art seems a cut above many other clip art sites I’ve seen, and is categorized by content area- there are some very interesting representations of concepts- Ever wanted to demonstrate "humidity" - there's clip for that on this site!

Check it out-it's worth a look

Acer and Intel K-12 School Library Makeover Contest

In a completely self service promotion, Acer and Intel are currently accepting nominations for a K-12 school library "makeover." The winning school will receive ten Acer Timeline laptops and two desktops. I'm not sure if twelve computers constitutes a full "makeover," but it's certainly better than no computers. To enter you must submit an essay describing what makes your school great and why your school should be chosen. You can also submit videos and images to supplement your entry. The entry deadline is January 17th. You can read all of the contest details and enter here.

How 'bout a little love for your "not so ordinary media center"