The Science of Football

The folks at NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, have done it again.

You may remember a January 2010 posting about the science behind the Olympic games.
Now, in partnership with the National Science Foundation and National Football League, they unravel the Science behind Professional Football through a thoughtfully narrated and annotated series of video clips. Each video segment/lesson, has a "flip cue card option". This option "flips the video screen over and provides general information and a description of the clip, keywords(which could easily be the vocabulary portion of the lesson),and a link to Lessonopoly, a free software portal developed by Silicon Valley Education Foundation.

Video segments/topics include: Newton's Laws of Motion, Geometric Shapes, Kinematics, Nutrition, Hydration & Health, Projectile motion, Torque and Center of Mass and the Science of Football Vectors

CyberSafety-OWN YOUR SPACE

Young people have been immersed in technology since elementary school. They download music, Google their homework, and are constantly IMing friends. They check email before dinner, and tweak their Facebook page before bed. While they're doing all of this, they also need to protect themselves.

Own Your Own Space is an ebook designed to educate tweens and teens about protecting themselves and their "stuff" online. This book is about keeping safe—protecting your data, your identity, and yourself without giving up all the great stuff the Net puts at your fingertips. It isn't a fluffy, general overview book. Each chapter goes into great detail explaining the technical threats that students' computers face online as well as the personal threats to data that can also be threatened.
Chapters include:
Chapter 1: Know Your Villains
Chapter 2: Drive-By Malicious Code
Chapter 3: Data Grabbers and Dumpers
Chapter 4: Spy vs. Spy
Chapter 5: Giving Spam the Curb
Chapter 6: Pretenders and Pirates
Chapter 7: Phishing for Dollars
Chapter 8: Taming the Cookie Monster
Chapter 9: Safe Cyber-Shopping
Chapter 10: Private Blogs and Public Places
Chapter 11: Any Port in a Storm
Chapter 12: Look Pa, No Strings!
Chapter 13: Protective Tools
Chapter 14: Tweaks
Appendix A: A Check List for Mom and Dad

The book is available to download as a complete book or as individual chapters compliments of Microsoft and is also linked on the PSHS Student Resources page.

The book is written by Linda McCarthy, a Security Architect in the office of the CTO at Symantec. Linda has been in the security field for over a decade, and has broken into systems around the world to show executives how easy it is to break into their networks. A portion of the proceeds from this book have been designated by the author for nonprofit work to educate teens about Internet security.

Thanks to amazon.com for the information!

VOTE EASY

Now that we are in the midst of campaign season and everyone is growing tired of political ads, along comes a web site to help us make sense of it all.

Vote Easy is an interactive map designed to help voters identify the Congressional candidate that is most closely aligned with their views on a selection of twelve issues. Once you select your state(all 50 will be available Oct 8) and congressional district(the program will do it for you with an address), potential voters answer each question then specify how important that issue is to you. Based on those responses Vote Easy will indicate which candidate in your Congressional district is most closely aligned to your views.

Vote Easy is "created by Project Vote Smart headquartered in Philipsburg, Montana and established in 1988 in order to provide voters with accurate, unbiased information on candidates, issues and legislation.They do not accept money from any groups that have any kind of political affiliation and are comprised primarily of volunteers who spend their days tracking and inputting information for public access. "


This is a great activity for Civics classes as a tool to get students thinking about the twelve issues (Among them :Afghanistan, Taxes, Social Issues, Health Care, and Education) presented to them. After students answer all of the questions and find out which candidate was most closely aligned to their views, it would be interesting to have them take it again to see what type of answers it would take to be aligned with the other candidates.




Thanks to Diana Laufenberg for the tip!

Changing the World--One Map at a time

Here a new way to visualize our world based on different kinds of information.

Show World is created by Mapping Worlds, an Amsterdam-based company that develops custom interactive data applications. They take demographic, economic, environmental, and political data and create maps based on that data.

Initially, you have the opportunity to take a world view or a US view(Japan is also available). Then, select a subject from the top menu and watch the countries (or states)on the map change their size based on various kinds of data. Each time you select a different data set, the size of each country increases or decreases in comparison to other countries. For example, if you select the data set about steel production, the size of China is huge relative to African countries. On the other hand, if you select the data set for students not in school, the African countries swell while China decreases in size.

Show World is a great way for students to visually interpret data. What a great discussion starter this could be. It could also be the starting point for research about the economic and social conditions of countries around the world.

Thanks to Richard Byrne for the tip!