EDheads- Activate your mind

Let's talk about Edheads. A site that provides various interactive activities that would be perfect on a SMARTBoard or AirSlate. Edheads has created unique, educational web experiences designed to make the featured concepts understandable using the power and interactivity of the Internet. Adding these activities to a SMARTboard or AirSlate adds an extra dimension.

Currently these high quality activities are free. Note that there are ads on the site(They are trying to remain free!) "Edheads helps students learn through educational games and activities designed to meet state and national standards. We partner with various school systems in the United States, which help us research, design and test our activities every step of the way!"

The front page features activities the likes of: Design a Cellphone, Virtual Hip Replacement surgery, Simple Machines, Weather and Crash Scene Investigation. Teacher guides are available for each activity. All of the activities include some additional work-research, reviewing research, interviews as well as an evaluation of results.

While some of it looks a bit elementary, I can assure you that viewing the photos of an actual hip replacement is not for the faint of heart!

It is worth your time to take a look at the activities-Enjoy!

Using Google Docs for creating quizzes

I continue to be of the opinion that someday Google will rule the world- That said, following is just another way that Google makes something else simple:

You can use Google Forms for giving short multiple choice quizzes. You create the quizzes in Google Forms, post them on a blog or web page, students take the quiz , and their answers appear in an easy-to-grade spreadsheet. Attached is a slideshow with directions for creating and embedding quizzes using Google Forms.

Most importantly, you need a Google account- If you don't have one--Get one!! It may be the most useful thing that you do today!

Math Fun Facts

The Harvey Mudd College Mathematics Department has created a Math Fun Facts resource site that I have to admit is WAY over my head! They explain: "This archive is designed as a resource for enriching your math courses and nurturing your interest and talent in mathematics! Each Math Fun Fact is a math puzzle or short article that contains a cool mathematics idea. You can learn about the mathematics of things like card shuffling to poker to computer vision to fractals to music, just to name a few. This makes great enrichment material for gifted math students or problem-solving groups."

They list ALGEBRA, CALCULUS, GEOMETRY. NUMBER THEORY, and PROBABILITY among the areas of "fun facts". You can also search by "Easy, Medium and Advanced" difficulty.

I have to admit that I have been fascinated by how many everyday examples they bring to fun facts-- Here are great responses to the age old retort: "When am I ever going to use this stuff?"

Harvey Mudd College is a member of The Claremont Colleges in Claremont, California

September 11th Remembered

Tomorrow is the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. History.com has some videos that should help your students understand what happened on that day and the longer term ramifications of the events.
There are also some interactive activities and maps available. Finally, there is a nice summary page that categorizes the day into: People and Groups, Themes, and Events.

Many of our students were too young in 2001 to fully understand what was happening on September 11. The videos and maps from History.com provide some good background information that you can build on for classroom discussion.

LANGUAGE GRAPHICS

With kudos to the Cool Infographics blog, linked are two interesting graphics produced by PS Translation Services.


The first is titled The Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World, a train or subway map of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Each track on the map represents one of twelve languages. Each station on each track indicates a country in which that language is widely spoken. Seems a cool representation of language throughout the world.


Scrolling down from the subway map gives you the second, entitled the Language Olympics. The Language Olympics features the iconic five rings. The rings represent Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania. Each of the rings is comprised of the languages spoken there. The graphic is a precursor to the London 2012 Olympics and includes some additional information about the number of potential languages spoken at the Olympics and the demographics of visitors expected at those Olympic Games.



Both graphics provide the opportunity for discussion about language and understanding.

ART BABBLE

Quality online art resources have traditionally been difficult to find.
Enter ART BABBLE

"ArtBabble was conceived, initiated, designed, built, sculpted, programmed, shot, edited, painted and launched by a cross-departmental collection of individuals at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). It is intended to showcase video art content in high quality format from a variety of sources and perspectives.ArtBabble was created so others will join in spreading the world of art through video."

I have to admit that they hooked me with their slogan: "Play Art Loud".

The site is a catalog of videos related to many forms of and formats for art.
Check "channels" and you'll find videos covering a wide array of topics ranging from abstract art to video art, mediums used and cultural art.
The "artist" tab compiles past and present artists and their works.

You can use the site with or without an account. It appears that creating account allows for saving of videos and email updates from the site.

Play Art Loud!